AdmiralVanGilbert

Sometimes, things unfold faster than you can guess, so this time, I'll post an update right away. You will find the images and everything in the original post at the top. ZEUS has transformed into a cube of glass and steel. And I love it. Its super silent - like, you cannot hear it at all while idle. And the temperatures are mind-blowing, I'm really happy (if you haven't already noticed) So, just a final round-up of the new specs: OS: Unraid 6.7.2 Case: Lian Li PC-O11DW Dynamic Mainboard: Gigabyte X470 Aorus Ultimate Gaming CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 2600 RAM: 4x16GB RAM (64GB), DDR4 2666. GPU1: Sapphire Pulse Vega 56 [For Gaming VM] GPU2: ASUS GTX 710 1GB Passive [For BIOS] Gaming-VM-Drive: 500 GB M.2 Samsung MZ-N5E500BW 850 EVO CPU-Cooler: EKWB Velocity Pump: Magicool DCP450 Radiator: XSPC TX360 Ultrathin Radiator - 360mm Fittings + Tubing: EKWB EK-STC Classic Fitting + EKWB EK-Tube ZMT (Zero Maintenance) Top Intake: 2x Noctua NF-A14 PWM 140mm Bottom Intake: 1x Noctua NF-A12x15 PWM 120mm (slim, 15mm height, spare part from an old cooler I didn't need any longer) Side Outtake: 3x Lian Li BR 120 Parity Drive: 1 x 6 TB Seagate IronWolf Data Drive: 1 x 6 TB Seagate IronWolf Cache: 2 x 240 GB Kingston SSD Drive Bays: 2 + 2 Powersupply: "be quiet!" Straight Power 11 850 CM PCI-E Cards: 1x USB 3.0 Extension Card, for the Gaming-VM only. Lights aren't final, I'm not sure how I will tune them. Btw, these are the temps (Read mainboard = water temperature) while basically idle (Docker containers are running, and so are the Minecraft VM, the PiHole VM and the Gaming VM) Next stop: Waterblock for the GPU. But this will have to wait for some time.

Thank you! Honestly, I never checked how much more power it consumes. In a worst case scenario... I mean, it's powered by a 5 Watt charger. So even if it consumes the full 5 Watt during the year (which it doesn't), we're talking about 30 kW - that's 6 € per Year here in Germany, which isn't cheap, of course, but all in all... It's ok. Regarding the light pollution, yes, it adds to it. But it's in the living room, and the light sensor does a pretty decent job during the day, so it's barely noticeable. Once you turn the light off at night though, it lits the room pretty ok-ish. But it's the living room, so it's fine for us. The main reason why I ditched the Kindle was that I hadn't had time to further develop my custom solution. It's sad, but that's the way it is. So I opted for Grafana + Prometheus + Telegraf. Also, the girls were asking* for a clock in the living room. So, one came to another, and I ended up using the iPad. *(read: demanded)

So, I wanted to post this update ever since, and now I finally got some time. It's almost outdated though, so beware. For pictures, see the original post. This is just a in-between update for new comments and old subs. Hardware - I doubled the RAM, as prices got lower compared to winter last year. ZEUS now runs on 64 GB RAM. - I expanded the storage by 2x2 TB - though they might get removed when moving to another cage. Seriously, I don't need them. - The AiO cooler broke, so I'm using the stock fan for the cpu. Not ideal, but it is what it is. Information Display - Kindle got removed, and got replaced by an 1st Gen iPad. I got it for 50 € off of ebay, with a broken display. Fixed the display for another 40€, and have a fancy display for some 90 € now. Mainly because I needed the space for the additional drives in the case. I now use Grafana + Prometheus for the dashboard, backed by data from home assistant for ambient temperature, as seen on the iPad now. Gaming - I removed the Parsec streaming after some time, because they weren't able to pass rumbling to the game controller. As you might guess, as a passionate arcade racer this sucks. So I pulled two 7.5 meter cables from the server to my desk. For a lightweight secondary system, I got a Thinkpad X230. It does a really good job at doing lightweight office work, and playing Youtube 1080p60 - that's all it's supposed to do. Planned: I think about getting a Lian-Li PC-o11 Dynamic case. Stay tuned.

