Advice for new CPU and MB

[smcw]

I currently have a machine that I've pieced together and upgraded over the years, the motherboard and CPU were taken out of a refurb lenovo machine that I got a deal on at the time. I'd like to reuse my existing full ATX case, 650W power supply and accessories (HDDs, SSDs, etc). So it would primarily be a CPU and Motherboard replacement I'd be looking for, I'd replace the ram too since the new system will probably require DDR4.

 

Right now I am limited by 2 ram slots/16GB limit, lack of PCIe x4 slots, lack of SATA ports on the motherboard, and the CPU is starting to show its age especially with multiple VMs going at once. I really can't do more than 1 intensive task at a time or the whole machine bogs down. Ideally I'd like a minimum of 6 motherboard SATA ports to avoid using the PCIe card for the array and cache, it will have to be an Intel system as I use the iGPU for plex transcode and I'd rather not spend the budget on a dedicated GPU.

 

I haven't been looking in detail at computer hardware and pricing in a while so I'm a bit out of date on what's the norm and what's current. So any advice is appreciated. Please let me know if my budget or anything seems unrealistic or if there's something I could do to future proof this upgrade as this hardware has served me well for almost 5 years given what it cost me. I'd like something that can keep me going another 5 and hopefully allow room to expand.

 

Budget: $600-800 (CAD)

Country: Canada

 

Existing Specs:

Lenovo 3098 "ThinkCentre E73 SFF" Motherboard (has 3 SATA ports)

Intel Core i5 4570

16GB DDR3 1600

JMB 585 5-port SATA PCIe x4 card (for array HDDs)

2x 512GB SATA SSDs for cache pool

3x data HDDs (6+6+3TB)

1x 6TB parity HDD

1x 500GB HDD for temporary non-array storage

Edited May 22, 2021 by smcw