Modern Hardware needed for Unraid? Guides are outdated

[austin]

Seems like most of the official documentation around hardware is deprecated and not really very usable. I last built an unraid server in 2012. It's still going strong but it is using a bunch of random drives from all PC's and the cache drive is throwing errors, another over heats all the time, but it still hums along quite nice with a AMD FX processor. However, I'm trying to just start to understand what is required these days for an effective unraid machine. I've tried reviewing some forums here and watching some guides on youtube, but really, what are the key features you need to get the best bang for your buck? I recall when I bought the AMD processor there was something about core virtualization and making sure it was compatible. Does stuff like that still exist? Do I need to make sure it can do something like GPU passthrough, special PCI lanes for speedy cache drives, ECC memory? What would you tell someone looking to build a "bang for your buck" build to look for? 

 

I'm sure the main question is, well it depends on what you are doing. Let's assume running a VM, maybe a few docker images, storage, and maybe attempting something fancy like running Starcraft 2 remotely (is that even a thing?).

 

Anything that'll get me down the right path would be super useful. Right now i'm at the throwing darts at the wall stage and don't know where to start.