Need help to upgrade ancient server.

[PhotoDK]

Hi everyone

A few weeks ago i bought a USB stick with an Unraid Plus licens, i have tested it on my very old (+10 years) server, and it works,

I would like to get more processing power, more memory and newer hardware, that uses less power.

But I have not build my own machine since i made this more than 10 years ago. So i need some help 🙂

The purpose of the machine, is hosting my DVD collection, so my kids can watch old movies.Running a multitude of Docker Containers like: Grafana, Influx, Zigbee2Mqtt, Plex, Home Assistant, Mysql, Dotnet Core, Minecraft and more.

I would like the following features:

• >= 6 Sata Ports
• at least 1 nvme port (prefer 2 or more)
• possibility for at least 2*32 GB ram.
• At least 1 Gbit/s ethernet. 2 * 1 Gbit/s ports or a single faster would be nice but not a must have.
• A cpu with Intel Quick sync would be nice to transcode the movies.
• With a low power CPU to lower the running costs.

What motherboard and CPU would be a good choice? a ATX formfactor would be nice, so it fit in my old Antec Housing.

Thanks a lot for your time.

[Lolight]

9 hours ago, PhotoDK said:

I would like the following features:

• >= 6 Sata Ports
• at least 1 nvme port (prefer 2 or more)
• possibility for at least 2*32 GB ram.
• At least 1 Gbit/s ethernet. 2 * 1 Gbit/s ports or a single faster would be nice but not a must have.
• A cpu with Intel Quick sync would be nice to transcode the movies.
• With a low power CPU to lower the running costs.

Welcome!

 

If you do just a few of transcoding streams and no VMs then the Intel i3-12100 or i3-13100 (non-F SKU) should be more than enough.

There's a good choice of LGA1700 motherboards with 8 SATA ports available, also featuring multiple NVMe slots.

 

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/

[PhotoDK]

Hi Lolight

Thanks for the CPU tip, ill look into it

That link is really cool, thanks Really helps.

Edited September 5, 2023 by PhotoDK

[X09C]

So here is the thing,

A great multithreading CPU will be great and have 64Gb+ is great to run containers and VM's. 

 

Second, having hard drive correlated with what you want will pay dividends (Ex, 1x 20TB for media, 1x for appdata, etc) because you do not to have everything spread across all your hard drives; now your making reading and writing slower.  Build pools, but i would have a parity drive for those as well.  

 

You said minecraft, you will need a really FAST SSD or NVMe because of reads and writes.  

Here is a great case to house your HD's:  Fractal 7XL

Here is a SAS card with sata connectors: LSI 9201-8i

[Lolight]

1 hour ago, MR.ROBOT said:

Here is a SAS card with sata connectors: LSI 9201-8i

Why would he need a HBA?

[PhotoDK]

4 hours ago, MR.ROBOT said:

So here is the thing,

A great multithreading CPU will be great and have 64Gb+ is great to run containers and VM's. 

 

Second, having hard drive correlated with what you want will pay dividends (Ex, 1x 20TB for media, 1x for appdata, etc) because you do not to have everything spread across all your hard drives; now your making reading and writing slower.  Build pools, but i would have a parity drive for those as well.  

 

You said minecraft, you will need a really FAST SSD or NVMe because of reads and writes.  

Here is a great case to house your HD's:  Fractal 7XL

Here is a SAS card with sata connectors: LSI 9201-8i

Hi MR.ROBOT

Thanks for the great tips.
I hadn't thought about using a card to get more Sata ports. good idea.

The minecraft server is just for my 2 kids and a few friends. I have never seen more than 4 players on it.
Currently it's hosted on a VM in Azure (I have a subscription that gives me some credits)

Du you have a suggestion for CPU and motherboard?

I don't need a huge amount of processing power, currently my dockers are running on a raspberry pi 4,  But some power would be great for fun. But low power usage is quite important, since electricity has become quite expensive here in Denmark.

Have a nice day
 

Edited September 6, 2023 by PhotoDK

[Lolight]

40 minutes ago, PhotoDK said:

I hadn't thought about using a card to get more Sata ports. good idea.

Not a good idea if you care about power efficiency.

 

You can always add a HBA card later on if/when running out of available SATA ports.

Besides, on a brand new system, why not to start with purchasing (adding) fewer and higher capacity HDDs?

Then you might never need to face the problem.

[Lolight]

1 hour ago, PhotoDK said:

But low power usage is quite important, since electricity has become quite expensive here in Denmark.

It's a long thread, but since efficiency is one of your concerns, I'd highly recommend to start reading through.

You might find it very helpful in understanding the issues involved and will also provide ideas for your component selection.

 

 

[PhotoDK]

7 hours ago, Lolight said:

It's a long thread, but since efficiency is one of your concerns, I'd highly recommend to start reading through.

You might find it very helpful in understanding the issues involved and will also provide ideas for your component selection.

 

Thanks for the link

If i can save money (to get more hardware) i will gladly read a lengthy post