Hello.
Been a very extremely happy unRAID user for several years now, with the following hardware:
unRAID 6.2.3 Pro
AMD FX-8120 (Passmark)
ASRock 990FX Extreme4
16 GB RAM
Gigabit ethernet
11 Array Drives - 9 Data, 1 Cache, 1 Parity
2 Unassigned drives (See below)
Antec 1200
And I run the following software:
Array size - 25TB (4TB Parity) (Used for NAS purposes). 750GB Cache
Unassigned Drives - 1 for Windows VM (80GB SSD); 1 for MythTV (500GB)
VM 1 - Windows (hosted on unassigned drive above) for basic use, Allocated 2 cores 4GB RAM. RDP connection. (no passthru)
VM 2 - Asterisk. (Running Debian). Allocated 2 cores 1 GB Ram. VNC/'Headless'
VM 3 - Ubuntu x64. Allocated 2 cores 4GB RAM. Does not always run, only when needed. VNC connection
~18 Dockers - Including but not limited to: OpenVPN (very important), MythTV, MariaDB, Apache, Nextcloud (in Apache), netdata, htpmanager, etc. (no transcoding). Normally, I have about 12 running at any given time.
With that being said, I am starting to see the age of my hardware. I do get occasional emhttp hang, when I am doing something intensive (coping large files to/from array, MythTV encoding to mp4), etc.) and I am starting to think that the FX-8120 is starting to show its age. So I am trying to decide if it is worthwhile to upgrade, based on my needs.
If I did upgrade, I would like:
IPMI
Onboard Video (easier passthru for GPUs, not the onbaord of course)
Lower power consumption
Another Windows VM for the wife
LibreELEC VM
So if I upgrade, I was looking at:
Xeon E5-2683 v3Passmark Ebay there ~$350 x2 = $700
SUPERMICRO MBD-X10DRL-I Newegg ~$330
64GB of some ECC Ram. Newegg ~$400
I have no idea if I will need to upgrade the PSU. I believe the one I have in there is 850W but need to check
Because the Antec 1200 is limited to ATX boards, it severely limits what I can get. I only found 2 on Newegg, one with IPMI and one without. I have a spare Cosair 800D that fits E-ATX, but cannot hold as many HDDs... I am also not completely sold on the E5-2683, due to its low clock speed (although 14 cores sounds very nice). Socket LGA 2011-3 for future-proofing-ish (you can never future proof). I stayed away from the E5-2670 due to an older socket & higher power consumption (although there a hell of a lot cheaper)
Does it make sense for a nice 'hardware refresh', or I can live out with my current hardware for a few more years? If yes, what hardware should I be looking at?
Thanks for looking!