Upgrading hardware - any advice?

[awediohead]

My current set up (see sig) is pretty old and I'm wondering about whether to switch the motherboard and CPU to much newer x570 and 3600 hardware from a gaming PC that gets very little use. I really don't know what to expect in terms of performance, efficiency and practical usage, and would love to hear from those actually running unRAID on something like this hardware: I mean in the same ball park. Also any thoughts on Intel vs AMD with unRAID?

 

For example, in terms of using 12 threads and six cores, for modest gaming with an RX580 passed through would it manage to play some not very taxing games AND handle light Plex media server duties simultaneously? Maybe with pinning 2 cores to Plex and 4 to a Windows VM?

 

I'd plan on using the GTX 1050 for transcoding with Plex and have the RX580 just for gaming. Is it realistic to think that 2 cores and 4 threads on a 3600 would be roughly equivalent or perhaps better than 4 cores / 4 threads of Haswell era CPU? Obviously it's a lot newer, but I'm struggling to get an idea of what to expect, and I'd like a better understanding before I take the plunge.

 

Do you think that would be more or less efficient than running the Haswell as purely a media server 24/7 and just booting up the Ryzen PC on the odd occasions we want to play some games? Would the more modern hardware be "smarter" at powering down when not in use?

 

TIA

[awediohead]

H all I posted this in the lounge cos I thought it was more of a chatty or general kind of topic rather than my either having a hardware problem or needing advice about what hardware to buy. If a mod thinks it belongs elsewhere, no problem.

 

I'm OK with my unraid box just being a media server using an old CPU, not least because it's something that old hardware does perfectly well and I'm not sure what else I'd do with it, other than sell it for peanuts. On the other hand if a more modern CPU can do the same job better and do other things (run VMs) my old hardware simply can't do well, AND lower my electricity bill, then that's something I really need to think about.

Cheers

 

 

[ConnerVT]

As I always answer this question - It depends.

 

You need to assess what resources you need for both your server needs and your VM needs.  Think of each as a stand alone system, as resources (CPU cores, memory, peripheral devices, etc) that are used in your server aren't available in your VM, and vice versa. 

 

My personal feeling is that 2c/4t running any modern O/S with a GUI that is actually used by humans is under powered.  You definitely wouldn't be gaming with it, so for your 3600 example, that would mean you would be running Unraid with 2c/4t.  Plex can be very demanding at times, especially when running maintenance tasks.  Even with a GPU doing video transcoding, the CPU typically will be transcoding audio, and if you turn on subtitles, will be transcoding video as well.

 

For me, the starting point for for a Unraid system running Plex and a medium powered VM is a current or the recent previous generation 8c/16t CPU.

[TimTheSettler]

I had the same question.  I tried to repurpose an old machine running Win7.  I installed the Unraid OS and gave it a go but it was so old (Core2 Duo with 4GB RAM) that 50% of the CPU and half the memory was in use all the time, even when idle.

 

The first thing to understand is that you don't really "install" the Unraid OS since it sits on its own USB stick.  At first I thought this was weird but then I realized that it works nicely because it doesn't really matter what's in the box.

 

My point here is that you should download the Unraid OS and try using your existing hardware.  If it works then great but if you find it slow then upgrade the mobo, CPU, and memory.  The Unraid OS will use the new hardware.  Mobo is around $100, memory is about $150, and CPU is about $150. 

[awediohead]

Thanks for the input, however I've actually been running unRAID on my Haswell era hardware for quite a few years now. As I said in my OP, it works very well as purely a media server, combined with a GTX1050 it also manages encodes, decodes and transcodes probably because I only have a small family where it's unusual for it to have to handle more than two streams simultaneously.

I think the way forward for me is to just carry on with things as they are for now, (if it ain't broke . . . ) and use my x570 +3600 for experimenting and learning stuff, which could an unraid trial license, but also Proxmox, reverting it to "gaming PC" on the rare occasions it's needed.

At some point in the future I might be able to snap up a 3900x or similar secondhand, as well as more DDR4 RAM, at which point I'll revisit the whole idea of combining media server and VMs into a single box.

[TimTheSettler]

I think your plan is a good one.  Wait and see and save some money.  At some point you'll get annoyed with something.  Maybe the CPU is overloaded all the time.  Maybe transfer speeds are slow.  Maybe you're running out of space.  Whatever is bothering you is what should drive your choices.