Hi folks, I have the same issue as you have. It's also not related to the Vega Cards. I now own a Vega 56, but had a R9 390 before. With both cards, I was unable to update the Drivers in the VM to anything more recent than Adrenalin 18.9.3. When installing later drivers, the screen will black out and not return. So I tried to use remote desktop for the driver installation, and was greeted with a "This driver is not signed, install anyways?"-message when installing the latest 19.x Adrenalin drivers, which is really odd. After acknowledging the request, the RDP session freezes, and won't return either. My hope is that these issues vanish once we are on unraid 6.7.x stable, which hopefully brings the Linux Kernel that includes the fixes for hanging AMD GPUs. As of now, I cannot start my vm a second time, because of the PCI error I get.

Cool, great you liked it! I wonder if I should pursue the idea of "Distat" any further, to make it accessible to more people. Might be a ton of work, at the end. But it could be awesome.

I, eh... well... *blushes* Thanks for your kind words! Both of you! Sure, a small writeup wouldn't be tooo hard, I guess... The Kindle Well, the Kindle being used is nothing too spectacular, but it was the part that consumed almost half of the time for the whole project. It's a 4th Gen Kindle, which, as you might already have guessed from the name, runs the Firmware 4.x (don't know the exact version number). For prepping the Kindle, I followed several online tutorials - most of it was taken out of this tutorial at galacticstudios. The author did a great work here. However, as outlined in the last paragraph, the writer also hit a roadblock when trying to register the cron job. I had the same issue, so at the end I had to head over to the mobileread thread, where I got everything to setup a USB-Network. Luckily, as you might remember, my thin client already runs on linux, so no problems here with crude Windows drivers. I could then ssh into the Kindle itself as root, and add the cronjob there. On the now-rooted Kindle, I installed Kite, an alternative launcher for the Kindle, which allows you to run basically everything that can run under Linux. What I also took from the first link, was the script, which fetches the image from the server: #!/bin/sh rm -f /mnt/us/weather.png read url </mnt/us/weatherurl if wget $url -O /mnt/us/weather.png 2>/mnt/us/documents/recentweatherlog.txt; then eips -c eips -c eips -g /mnt/us/weather.png else cat /mnt/us/recentweatherlog.txt >>/mnt/us/documents/weatherlog.txt eips -c eips -c eips -g /mnt/us/weather-image-error.png fi eips is the program on the kindle, which is used to display images (which are in a really special format) on the display. The script reads the url from a text-file, then tries to wget the image from a server, and stores it on the kindle. Also, logging is performed, and an error image has been provided, in case something fails. This basically rounds up the Kindle setup. The Server Yeah, well - it's a bit ugly. I wanted to make it a bit more cleaner, but sometimes life happens, and you don't have time to finish stuff the way you want it. But it's working for now, and I'm sure I'll get back to it some day. As you can see in the image from the first post, the Kindle only displays text. So, I thought it should be pretty straight forward: Design a template svg file, replace the placeholders with the actual content, convert it to a png, and push it to a webserver somewhere on the network. Well... no. First, I created a template SVG file in my favourite SVG editor, inkscape. It looks like this: Then, because I'm a C# coder all day, I wrote a .NET Core application, which can run under Windows and Linux alike (big bonus for developing in Visual Studio, and then deploying to a Linux Docker). It reads like this: using System; using Renci.SshNet; /* reference needed: Renci.SshNet.dll */ using System.IO; namespace Distat.Cli { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { Console.WriteLine("Booting Launchpad..."); //smartctl -a /dev/sde | grep -m 1 -i Temperature_Celsius | awk '{print $10}' string[] drives = new string[]{ "sdf", "sdd", "sde", "sdc" }; string[] placeholders = new string[]{ "PT", "HDD1T", "C1T", "C2T" }; string svgContent = File.ReadAllText(@"./template/kindle-600-800.svg"); if (String.