Power Eficent Build Questions

[Kronos_]

Hi,

I'm making a plant to upgrade my current unraid server from my old gaming pc parts to a more powerful and power efficient machine. My budget is around $500 give or take and I'm mainly looking to upgrade the CPU, Motherboard, and Power Supply. My current build consists of an Intel® Core™ i7-8700K, ROG STRIX Z370-E GAMING, 32GB DDR4, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080, LSI 9211-8i 6G SAS HBA, 10 HHDs, 2 NVMe SSDs, 6 120mm fans. I know what docker containers I will be running, this is mainly a plex and minecraft sever build. I use Tdarr to convert my videos to h265 and most my plex client devices can play back h265 so I'm not transcoding back to H264 a majority of the time. Looking to upgrade the CPU to one with UHD 770 Graphics to be able to remove the dGPU. I heard hat the intel UHD 770 Graphics are amazing at transcoding. So my question is, is there a difference in UHD 770 Graphics performance based on i3/i5/i7 and 12th and 13th gen? In searching I couldn't find a clear answer. From what I read no but just want to make sure. Is a i7-2700k over kill? I would like some performance wiggle room. Any advice on motherboards would be awesome. Would prefer DDR4 compatible but what affect DDR4 vs DDR5 has on the UHD 770 Graphics I don't know. I'm also looking to get a 600W Platinum power supply. And I probably will replace the LSI 9211-8i 6G SAS HBA with a ASM1166 sata card.

 

Screenshot of my current docker containers:

 

[Kronos_]

Also to note my power usage idle currently is around 100W with 3 drives active and the rest spun down and MC server off. Honestly not sure how much power will be saved making these changes.

Edited February 6, 2023 by Kronos_

[Lolight]

7 hours ago, Kronos_ said:

I'm making a plant to upgrade my current unraid server from my old gaming pc parts to a more powerful and power efficient machine.

My current build consists of LSI 9211-8i 6G SAS HBA, 10 HHDs.

You haven't mentioned the size of HDDs.

If they're old and small then you could easily improve your efficiency by replacing them with just a few of the current crop large HDDs (16-18TBs).

Which will allow you to get rid of the HBA card - another electricity consuming device.

Edited February 6, 2023 by Lolight

[Lolight]

6 hours ago, Kronos_ said:

is there a difference in UHD 770 Graphics performance based on i3/i5/i7 and 12th and 13th gen? 

Any advice on motherboards would be awesome. 

I'm also looking to get a 600W Platinum power supply.

There should be no difference between iGPUs of the same part number within the chip families.

 

Stay away from those "gaming" motherboards with tons of MOSFETS and many power stages - a waste of money and electricity.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/

Get a more basic motherboard from your favorite brand with as many of SATA ports as you can find but not before checking its manual on the .M2 expansion slots configurations.

Many MBs will disable one or several SATA ports when any of the .M2 slot(s) are in use.

 

Consult the following link for a PSU. https://cultists.network/140/psu-tier-list/

Get a single rail, listed in the Tier A, High-End group.

Pay attention to the model years (if applicable), some models are not recommended if out of the specified year range.

Don't try to save on a PSU.

[Kronos_]

59 minutes ago, Lolight said:

There should be no difference between iGPUs of the same part number within the chip families.

That's what I figured glad I got an answer .

 

1 hour ago, Lolight said:

You haven't mentioned the size of HDDs.

If they're old and small then you could easily improve your efficiency by replacing them with just a few of the current crop large HDDs (16-18TBs).

Which will allow you to get rid of the HBA card - another electricity consuming device.

The main ones that stay active and don't sleep are 4 10TB 7200rpm WD red drives. I could probably condense what is on the other drives (mix of 4 and 3TB) and pop out the HBA card.

 

1 hour ago, Lolight said:

Stay away from those "gaming" motherboards with tons of MOSFETS and many power stages - a waste of money and electricity.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/

Get a more basic motherboard from your favorite brand with as many of SATA ports as you can find but not before checking its manual on the .M2 expansion slots configurations.

Many MBs will disable one or several SATA ports when any of the .M2 slot(s) are in use.

Good advice thank you.

 

1 hour ago, Lolight said:

Consult the following link for a PSU. https://cultists.network/140/psu-tier-list/

Get a single rail, listed in the Tier A, High-End group.

Pay attention to the model years (if applicable), some models are not recommended if out of the specified year range.

Don't try to save on a PSU.

I will definitely take a look at this site and see my options.