Evenimous Posted April 21, 2023 Share Posted April 21, 2023 Hello, I was curious what the systems cost for hobbyists and sysadmins out there using UnRaid, as well as some other questions. Personally, I feel like I was able to get decent deals for my components. How much did your server cost to purchase or build? What are the specs of the aforementioned server, and do you feel that you got a good deal? What are the things about your server that you wish you purchased differently? Quote Link to comment
Evenimous Posted April 21, 2023 Author Share Posted April 21, 2023 (edited) For my own personal answer, My server cost roughly $2511 to build. The specs of my server are shown in my signature, but here's a breakdown Base Fractal Design 7XL ($250) (Newegg) Corsair HX750 80+ Plat Fully Modular PSU ($145) (Amazon) Adaptec ASR-71605 ($89.99) (Ebay) CableCreation Mini 8643 SAS->SATA Breakout Cable, 0.5M / 1.6ft ($15.59) (Amazon) Unraid Pro ($129) Compute Supermicro X9DRE-TF+ ($155) (Ebay) 2x Xeon E5-2660-v2 ($20/each) (Ebay) 2x32GB IBM 78P1539, RDIMM, 1066MHz ($34/each) (Ebay) Cooling Arctic P12 PWM 5 pack ($30.99) (Amazon) Noctua A4x10 FLX ($13.95) (Amazon) Arctic Freezer 34 Esports Duo ($46.7/each) (Amazon) Storage Samsung BAR 32GB USB (boot drive) ($13) (Newegg) 6x Seagate Exos x16 16TB (array) ($244.5/each) (Amazon) Things that I wish I purchased differently; I wish that I purchased a slightly newer CPU, for the sake of idle power consumption. I did not realize that the idle power consumption for this server would be 105-110w. To me, that seems like quite a bit. Power numbers are observed from my UPS with nothing else plugged into it. I also feel that the CPU coolers are entirely overkill for what I anticipated that I would need. I have literally never seen the temperatures go over 45C, And that's with extremely warm room ambient temperature, as I live in a hot climate and the server is in a room with no air conditioning. I wish that I purchased higher static pressure fans for the intake for the server. Some of the hard drives in the PSU basement get a little bit toasty in the summer, reaching 51C at max when the server is under full load from 5-10 users, which gives me concerns about drive longevity. Outside of the summer, the drives seem to stay comfortably in the 38-45 range under load, depending on ambient temperatures. The Supermicro board has its power connectors at the top... and this required me to get the most out of the cable lengths from even this power supply, which is pretty long. I would recommend cable extensions for other users in the future. The same can actually be said about the fan cables. It was difficult to get the fans to reach all the way along the case. I would have routed cables cleaner if I had enough slack to do so. I have also attached two pictures of the server from just before I deployed it. (Edit, added another picture showing the HBA with fan) Edited April 21, 2023 by Evenimous added another picture Quote Link to comment
ConnerVT Posted April 23, 2023 Share Posted April 23, 2023 For me, this is kind of a funny story. It is difficult to give an accurate cost, for my server should be renamed Theseus. I originally decided to build an Unraid server with the $600 COVID stimulus check I received two years ago. I had a retired CPU, motherboard, power supply and some DRAM on hand, so I figured I would give Unraid a try. I initially came pretty close. Then decided I didn't trust the power supply, so I replaced it. Then bought two more drives. I really started to enjoy the server, and started to put it to work more. Bought it a GPU. And a UPS. So I ended up upgrading a few things. I upgraded the: NVMe drive used as the main cache pool/appdata CPU Motherboard (old MB didn't play well with the new CPU) Additional DRAM 4 more, much larger drives Right now, about the only things left from the initial build are the case, a 3x4 drive cage, the small ssd I have that will never die, the flash drive, some fans and cables. So, do I add up the cost of the original component, of the current components, or of everything that has passed through this setup? 🤔 One benefit of all of this is that I'll be starting a new Unraid server build this week. Other than needing a power supply, all of the remaining components I have on hand, many of them previously installed in the server above. So the total hardware cost will be about $70 USD. Of course, that's before upgrades. 😝 Quote Link to comment
Evenimous Posted April 25, 2023 Author Share Posted April 25, 2023 On 4/23/2023 at 11:44 AM, ConnerVT said: For me, this is kind of a funny story. It is difficult to give an accurate cost, for my server should be renamed Theseus. I originally decided to build an Unraid server with the $600 COVID stimulus check I received two years ago. I had a retired CPU, motherboard, power supply and some DRAM on hand, so I figured I would give Unraid a try. I initially came pretty close. Then decided I didn't trust the power supply, so I replaced it. Then bought two more drives. I really started to enjoy the server, and started to put it to work more. Bought it a GPU. And a UPS. So I ended up upgrading a few things. I upgraded the: NVMe drive used as the main cache pool/appdata CPU Motherboard (old MB didn't play well with the new CPU) Additional DRAM 4 more, much larger drives Right now, about the only things left from the initial build are the case, a 3x4 drive cage, the small ssd I have that will never die, the flash drive, some fans and cables. So, do I add up the cost of the original component, of the current components, or of everything that has passed through this setup? 🤔 One benefit of all of this is that I'll be starting a new Unraid server build this week. Other than needing a power supply, all of the remaining components I have on hand, many of them previously installed in the server above. So the total hardware cost will be about $70 USD. Of course, that's before upgrades. 😝 Are those parts from your old personal system that you upcycled? Quote Link to comment
Evenimous Posted April 25, 2023 Author Share Posted April 25, 2023 I always base the cost of a system on the current parts in it, not what used to be in it. Usually those are sold off or upcycled. Quote Link to comment
ConnerVT Posted April 25, 2023 Share Posted April 25, 2023 For the Unraid build, I started with some of the components coming from my desktop PC upgrade: Ryzen 1500X, mATX MB, my first NVMe drive, and 8GB of DDR4 I had bought for another PC (now decommissioned). For ~$600, I bought a case, 4 re-certified 6TB drives, PSU, 8GB more DDR4, and some cabling. The case, power supply and cables may be all that is still in the server. I've made a lot of changes in the 2 years I've been running Unraid. That 1500X/MB/DRAM combo, and 3 of those 4 drives ended up in a backup server I just built this week. It all ended up in the case I had replaced when I updated when I updated the desktop PC I mentioned at the start of this post (just realized that as I typed this). More confusing than a hillbilly family gathering. 🤪 1 Quote Link to comment
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