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(svgContent)) Console.WriteLine("Not loaded..."); ConnectionInfo ConnNfo = new ConnectionInfo("192.168.178.51",22,"root", new AuthenticationMethod[]{ // Pasword based Authentication new PasswordAuthenticationMethod("root","****************") } ); //svgContent = svgContent.Replace("PT", "31").Replace("LSTUPDATETST", DateTime.Now.ToString()); for(int i = 0; i < placeholders.Length; i++){ try{ using (var sshclient = new SshClient(ConnNfo)){ sshclient.Connect(); using(var cmd = sshclient.CreateCommand(String.Format("smartctl -a --nocheck standby -i /dev/{0} | grep -m 1 -i Temperature_Celsius | awk '{{print $10}}'", drives[i]))) { cmd.Execute(); string result = cmd.Result; if (String.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(result)) result = "Sleeping... zzZzz"; else result = result.Replace(System.Environment.NewLine, "") + "°C"; Console.WriteLine("Command>" + cmd.CommandText); Console.WriteLine("Return Value = {0}", result); svgContent = svgContent.Replace(placeholders[i], result); } sshclient.Disconnect(); } } catch { } } svgContent = svgContent.Replace("LSTUPDATETST", DateTime.Now.ToString()); Directory.CreateDirectory("./output/"); if (File.Exists("./output/kindle.png")) File.Delete("./output/kindle.png"); if (File.Exists("./output/kindle.svg")) File.Delete("./output/kindle.svg"); File.WriteAllText("./output/kindle.svg", svgContent); "rsvg-convert --width 600 --height 800 --background-color white -o ./output/kindle.png ./output/kindle.svg".Bash(); "convert ./output/kindle.png -rotate -180 ./output/kindle.png".Bash(); "pngcrush -c 0 -ow ./output/kindle.png".Bash(); using (var sshsftp = new SftpClient(ConnNfo)){ sshsftp.Connect(); sshsftp.UploadFile(new MemoryStream(File.ReadAllBytes("./output/kindle.png")), "/mnt/user/appdata/apache-www/imgs.png"); sshsftp.Disconnect(); } } } } So I guess I have to explain a few parts: Everything is hardcoded. Yes. I admit. I have another EPaper sitting in our house, which waits for being allowed to display some info. Maybe next year. Let's walk through the code: string[] drives = new string[]{ "sdf", "sdd", "sde", "sdc" }; string[] placeholders = new string[]{ "PT", "HDD1T", "C1T", "C2T" }; string svgContent = File.ReadAllText(@"./template/kindle-600-800.svg"); I defined an array with all the drives that are available in the server, and another array, which holds the placeholder. Out of pure lazyness, these share the same indices. ;) The next line reads all the content from the template svg into a simple string. for(int i = 0; i < placeholders.Length; i++){ try { using (var sshclient = new SshClient(ConnNfo)) { sshclient.Connect(); using(var cmd = sshclient.CreateCommand(String.Format("smartctl -a --nocheck standby -i /dev/{0} | grep -m 1 -i Temperature_Celsius | awk '{{print $10}}'", drives[i]))) { cmd.Execute(); string result = cmd.Result; if (String.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(result)) result = "Sleeping... zzZzz"; else result = result.Replace(System.Environment.NewLine, "") + "°C"; Console.WriteLine("Command>" + cmd.CommandText); Console.WriteLine("Return Value = {0}", result); svgContent = svgContent.Replace(placeholders[i], result); } sshclient.Disconnect(); } } catch { } } Here, most of the magic happens. Using the awesome ssh.net library, I connect to the unraid machine via SSH, and run several commands on it (Note: Don't do that.) Nice detail: The --nocheck standby flags doesn't wake up the drive. So it stays idle, although the cron job is updating the data every 7 minutes. I then simply replace the placeholders with the real data (Note: My daily production code doesn't look like this.