#Home Server Build Advice

156 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

torpid cave
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Really could use some advice building a new home server for unraid. I’ve built lots of gaming rigs in the past but want to bounce some ideas off the community before pulling the trigger.

I currently have this:
Dell Precision T5820 Desktop Workstation
W-2125 4.0GHz 4 Core
64GB DDR4 with ECC
Quadro P5000
2TB M.2 NVME SSD for cache
(x3) 22TB HDD for storage

It’s mostly a plex server with the need for transcoding. Then a handful of RRR apps and network monitoring tools. I would like to be able to migrate some gaming servers I host over to unraid. But when I tried last time my CPU was pegged and causing lag. The next thing that they would start to bottle neck is my memory capacity. I’d also like to consider moving my Home assistant instance? But ultimately future proof myself a little to be able to add more containers/apps and all.


I currently only have room for one more drive and no 10gb network card. I also would like the ability to add more memory but don’t want to pay stupid money to buy matching ECC memory. ```

```Option two is to start from scratch. 
I’d move over:
M2 drive 
HDDs 
GPU

And then be looking for:
128gb + of memory
10gb network card or motherboard that supports it
Ideally like 6+ drive bays
1+ NVME slots
Fast future proofed CPU

Where I’m torn on is core count vs operating frequency. And then also worried about PCIE lanes. I can either try to find a motherboard that has 10gb Ethernet. Or a separate card. But I’ll be using a descent amount of PCIE lanes:
GPU
NVME
Network Card ```

***Please DO feel free to reply, mention or even DM if you’re willing to help.***
knotty acorn
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Not sure why you would buy a Xeon just for ecc, this is pretty standard on consumer CPUs for years now

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For pcie lanes you should look at how much addon cards you want to run and how fast they are + how the board can split the lanes. Generally you want to have more than less

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Consider you also would want an hba to add your drives and not through the Mainboard

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Generally if you were to build something new it's probably more close to 2k$

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For core count, go for what had the most cores per w tdp which reasonable fits your budget. More than 8 with HT makes less sense but there may be good deals out there

torpid cave
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I was looking based off this list

knotty acorn
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Intel offers this since 12th gen and amd allthrough ryzen with some exclusions to mobile and G processors

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i see this is supposed to be a same board upgrade

torpid cave
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Intel Xeon W-2295
Intel Xeon W-2275
Intel Core i9-9820X

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Was thinking these were my top choices

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and guess I was thinking I had to do something that supported ECC because of the dang memory

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So can I realistically get any LGA 2066 socketed CPU?

knotty acorn
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id probably recommend not buying any of those

torpid cave
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lol alright

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so what would you suggest?

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And can I replace ECC Memory with regular desktop memory?

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Or does the MB need it since its a workstation and what not

knotty acorn
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generally they can be used with non ecc memory

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there probably are exclusions to this but i havent seen one yet that wouldnt take regular ones as long as you dont mix them

torpid cave
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Ahh this is what I had found

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that made me think I HAD to have a W-CPU

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because I have this DDR4 SDRAM with ECC

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But this note may apply to me?

NOTE: Computer configurations offered with 2933 MHz RDIMMs operating with Sky Lake processors will operate at 2666 MHz.

knotty acorn
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i would think so but the 7940x is wasted money

torpid cave
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How so

knotty acorn
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you are getting 2017 performance out of something that costs as much as a 14700 which is more than twice as fast

torpid cave
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so your saying upgrade the motherboard to a new socket?

knotty acorn
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probably yes

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if you want to stick to ddr4 memory there are great deals out there and you could save the buck on it for now

torpid cave
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Well if im changing the MB for a newer socket then I would probably run DDR5

knotty acorn
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that would also work, its not unreasonably more expensive

torpid cave
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I thought you were suggesting I keep all the hardware and only swap out the CPU and or maybe memory

knotty acorn
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that was my initial thought but only if the upgrades would have been cheapish

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thats a bit unfortunate

torpid cave
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The game servers im hosting are CPU intensive.
They "suggest" that you have 4 cores per server running at 3ghz+"

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Im currently running 3 and want to add 4-5more possibly in the future

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i7 vs i9 preference?

