April 3, 201610 yr Hey all , This is my first post on the forum and really I just need some parts advice. I am currently running an Unraid 6 trial on an old mini-itx rig I have for testing purposes and also so I can get to learn the software so I am comfortable using it day to day. My requirements: 1) Must support Plex media server (2-3 transcoded streams), Coachpotato, Sickbeard, SABnzbd, MakeMKV, Handbrake, crashplan and maybe other dockers in the future. 2) It needs to run an openVPN server (yes I know this requires very little power ) 3) It needs expandability for the future, eg: spare ram slots and hard drive cages/sata ports 4) I would like to certainly be able to play with VMs, probably running a ubuntu/lubuntu test machine What I would like in addition: 1) I would like the server to be using relatively new hardware, either haswell or skylake (I know many will suggest used parts but I like my warranties ) 2) I want the server to have a relatively low power draw and be as quite as possible (It will be located in the living room under a desk) Now my budget is around £550-£700 pounds but I already have a handful of parts: Case - Corsair 200r PSU - Corsair CX500M DVD drives - 3x samsung dvd reader writer units (Not sure if I will use 1 or more yet for ripping dvds) In addition I have a Samsung 120gb 840 evo ssd that I might use as a cache but i am unsure if its too small for my needs? Parts: I have put together a few parts lists I have researched, they all support vt-d, vt-x and other features. I have not included items such as usb header adapters, sata cables etc. I would really appreciate it if you could recommend one or a completely different one if my ideas are rather bad . Obviously I want to spend what is required for my build and not too much for components I will not utilise, hence any repetition in the parts lists! Parts list 1) CPU - Intel i3 6320 Skylake 1151 (Is this CPU powerful enough?) Motherboard - Gigabyte GA-H170-HD3 RAM - Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 16gb (2X8GB )2400Mhz CL14 HDDs - 3x WD red 3tb drives (will add more in the future) Parts list 2) CPU - Intel i5 6500 Skylake 1151 Motherboard - Gigabyte GA-H170-HD3 RAM - Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 16gb (2X8GB )2400Mhz CL14 HDDs - 3x WD red 3tb drives (will add more in the future) Parts list 3) CPU - Intel i5 4590 Haswell 1150 Motherboard - MSI Z97 PC Mate RAM - HyperX FURY Series 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR3 1866 MHz CL10 HDDs - 3x WD red 3tb drives (will add more in the future) What are your guys thoughts?
April 3, 201610 yr In my experience 8GB is plenty for unRAID 6 and a handful of Dockers. I'd expect 16GB to be generous and a good idea that will let you play around with a bunch of Dockers and light weight VMs. A Core i3 however (even one with 6118 passmarks) isn't generous for 2-3 transcoded streams, Dockers, and VMs. It might work out - but it isn't generous. If you afford the Core i5 I'd go in that direction, it should give you the kind of headroom that 16GB of RAM will. A Xeon and ECC RAM is also worth considering though it adds to the cost. Skylake vs. Haswell is a bit of a toss-up. In theory Skylake should be the better choice with DMI 3.0 and DDR4, but it has some IOMMU problems that are making device pass through harder than it ought to be (check out this). That could affect you if you want to pass a DVD into a VM - hopefully someone with more experience on that will chime in.
April 3, 201610 yr A decent Haswell board/CPU combo will use less power than Skylake, too. Skylake uses less power on the memory, but the VRM on the motherboard brings power consumption back up to Ivy Bridge area. For example, comparing two machines running the same UnRAID install: Skylake i3-6100T, Gigabyte Z170N-Wifi, 1x8GB Kingston DDR4, Samsung NVMe M.2 SSD - idles at 21W. Haswell E3-1226v3, Fujitsu TX1310M1 server with 2x8GB DDR3 ECC, Corsair Neutrom XT SSD - idles at 16W. The Haswell is WAY quicker.
April 4, 201610 yr Author In my experience 8GB is plenty for unRAID 6 and a handful of Dockers. I'd expect 16GB to be generous and a good idea that will let you play around with a bunch of Dockers and light weight VMs. A Core i3 however (even one with 6118 passmarks) isn't generous for 2-3 transcoded streams, Dockers, and VMs. It might work out - but it isn't generous. If you afford the Core i5 I'd go in that direction, it should give you the kind of headroom that 16GB of RAM will. A Xeon and ECC RAM is also worth considering though it adds to the cost. Skylake vs. Haswell is a bit of a toss-up. In theory Skylake should be the better choice with DMI 3.0 and DDR4, but it has some IOMMU problems that are making device pass through harder than it ought to be (check out this). That could affect you if you want to pass a DVD into a VM - hopefully someone with more experience on that will chime in. Great! Thank you, I will have a look into the Skylake potential issues however I dont think they would really affect me. By the time they possibly could I would imagine they would mainly be resolved! If I was considering to go down the Xeon and ECC ram route where should I start looking? We dont have many server grade stockists in the UK as far as I know? Thanks again all!
April 4, 201610 yr A decent Haswell board/CPU combo will use less power than Skylake, too. Skylake uses less power on the memory, but the VRM on the motherboard brings power consumption back up to Ivy Bridge area. For example, comparing two machines running the same UnRAID install: Skylake i3-6100T, Gigabyte Z170N-Wifi, 1x8GB Kingston DDR4, Samsung NVMe M.2 SSD - idles at 21W. Haswell E3-1226v3, Fujitsu TX1310M1 server with 2x8GB DDR3 ECC, Corsair Neutrom XT SSD - idles at 16W. The Haswell is WAY quicker. I'm not quite sure why you are comparing an i3 setup to a Xeon E3 setup, of course the Xeon is going to be quicker. A constructive comparison would be the E3-1226 v3 to the E3-1225 v5. They both have the exact same clock speeds yet the v5 is slightly lower power.
April 8, 201610 yr A decent Haswell board/CPU combo will use less power than Skylake, too. Skylake uses less power on the memory, but the VRM on the motherboard brings power consumption back up to Ivy Bridge area. For example, comparing two machines running the same UnRAID install: Skylake i3-6100T, Gigabyte Z170N-Wifi, 1x8GB Kingston DDR4, Samsung NVMe M.2 SSD - idles at 21W. Haswell E3-1226v3, Fujitsu TX1310M1 server with 2x8GB DDR3 ECC, Corsair Neutrom XT SSD - idles at 16W. The Haswell is WAY quicker. I'm not quite sure why you are comparing an i3 setup to a Xeon E3 setup, of course the Xeon is going to be quicker. A constructive comparison would be the E3-1226 v3 to the E3-1225 v5. They both have the exact same clock speeds yet the v5 is slightly lower power. Do you mean lower power consumption?
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