^^). File.WriteAllText("./output/kindle.svg", svgContent); "rsvg-convert --width 600 --height 800 --background-color white -o ./output/kindle.png ./output/kindle.svg".Bash(); "convert ./output/kindle.png -rotate -180 ./output/kindle.png".Bash(); "pngcrush -c 0 -ow ./output/kindle.png".Bash(); using (var sshsftp = new SftpClient(ConnNfo)){ sshsftp.Connect(); sshsftp.UploadFile(new MemoryStream(File.ReadAllBytes("./output/kindle.png")), "/mnt/user/appdata/apache-www/imgs.png"); sshsftp.Disconnect(); } Afterwards, everything is written to a new file, called kindle.svg. The ssh library also provides a simple "Bash()" - Extension to strings, with which I can run commands on a local machine. I use rsvg-convert, convert and pngcrush: rsvg-convert: Does the heavy lifting from svg to png. Had some headache to get it running. convert: Rotates the output. As you can see in the picture, the Kindle is placed upside down. This is for the power cord. pngcrush: Does the conversion to a "Kindle"-friendly, grayscale png format. Took some time to find the right format for the png. Finally, the image gets uploaded to the Unraid server. On the Unraid server itself are two Docker containers running, that belong to this project: Apache-PHP: The easiest to use apache server I could find. Works like a charme, and provides the image to the Kindle Gogs: My go-to git repository. I use it to pull the source code to the server, and then build everything into a docker container. The aforementioned docker container is then run via cron every 10 minutes: #!/bin/bash while timeout -k 10 8 docker run --rm distat; [ $? = 124 ] do sleep 2 # Pause before retry done Yes, sometimes the "smartctl" - command doesn't return, and I haven't had the time to look into it. So I give the whole container a 10 second timeout. "Distat" is the name of the project - "Display Statistics". It should grow into sth. bigger, but I haven't had the time for it yet. I guess I missed some bits and pieces, but I'm also a little bit sick at the moment, so my mind might not work as expected.^^ One more thing... I almost forgot - there is one thing left: The power supply. One part of the hack is to change the Kindle to an "always on" kind of display. That's not how the kindle works out of the box. It normally goes to sleep, which also means that the wifi gets disconnected. So I had to turn this off. This means, the Kindle needs to be attached to a 5V PSU all the time. I did this by splicing up a Micro USB cable, soldering a Fan-Connector at the other end, and then put a 5V/12V - Fan - Molex splitter in between. Now, the Kindle never switches off, because the server runs 24/7. Conclusion That's pretty much all that is to say about the project. It was fun, and I'm really looking into making it more mature - like growing it into a "home-assistant" for information displays through out the household. Don't know if that's realistic, but... Well, that's what dreams are for. Thanks for reading. :)

Thanks, santa! Well, your mileage may vary. There are several reasons why I choose the components. The Case This was already existing, and for my use case, is quite sufficient. If I want to, I can add a lot of drives in total. However, because the cages are removable, I can also make some room for other stuff, e.g. the Kindle. PSU The GPU is quite hungry in terms of power - taking the rest of the system into account, and that a PSU runs best at 70-80% load, I've choosen the bequiet psu. CPU, Mainboard, RAM This is the most important part, I guess. The Ryzen 5 2600 offers 6 cores, 12 threads for a price of roughly 160€ where I live, whereas the Ryzen 7 costs 300 €, but only adds 2 cores, 4 threads to the party. You can always overclock a non-X to X with the right cooling, so no point in taken a Ryzen 5 2600X either. Which leaves the question - why no Threadripper? Because I don't need the additional power, thus I can save on the costs. However, again, depending on what you are doing, a TR4-platform might be a better choice for you. From what you wrote, if you assign 4 threads to your Windows 10 VM, there should be plenty of room left for pfsense, Kodi and stuff like that. On the other hand - once you've got your hands down on unraid, and everything is working as expected, it's tempting to do a little bit more. And then a bigger platform is justified.