knotty acorn
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probably would stick to whatever they call the i7 now

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its likely more cost effective

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ultra 7 or something

torpid cave
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at first glance this seems to be two of the top choices

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$350 and $630 respectively

knotty acorn
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Yea that's some cost difference ^^

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Soon they should have the new models which "perform slightly worse but may be better somehow",not sure if those would be worth the wait

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Especially as they strip multi threading

fresh basalt
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Unraid kinda sucks at the kernel level for high-intensity CPU "things". IIRC, you could do something with CPU pinning and the tips and tweaks plugin. But the CPU discussion you guys are having is 100% spot on.

torpid cave
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hmm well hoping the containerized version of the game servers will run well with one of these newer CPUs

fresh basalt
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They might. I ended up ditching Plex with transcode on my unraid box because even with CPU pinning and tons of tweaks, it would peg all the CPU cores to max and bring the whole thing to it's knees.

torpid cave
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Well im running a P5000 card

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for transcodes

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its a beast and can never get it to max

fresh basalt
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Oh, that should help a lot then.

torpid cave
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haha yeah

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so the CPU is really only for my other apps

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specifically Ark ASA

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in a container

fresh basalt
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Oooooofff Ark in a container was a BITCH to get right.

torpid cave
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which the native version of Ark ASA wants 4 cores per server at 3.0ghz +

fresh basalt
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Yup

torpid cave
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I had it working no problem, but my lilttle CPU couldnt handle it

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so now trying to decide between this i7 and i9

fresh basalt
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I would lean closer to the i9, personally. The cost sucks, but... the performance is solid.

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I have ollama running in a container on my i9 and it's actually really good (most of the time).

torpid cave
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Yeah I have to get a new MB, ram and cooler too

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And possibly a 10gb network card

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I wish I could determine if a MB comes with 10GB Ethernet port does that count as some of the PCIE lanes?

knotty acorn
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If possible consider a board with onboard 10gbit (and preferable not an aqc10x nic)

torpid cave
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Because if i buy and after market network card I have to consider how many lanes I’m using

knotty acorn
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The lane allocation for those usually is done over the chipset

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So it's kinda freeish

torpid cave
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Ahh ok

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Yeah that’s what I’ll do then

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Plus avoid having room issues with larger GPUs and all

knotty acorn
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I think asus pro art z790? (Whichever fits a 14th gen cpu) or something ones should have that

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But it's kinda expensiveish

torpid cave
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Soooo

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I did a thing

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Got a Dell R730XD

knotty acorn
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That sounds like a terrible choice in terms of availabile CPUs for a gaming server

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Especially the overhead if a dual socket system is dangerous in performance terms.

torpid cave
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Gaming server?

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I’m hosting game servers. Have a buddy that’s running two of them and is running 48 game servers

knotty acorn
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Well the supported E5 2600 v4 line xeons that the r730xd supports are all two years older than the one you currently have in use while also clocking slower

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So you kinda just get more cores but very much not better performance per core

torpid cave
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Makes up for single core performance in the shear amount of threads

eternal rivet
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That's not really how it works.

torpid cave
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Correct in instances where you need single core performace

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quick benchmark comparison shows 22% slower single core performance but 400% increase in over all performance

knotty acorn
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Unless your applications scale across more cores better than they would on faster cores that's not good

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You don't negate that impact by having more cores

torpid cave
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Well thats exactly what i needed

