Narrowing down CPU/mobo/chipset specs for build

[bobbintb]

I'm looking to upgrade my server:

M/B: ASRock Z87 Extreme11/ac

CPU: Intel® Core™ i7-4771 CPU @ 3.50GHz

Memory: 32 GiB DDR3 (max. installable capacity 32 GiB)

     0215 CMY32GX3M4A2400C11, 8192 MiB DDR3 @ 1333 MT/s

     0215 CMY32GX3M4A2400C11, 8192 MiB DDR3 @ 1333 MT/s

     0215 CMY32GX3M4A2400C11, 8192 MiB DDR3 @ 1333 MT/s

     0215 CMY32GX3M4A2400C11, 8192 MiB DDR3 @ 1333 MT/s

It's pretty old but has served me well for at least a decade. I'm hoping to build something that will also last me as long but seeing it's been 10+ years since I built a system, I'm not up to speed on the current hardware. The biggest issue is trying to figure out what components have want I want. I'm thinking of switching to an AMD processor. I used to exclusively use AMD but haven't for a while. They seem to be out on top again and have usually been cheaper. They also don't seem to be as plagued with the security issues common to Intel. But I don't know anything about their chipsets either and they don't seem to be as robust as Intel's. I hope to make a few gaming PC VMs in Unraid, once with a nice beefy new nVidia card for me and a few older ones for the kids. I run Plex and a lot of other Dockers. I'd like to have a dedicated card for Plex, or at least be able to easily swap undedicate it if 3 or 4 people want to game all at once (not a necessity, probably will never happen).

 

One problem is, I don't seem to see as many AMD mobos that have a lot of PCIe slots. I will also probably need a PCIe slot for a controller card for my hard drives. I see some mobos with 4x PCIe but a lot of the share lanes. Probably not a big deal if they are PCIe 4.0. I did some research and it seems PCIe 3.0 x16 and x8 performance for video card is the same. PCIe 4.0 being twice as fast means x4 should in theory be able to run a video card without any performance hit. I don't know for certain and it probably depends on the card I get. I'm thinking of a high end 300 series when they come in stock. I see more Intel mobos with upwards of 7 PCIe slots but I don't think I've seen an Intel board with PCIe 4, not a deal breaker. I'm also considering Xeon, as I can get lots of cores for VMs and lab machines for all my projects and tinkering. Those can be pretty cheap second hand. I don't see anything comparable in AMD. Their processors that have a lot of cores seems to greatly out perform Intel (not sure if that includes Xeon) but there doesn't seem to be a second hand market for them yet.

 

So, I'm just a little overwhelmed at trying to find out what fits my needs and wants. I would like:

CPU - minimum 16 core/32 threads.

MOBO - support minimum 64GB DDR4. Probably more for all the VMs and dockers but mostly concerned

    - minimum 4 (possible 3) PCIe x16 slots (3.0 or higher). At least one other PCIe slot for controller cards.

    - prefer onboard video, not a deal breaker.

 

Can anyone recommend a mobo and CPU, or a chipset to look into? I'm not worried about cost for the moment.