//Updates so far: [2019-09-07]: Increased RAM, removed some parts. Scroll to read the update. [2019-09-17]: Complete overhaul. New case, new cooling. Scroll further to read the update. Original Post Hi folks, some time ago, I asked about a decent way to consolidate my IT. Thanks for your input! I posted a follow-up there, but wasn't finished at that time. Now, this consolidation has come to a conclusion. I mean... for now. For... the next weeks, maybe... Don't tell my gf. OS: Unraid 6.6.2 Case: Anidees AI6V2 (+ LED Strips, they boost performance! #CommonKnowledge) Mainboard: Gigabyte X470 Aorus Ultimate Gaming CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 2600 RAM: 2x16GB RAM, DDR4 2666. GPU1: Sapphire Pulse Vega 56 [For Gaming VM] GPU2: ASUS GTX 710 1GB Passive [For BIOS] Gaming-VM-Drive: 500 GB M.2 Samsung MZ-N5E500BW 850 EVO CPU-Cooler: CoolerMaster Masterliquid lite 120 Front Intake: 2x Noctua NF-A14 PWM 140mm Top Outtake1: 1x Noctua NF-A12x15 PWM 120mm (slim, 15mm height, spare part from an old cooler I didn't need any longer) Top Outtake2: 1x Noctua NF-F12 PWM 120mm Rear Outtake: 1x Noctua NF-F12 PWM 120mm Parity Drive: 1 x 6 TB Seagate IronWolf Data Drive: 1 x 6 TB Seagate IronWolf Cache: 2 x 120 GB Kingston SSD Drive Bays: 3 currently mounted, 7 - 8 in theory. Powersupply: "be quiet!" Straight Power 11 850 CM PCI-E Cards: 1x USB 3.0 Extension Card, for the Gaming-VM only. Information Display: 4th Gen. Amazon Kindle with PSU-attached Micro-USB Powersupply. The "Kill A Watt" says: 80 Watt in Idle (Drives spinning, Gaming-VM running with one virtual Monitor) 70 Watt in Idle (No Drives spinning, Gaming-VM running with one virtual Monitor) 220 Watt while playing Forza Horizon 4 530 Watt with Prime 95 (max Heat) + Furmark  Primary Use: Gaming VM, NAS, smart home central, backup master. Likes: It's silent when idle - you only get a low-noise breeze sound from the fans. Dislikes: Tinted acrylic display - would love a TG, and a white case. Future Plans: Beefier CPU, more RAM Impressions: Gaming I'm currently doing Inhouse-Streaming using Parsec. Works pretty well - imagine watching a good-quality stream on Twitch. That's basically how it's looking on my "thin-client". My thin-client is a AsRock J3455 Mini-ITX Board with Ubuntu 18.04. Would love to upgrade that to a J5005 some time soon. It's good for typing, watching Youtube and streaming. Plus, it's passive, and with a SSD, so it's totally quiet. Power Consumption is at 10W idle. Information Display I had an old Kindle laying around, and always thought of adding a display to my server. The Kindle has been rooted, Energy-saving options have been disabled, and I found a script on the web which basically allows you to fetch an image from a Webserver and display it fullscreen on the Kindle. I then wrote a .Net Core program, which loads a template SVG I built, opens a SSH connection to the Unraid server, runs "smartctl" on the drives (without them waking up, there is a parameter for that), replaces the placeholders in the SVG, and saves it to disk under a differnt name. It then converts the SVG to PNG, and converts that PNG to the special PNG format the Kindle needs. Finally, it's uploaded via SFTP to the unraid host, and served via a docker httpd to the Kindle script. Was some fun hacking, would love to do more in the future. Conclusion The basic system is now up and running. I'd like to re-add all the systems that were running on my server before. Mainly, that includes home-assistant with Alexa control, re-adding the Xiaomi Vacuum to the overall system. Also, I have a cable based Internet connection now, and the modem I'm using offers 4 cable tv tuners, which could be used via tvheadend. There is a lot to tinker around. If there's interest, I'll surely post some updates. Thanks for reading! Update 2019-09-07 (Link for comments posted after this update) So, I wanted to post this update ever since, and now I finally got some time. It's almost outdated though, so beware. Hardware - I doubled the RAM, as prices got lower compared to winter last year. ZEUS now runs on 64 GB RAM. - I expanded the storage by 2x2 TB - though they might get removed when moving to another cage. Seriously, I