Opinions needed

[tomtomtomtom]

Recently I've realised that between my Unraid server and NVR im using about $1000 a year in electricity (power's expensive where I am) so want to try and merge the two together and make it a bit more energy efficient and at the same time build what I really need instead of using old parts. 

 

Currently I'm using a i7-2600 on an old dell motherboard with a few PCI cards for expansion. I have set up a windows 10 virtual machine with a VMS running on there for my security cameras but want to find out if there's a better way of doing things. 

 

I'm looking for some opinions on the following and if anybody has any other ideas to do make this better-

 

1. Efficiency of the system to reduce power cost is a pretty big factor. If I can spend $1000 to reduce my power bill by $300 a year not running old hardware and 2 devices I'll be very happy. Not looking every last watt but whatever is worth spending money on that will outweigh the power cost in the long run.

 

2. Main uses for this system will be Wisenet WAVE VMS for security cameras runnning on a Windows 10 virtual machine, Plex media server and a bit of general storage. There'll be a couple of dockers for managing my Plex media. I may install a few other things on the windows 10 virtual machine in the future like Unifi and Sonos server but nothing too intensive. 90% of my media on plex is higher quality 1080p rather than 4K. 90% of that 4K is watched on my Samsung TV at home through the Plex app but most stuff is watched on my iPad through Infuse. This means that transcoding is probably not a big deal to me but if there's something I can do to make transcoding work better without spending a heap more money then it might be worth it. There would be a maximum of 2 streams at once. 

 

3. I was looking at the i5-13500 as the CPU. I don't follow this stuff religiously so don't know all the latest news but seems like the efficiency cores might be good here for when the server is idling 90% of the time and then has the performace cores for when I want to use it. The VMS doesn't need alot of computing power to run but it seems like windows itself might need a bit. I'm also thinking that the Intel 770 graphics would probably be pretty good here as well. Can anybody tell me whether UnRaid will take advantage of those e cores and is the 770 graphics good for transcoding or are they a waste?

 

4. Will I need a graphics card? I won't be doing any kind of gaming on the system. It will be sitting in a server rack without a screen plugged in. Ideally I'd like to not have one to save power but will I want one for transcoding and if I put one in there will it be turned off/not adding to the power draw of the system unless I'm actually doing something that needs it like transcoding?

 

5. Does anybody have any good recommendations for rack mount servers? I'll probably want to fit around 8x 3.5" drives and 2x 2.5" drives. Don't need hotswap or anything. The cheaper the better without being too shit. 

 

6. Does anybody have any good solutions for remotely booting up the server if it's turned off? It has a UPS but for longer power outages aswell as in the past I've had it not turn back on after a reboot when there's been an issue with it. Sometimes I can't physically get to the server for up to a week and if my CCTV is running on this it needs to be running as much as possible. Ideally I'd like to be notified when there is any issues with the server that I need to look and can then turn it back on or possibly just have it automatically reboot if it's sitting there with power available after a set amount of time. 

 

Let me know what you all think. I've learnt alot after setting up my current server a couple of years ago but I'm sure there's alot still I don't know and want to do it right from the start.