I am trying to decide between an i5 12400 and a i5 12600

 

My needs will be Plex (eventually will need some transcoding), Nextcloud, Pi-hole, Easy-wg, probably 10 other Dockers and maybe 10-15 VMs (Not usually simultaneously). Maybe gaming one day but not a concern right now. I already have a Rosewill 4u chassis. The 4500 15 bay model. I have some hard drives and an m. 2 ssd. 

 

My second question is, will this motherboard suffice? And does anyone have any experience with it as a server motherboard?

 

ASRock Z690 PG Riptide LGA 1700 Intel Z690 SATA 6Gb/s DDR4 ATX Intel Motherboard

 

https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16813162031

 

Edited January 2, 20233 yr by nathan9214

Hopefully you'll get some other comments from other people because my comments here are just my opinions.

 

The mobo looks good.  As a bare minimum this is what I generally look for today:

• At least two M2 slots.
• At least six SATA ports (more preferred).
• Extra and fast PCIe expansion ports (in case you want to use a SATA/SAS expansion card).
• Intel LAN.

 

As for the CPU I usually narrow my choices down to a half dozen or so that will cover my basic needs and then I price compare them by finding out their benchmark numbers like the link below.  I then take that number and divide it by the cost.  The CPU that gives me the best bang for my buck is the one that I buy.

 

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i5-12400&id=4677

 

Plex runs nicely on my file servers which use a ASUS PRO B460M-C mobo with an Intel i3-10100 CPU.  Although I don't run much on those machines they are definitely underutilized.  Your choices here should be just fine.

You can run anything... I'm going to recommend ECC RAM and your motherboard won't support it (why?). What are you going to do?...

 

Just build and learn. I know... (no one has the money to do that anymore)... ghost protocol.

 

MrGrey.