don't need them. - The AiO cooler broke, so I'm using the stock fan for the cpu. Not ideal, but it is what it is. Information Display - Kindle got removed, and got replaced by an 1st Gen iPad. I got it for 50 € off of ebay, with a broken display. Fixed the display for another 40€, and have a fancy display for some 90 € now. Mainly because I needed the space for the additional drives in the case. I now use Grafana + Prometheus for the dashboard, backed by data from home assistant for ambient temperature, as seen on the iPad now. Gaming - I removed the Parsec streaming after some time, because they weren't able to pass rumbling to the game controller. As you might guess, as a passionate arcade racer this sucks. So I pulled two 7.5 meter cables from the server to my desk. For a lightweight secondary system, I got a Thinkpad X230. It does a really good job at doing lightweight office work, and playing Youtube 1080p60 - that's all it's supposed to do. Planned: I think about getting a Lian-Li PC-o11 Dynamic case. Stay tuned. Update 2019-09-17 (Link for comments posted after this update) Sometimes, things unfold faster than you can guess, so this time, I'll post an update right away: ZEUS has transformed into a cube of glass and steel. And I love it. Its super silent - like, you cannot hear it at all while idle. And the temperatures are mind-blowing, I'm really happy (if you haven't already noticed) So, just a final round-up of the new specs: OS: Unraid 6.7.2 Case: Lian Li PC-O11DW Dynamic Mainboard: Gigabyte X470 Aorus Ultimate Gaming CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 2600 RAM: 4x16GB RAM (64GB), DDR4 2666. GPU1: Sapphire Pulse Vega 56 [For Gaming VM] GPU2: ASUS GTX 710 1GB Passive [For BIOS] Gaming-VM-Drive: 500 GB M.2 Samsung MZ-N5E500BW 850 EVO CPU-Cooler: EKWB Velocity Pump: Magicool DCP450 Radiator: XSPC TX360 Ultrathin Radiator - 360mm Fittings + Tubing: EKWB EK-STC Classic Fitting + EKWB EK-Tube ZMT (Zero Maintenance) Top Intake: 2x Noctua NF-A14 PWM 140mm Bottom Intake: 1x Noctua NF-A12x15 PWM 120mm (slim, 15mm height, spare part from an old cooler I didn't need any longer) Side Outtake: 3x Lian Li BR 120 Parity Drive: 1 x 6 TB Seagate IronWolf Data Drive: 1 x 6 TB Seagate IronWolf Cache: 2 x 240 GB Kingston SSD Drive Bays: 2 + 2 Powersupply: "be quiet!" Straight Power 11 850 CM PCI-E Cards: 1x USB 3.0 Extension Card, for the Gaming-VM only. And more pictures, just for the fun of it: Lights aren't final, I'm not sure how I will tune them. Btw, these are the temps (Read mainboard = water temperature) while basically idle (Docker containers are running, and so are the Minecraft VM, the PiHole VM and the Gaming VM) Next stop: Waterblock for the GPU. But this will have to wait for some time.

Hi folks, I thought I might post a follow-up here on what I've done so far. First and foremost: I've bought an Unraid license. This OS is worth every penny. Other than that, here is my current setup: OS: Unraid 6.6.2 Case: Anidees AI6V2 Mainboard: Gigabyte X470 Aorus Ultimate Gaming CPU: Ryzen 5 2600 RAM: 2x8GB RAM, DDR4 2400. GPU1: Sapphire Radeon R9 390 8GB [For Gaming VM] GPU2: ASUS GTX 750 2GB [For BIOS, soon to be replaced with a cheap passive one] GPU3: Gigabyte HD7750 1GB [For fun?] Gaming-VM-Drive: 500 GB M.2 Samsung MZ-N5E500BW 850 EVO Array: 1 x 6 TB Seagate IronWolf + 1 x 6 TB Seagate IronWolf (Parity + Data) Cache: 2 x 120 GB Kingston SSD (Cache-Pool) Powersupply: "be quiet!" Pure Power 10 600 CM As the RAM prices are currently falling, I'll upgrade it maybe mid next year to a lot more. We'll see. The "Kill A Watt" says: 90 Watt in Idle (Drives spinning) 160 Watt with Gaming VM running (3 Monitors attached) 270 Watt while playing Forza Horizon 4 530 Watt with Prime 95 (max Heat) + Furmark In terms of energy consumption, I haven't calculated yet. However, considering that I use my rig round about 4-5 hours a day, going down from roughly 220 Watt to 160 Watt makes quite a different where I live, so the upgrade was worth the money. Next up is the software part. Once I'm finished with everything (including lighting ), I might open a thread over at the UCD-Forum. Thanks everybody for your input, it really helped a lot!