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I was running out of cores

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not having issues with single core speeds

knotty acorn
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Also 4 times the total compute by throwing 9 times the amount of cores should give you a hint

torpid cave
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Im running plex server and a handful of contaiers associted with that

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those items run fine on hardware even slower than what I have now

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My largest hurdle is add the game servers im hosting in another box

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those can each be given a handful of cores

knotty acorn
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It's about wether or not they profit about having more but slower cores vs having faster ones

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Generally applications dont

torpid cave
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its not one single item im throwing at the hardware and expecting better speeds.

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but thats just it lol

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its not an app

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its 40+ gaming servers

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can do that on a 14th gen i9

knotty acorn
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you effectively turn money into heat and not into compute

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Why wouldn't it, benchmarks suggest that a 7950x would be faster than your dual socket on less than half the cores

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A 14900 isn't far off either

torpid cave
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because i would have to be running 9 works stations and need 300gb of memory split up between them all lol

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14900 you cant use with 300+gb of memory

knotty acorn
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That's fair, you still can buy more than a decade old hardware

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Threadrippers go very cheap tho they aren't new and used proper gear with epyc or recent xeons isn't unobtainable either

torpid cave
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not for this kinda money lol no where close

knotty acorn
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How much are you spending on that?

torpid cave
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https://www.ebay.com/itm/126377701879?_skw=dell+R730XD+SFF&itmmeta=01JC0Q89SVJ0Z7VP5VHACK11CT&hash=item1d6cb2b1f7:g:Gp4AAOSwen9mAyUo&itmprp=enc%3AAQAJAAAA8HoV3kP08IDx%2BKZ9MfhVJKnBWidz5ja6Xq074cHKsMv%2BxGbPKUVxVYVeZKgXhSSxUPe6t%2FRSsG1i5fj7IqCj%2Fu61TSE5AtevHuQXNfwXED3EU2yeoyBO6olae0TVx7R1GHQ9%2FaPsyVg1nnK7HicIqicoq1MBzGqYxSjtc6xkYYxygfE5J8eZVJXhMrmn2nM2nCmQkgeZEIp%2FGdqBbRy1qhyZl%2FgbGiiIx1wo70c9x8kVX5kQynzN3uk0WmnXj1qssPF3t8q6pkEouGcNtur9cYcqGAFIPHgpjoNlpFayLZaZh1zExwzfgIdlVmLX%2Fpye9g%3D%3D|tkp%3ABk9SR4SdoZfgZA

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then slapping my Quadro P5000 in it for plex trasncoding

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should make all the lights in the house dim and the noise might keep the neighborhood up...

eternal rivet
torpid cave
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but should be perfect

torpid cave
knotty acorn
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The price is reasonable but the performance kinda will be disappointing

torpid cave
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well it already does what I need it to do and more

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buddy has two of them with slightly slower components

knotty acorn
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slow stuff from 2015 won't get any faster ^^

torpid cave
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dont need it too

knotty acorn
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If your buddy has one tho, you may want to ask him to try out running the software you want to run and see if it works as you intend

torpid cave
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Find me something with that can support 300gb+ of memory with a fast CPU for even 200-400% of the price this cost and ill change my mind

torpid cave
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proxmox, plex, containers, Ark ASA servers

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same stuff im running on multiple pcs now hes running on one R730XD

knotty acorn
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You could probably get a dl360 g10, g292-z20 or an R6415 from my quick look

torpid cave
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sure with a 1/4 of the specs

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or no cpu or memory included lol

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also has to support GPUs

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so an 1U hardware wont work

knotty acorn
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Not sure what 1/4 of the spec means in terms of buying significant faster stuff but sure

torpid cave
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you can build them out to be a ton faster yes

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they are all pretty nice and much newer

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but can get them anywhere near as fast for the money

knotty acorn
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Of course you can lol. The z20 ships refurbed with a 7402p which is faster than your dual socket one in any regard

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Ateast those that eBay shows me, regional stuff may make a difference

torpid cave
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link?

knotty acorn
torpid cave
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yeah i mean its double the money, but a good deal. That CPU is insane

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even slower single core though

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and yeah you would have to add hella memory