Is this combo overkill?


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HI folks, I'm looking at pairing an i5-9600K with an MSI H310M Pro M2. I'm a little stuck on the price ($450 before memory & HDD's), so I'm wondering if this is overkill.

 

What I'd like from this system:

1. Reliable NAS (Obviously)

2. Plex server (relatively light use, no more than 3 streams at 1080p)

3. Light, non-continuous VM use

4. Possibly some Docker containers (OpenVPN, PiHole, etc... Other useful stuff that's out there..)

 

I'm currently using an old Dell (3800 passmark) with a pair of 1TB drives in RAID 1 as a poor-man's NAS & Plex server. It been working ok for a couple of years, but I need to add space and migrate it away from Windows 7. I think that pretty much anything I do is going to be a pretty big improvement over where I'm at.

 

With the price of the combo above, I'm wondering if it might be better to do a budget build to handle the non-Plex stuff above and then migrate the old Dell to Linux and continue running Plex on that machine. Any thoughts? Would one of the budget builds handle the non-Plex stuff listed above?

 

Sorry for the lengthy post, and thanks in advance!

 

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On 6/12/2021 at 10:14 PM, SpaceballOne said:

...pairing an i5-9600K with an MSI H310M Pro M2...

 

The H310 Chipset is a LowCost Chipset for lowcost office PCs with only 4 SATA's and a small connection between the CPU and the PCH (5GT/s).

Beware: There are "no heatsinks" on the VRMs of this board - NOT suitable for K-CPUs with 95W at BaseClock!

I wouldn't recommend this Board...

 

Strange Thing: The Manual says its for Intel Gen 8 CPUs only...

But the Webpage says, its for Gen 8 "and" Gen 9 CPUs - confusing...

 

i woud recommend the ASRock board from my signature for this CPU.

It can handle a max. Load of 95W - but you can also reduce the Power-Target for the K-CPU at the BIOS - lets say 80W or 75W.

My 65W i7-9700 runns at 45W and is twice as fast as my old i7-3770.

Edited by Zonediver
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Awesome! Thanks for the info! I think that I've pretty much got the CPU side of things figured out. I need 7th gen or better, and Passmark score isn't a massive consideration since i'll have QSV. 

 

I do need to brush up on the motherboard and chipset side of things. Is there a resource - preferably Unraid specific - that you would recommend?

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5 hours ago, SpaceballOne said:

Is there a resource - preferably Unraid specific - that you would recommend?

 

I don't really understand what you exactly mean... "resource" of what?

unRAID run on almost every intel platform. I am not sure whats up with 11th Gen, but with v6.9.2, unraid supports Gen 2 to Gen 10 of Intel CPUs.

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5 hours ago, Zonediver said:

I don't really understand what you exactly mean... "resource" of what?

 

sorry, by "resource" I meant a link to a guide that would help me to select a chipset & motherboard that would best meet the needs I listed in the OP.

 

I now know that 4 SATA ports is not enough, but it looks like there are quite a few boards with 6 ports. That would support a cache drive, parity drive and 4 data drives. From there I could add a controller and expand to more drives

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29 minutes ago, SpaceballOne said:

 

sorry, by "resource" I meant a link to a guide that would help me to select a chipset & motherboard that would best meet the needs I listed in the OP.

 

I now know that 4 SATA ports is not enough, but it looks like there are quite a few boards with 6 ports. That would support a cache drive, parity drive and 4 data drives. From there I could add a controller and expand to more drives

If you need 6 SATA port, then no reason buy a mobo with 4 SATA then add extra SATA controller.

 

Must MATX mobo ?

Mobo budget range ( in USD ) ?

i5-9600K with an MSI H310M Pro M2. I'm a little stuck on the price ($450 .... seems expensive, in which market ?

Edited by Vr2Io
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9 hours ago, SpaceballOne said:

sorry, by "resource" I meant a link to a guide that would help me to select a chipset & motherboard that would best meet the needs I listed in the OP.

Ah - i see... well, i do the same like you want to do - so see my signature 😄👍

The ASRock B365M Pro4 (and also the "Phantom Gaming 4") is a "special case":

You can use:

6 SATA Drives +

2 NVMe's (PCIe 3.0 x4) +

3 PCIe Cards (PCIe 3.0 x16, x1, x4)

"ALL TOGETHER AT THE SAME TIME"

Thats why i choosed this board 👍;-)

Edited by Zonediver
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On 6/19/2021 at 9:15 AM, Zonediver said:

Ah - i see... well, i do the same like you want to do - so see my signature 😄👍

The ASRock B365M Pro4 (and also the "Phantom Gaming 4") is a "special case":

You can use:

6 SATA Drives +

2 NVMe's (PCIe 3.0 x4) +

3 PCIe Cards (PCIe 3.0 x16, x1, x4)

"ALL TOGETHER AT THE SAME TIME"

Thats why i choosed this board 👍;-)

 

Well, I searched for this board and stumbled across what seems to be a pretty good deal. I can get it in a combo with an i7-9700k (pretty much identical to your rig) for $300usd. I've reserved it because I can't imagine doing any better on price vs performance.

 

Thanks  a bunch,  your recommendation really led me to a great combo and the board seems awesome with all of the sata/nvm/pci.

 

I still need to find ram and hdd's but that should be pretty easy. This is a great future-proof but well-priced start. 

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5 hours ago, SpaceballOne said:

I can get it in a combo with an i7-9700k (pretty much identical to your rig) for $300usd.

 

Thats a "very good" deal for this combo. Get them!

Regarding the K-CPU: If you dont need the "full power", I would recommend to set the PowerLimit in the BIOS from 65-85W to not stress the VRMs.

Edited by Zonediver
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  • 3 weeks later...
On 6/24/2021 at 3:19 AM, Zonediver said:

Thats a "very good" deal for this combo. Get them!

Regarding the K-CPU: If you dont need the "full power", I would recommend to set the PowerLimit in the BIOS from 65-85W to not stress the VRMs.

 

So I've picked up that Mobo/CPU combo, found a case that works well, and I'm finally making some progress on my build. I've installed the CPU & Cooler, RAM, and Power supply. I fired the system up with (and without) my Unraid USB connected, just to check for signs of life. 

 

I'm getting a power LED, the CPU fan spins up, and the LED on my USB stick lights up. However, I'm not getting any signal on the display and no lights on the keyboard or mouse.

 

On the page below, all of the compatible PSU's that I've looked at have an 8-pin EPS connector. I'm using a dinosaur of a power supply that only has a 4-pin. 

https://pcpartpicker.com/products/power-supply/?compatible_with=Xtzkcf#sort=price&page=1

 

I'll pick up another PSU tomorrow to try, but I was wondering if there are any other rocks that I should look under or parts that I should pick up. Thanks!

 

 

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1 hour ago, SpaceballOne said:

I was wondering if there are any other rocks that I should look under or parts that I should pick up.

Does the board have a piezo speaker, or just header pins for a speaker? Since you didn't mention beeping on startup, I'm guessing no speaker on board, so hooking up a speaker to see if the system is trying to tell you something may help. To start diagnosing a problem system I generally boot without RAM or any cards, just PSU, CPU, speaker. That should generate a beep code indicating no RAM, then I add the RAM back and see if the beep code changes.

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Err, well let's just say the system works a bit better when the RAM is snapped in all the way. 🙃🙃

 

I do have a nice new Power Supply though. 

 

Looks like I'm up & running. The web interface is super slick. I'm liking it so far. Anyway, I'm on to the new user guide and in full tinker mode 

  • Haha 1
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