Ok, so.... Bummer. I double checked to see if it's possible what I'm about to try, and with my current setup, it's not. The i5-4670K doesn't support VT-d - so no pass-through for the GPU, I guess. Well, it wouldn't be that bad at all - just get a matching CPU (the i7-4790K does indeed support VT-d. Oh, Intel... ), and off you go. It's not that easy - the ASUS mainboards also do not support VT-d. Back to the sketchboard, I guess. We upgraded our old living room TV to a newer model (2013 vs 2017) - I was surprised that todays TVs run a full-fledged Android with Play Store on them. Haven't been doing much in terms of TVs since the old days. Anyway - the old living room pc is, strictly speaking, not needed any longer. So I got another idea: I swap the two mainboards, and try the build on the Pentium G4600. Yes, I know, I'll face only 2 cores (4 thanks to HT), but I was running GTA V on the HTPC without a dedicated graphics card. So the Pentium might not be that bad at all. And, the B250 supports VT-d! One headache: I need to keep the old BeQuiet PSU, as the one in the HTPC is not capable to supply enough wattage to the GPU. However, the old one is this model: BeQuiet System Power L7 500W. It's rather old, so I'm likely to swap it anyways for a modern one. @Benson: That's the tinkering I was speaking about.

I guess that's part of the fun - see what's possible. I like to tinker around, so... I'd give it a shot. Seems legit, yes. The current NAS-SoC could do this job. A second ethernet card (intel) is already inside. I don't know - maybe the main reason is / was that I think I won't be able to game on the cpu as before. I mean, we are talking about Forza Horizon 4, GTA V, etc. But you are right, I should just give it a try. I'll report back.

Hi, So personally, you would stick to the current configuration? Despite the expected workload I outlined above? Switching the Platform altogether means a difference between 400 Bucks, roundabout. From what I've read, the X370 and X470 don't differ that much. I could order it with a BIOS-Update, so I wouldn't have problems here. On the other hand, I guess the manufacturers could have learnt from mistakes the made on the first gen boards, and could have fixed them on the second gen. So it would make sense to switch to a 2nd gen board anyway.

Ok, so maaaaaybee, this wall of text was a little too much - but I like to provide as much info as possible. However, my plans got me thinking: Maybe a i7-4790 or i7-4770 is enough as an upgrade for my current mainboard? I‘m currently on a i5-4670k. Used ones come at a price of around 150€ (~174 US-$), and both my mainboard and the psu are still pretty ok-ish, I guess. As an alternative, this is what a Ryzen-Build would cost: https://de.pcpartpicker.com/user/MrGilbert/saved/zLn8YJ (I‘ve read the warnings on the page)

Hello everybody, I'm using UnRaid for three weeks now, so my trial period is about to end, and I'd like to consolidate my home IT infrastructure. Yes, I consider myself a newbie in terms of KVM, UnRaid and everything around. I mean, I know how to do things in Linux, I can edit fstab and mount drives, but I failed recompiling the kernel some years ago. That's basically me. Hi - I'm Daniel. So, here is what I'm starting with: My Gaming Rig (2015 Build, with upgrades) OS: Windows 10 Pro Case: Anidees AI6V2 Mainboard: ASUS Z 97-K CPU: Core i5 4760 K RAM: 4x4GB RAM, DDR3 - not sure about the timing though. GPU: Sapphire Radeon R9 390 OS-Drive: 500 GB M.2 Samsung MZ-N5E500BW 850 EVO Data Drive: 1 TB WD Blue Powersupply: 500W "be quiet!" Our NAS OS: UnRaid 6.6 ( ❤️ ) Case: CoolerMaster Elite 130 Mini-ITX Mainboard: ASRock J3455 SoC CPU: Intel® Quad-Core Processor J3455 (up to 2.3 GHz) RAM: 2x4GB DDR3L Array: 1 x 6 TB Seagate IronWolf + 1 x 6 TB Seagate Iron Wolf (Parity + Data) Cache: 2 x 120 GB Kingston SSD (Cache-Pool) Powersupply: 300 W "be quiet!" Our living room HTPC OS: Windows 10 Pro Case: Silverstone ML04 Mainboard: MSI B250M Mortar CPU: Pentium G4600 RAM: 2x4GB Crucial CT4G4DFS824A DDR4-2400 DIMM Data Drive: 1 x 4 TB Seagate Barracuda (Backup Drive for the NAS) OS-Drive: 1 x 275 GB M.2 SSD Powersupply: 300 Watt "be quiet!" SFX Power 2 Then we have an old (2010-ish) HP laptop that my mum used to use, and now my little sister is using, and a medium gaming rig (i5, GTX 1060) that my girlfriend is using. Or household consists of my girlfriend, my sister (Teenager) and me - so the media consumption is basically YouTube + Netflix. Adding snapchat & co on top, we have round about 500 - 800 GB of outside Traffic per month. (Hope you are still with me after this wall of text, I'm sorry) My plan: Keep as much things as possible, try to sell the stuff I don't need. What should the new server do? Host my Gaming Rig as a Virtual Windows-Machine with the Radeon as dedicated GPU (I do 1080p / 60fps for at least the next 3 years to come, if my 3 monitors don't die before that. I'm not yet into 144Hz or 4K Gaming) Host our Home-Assistant instance (Docker) Of course, "normal" NAS capabilities (SMB-Share) UrBackup-Server for the attached Windows PCs (although I wouldn't need that for the virtual machines any longer) Host a more capable virtual Windows-machine for my little sister (instead of replacing the old laptop). I might add a small, dedicated GPU some day. Maybe Plex or similar? pfsense would be good - or something related. We currently have a router + modem from our cable provider, but I cannot change the DNS-server on this one, so I'm unable to setup a network wide ad filter instance like pi-hole without tinkering too much with the overall infrastructure (double natting, for instance) Maybe it could serve as an access point for our mobile devices, but I'm not sure if this makes any sense. Otherwise, I'd need an extra access point. Parts I can re-use (I think...): - Case: Anidees AI6V2 - GPU: Sapphire Radeon R9 390 - Array: 1 x 6 TB Seagate IronWolf + 1 x 6 TB Seagate Iron Wolf (Parity + Data) - Cache: 2 x 120 GB Kingston SSD (Cache-Pool) - VM-Drive: 500 GB M.2 Samsung MZ-N5E500BW 850 EVO (just an idea) I would like to keep the Mainboard, but I don't think that makes any sense. Judging from the market prices at least here in Germany, a i7 4xxx (4 cores, 8 threads) costs nearly as much as a ThreadRipper 1900X. Which brings me down to the main question I have: -It looks like a need a new Mainboard, CPU, RAM and power supply, because none of the old stuff seems to be powerful or recent enough. I consider AMD for this task, because the Ryzen-CPUs seem pretty capable - and they are good if you are on a budget. Speaking of budget: The lesser the better. I cannot afford a 1800 US-$ CPU with all the bells and whistles. The whole project shouldn't cost more than 600 US-$. However, I could calculate with the stuff I'm selling. So, if we end up with a pricetag of 850 bucks, and I can sell my old stuff for 250, everything is ok. I think, I need a good blend of cores and single-core performance. Maybe a 12 core Threadripper could fit? But then I need a matching mainboard, which is quite expensive? Or would a Ryzen be sufficient? All in all, the build should run decent for at least the next 3 years to come. Love to hear your thoughts, suggestions and ideas on this one!