How do you start to pick

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OK I run an old box with unraid 5. I also run several other boxes/pcs with various operating systems ranging from win7 to Fedora deb etc. So being here in aus and being a person that never buys a new PC as I normally don't need the fastest etc, what case my etc combination do I buy and from where. I am not limited in space so full tower etc is fine. I want to be able to add drives later as I need. I would like to be able to run virtual machines so I can get rid of the other 10 pics I run. I would like to store my media and run plexus. I HAVE MSY up the road but don't understand which processor goes with what my etc. Would someone like to help with a shopping list please

 

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[tdallen]

Hi -

 

It sounds like you would like to run several/a bunch of VMs.  Typically, people are doing that with large Xeon E5's they buy from Ebay.  These chips come from corporate servers that are being decommissioned.  I'm not sure if these are available in Australia, you should check.  Beyond that, let us know how many VMs you would want to run, and how many Dockers.  If you plan to run Plex, it's important to know how many streams you want to support and whether they will need transcoding.

[HellDiverUK]

PCPartPicker is a good resource.  It allows you to build machines and warns about incompatibilities. Lots of suggested builds too.

[secs]

Hi -
 
It sounds like you would like to run several/a bunch of VMs.  Typically, people are doing that with large Xeon E5's they buy from Ebay.  These chips come from corporate servers that are being decommissioned.  I'm not sure if these are available in Australia, you should check.  Beyond that, let us know how many VMs you would want to run, and how many Dockers.  If you plan to run Plex, it's important to know how many streams you want to support and whether they will need transcoding.

Thanks heaps. At the moment 3 plexus streams max. 2 windows 7 vms and 2 Linux vms but may run more later. I normally just ask into them and not actually sit at console. Vnc or team viewer for windows

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[secs]

PCPartPicker is a good resource.  It allows you to build machines and warns about incompatibilities. Lots of suggested builds too.

Many thanks. Will look. I guess if I pick the CPU first then work backward might be best. CPU then mb to support CPU etc the case. This is the first new PC I have had in years[emoji3]

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[tdallen]

Since you want to run several VMs and several Plex streams I think you should look to see whether you can get a good deal on one of the decommissioned multi-core E5's on eBay or similar, they are great for that kind of use case.  They require a socket 2011 motherboard so you can start looking for those as well.  Good luck!

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So I did a quick search on Ebay. Is this what you men https://www.ebay.com.au/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2380057.m570.l1313.TR9.TRC2.A0.H0.XXeon+E5.TRS0&_nkw=Xeon+E5&_sacat=0

 

 

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Ok thanks to ll so far.

 

So I did  search on Ebay etc. I can get Xeon E5 processors such as 

Intel Xeon E5-2690 - 8 Core Processor, 20M Cache, 2.90 GHz - SR0L0

or say LOT OF 2 IDENTICAL CPU INTEL XEON E5-2670 2.6GHz 8 Core 20MB L3 Cache LGA2011

 

So how many cores etc are recomended? Does having say 2 CPU's help?

 

So from there I gather I go look for a mother board with 2011 socket and one or 2 of these depending on the above? Am I heading in the right direction?

 

[tdallen]

People have generally found using unRAID/KVM that performance sensitive VMs work best with pinned cores (and typically assigning the hyperthreaded core along with the real core).  So the decision you need to make is how many VMs do you want to run, and how many cores do you want to assign to each VM.  Be sure to leave at least one core (and its hyperthreaded vcpu) for unRAID.  If the number of cores you need exceed what you can get in a single chip, then you're looking at a dual CPU setup.

 

There have been a lot of threads on this topic, I'd recommend doing some reading.  Here was one of the big ones:

 

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Looking at https://www.allbids.com.au/auctions/860842/ibm-system-x3650-m3-quadcore-xeon-e5507-227ghz-2-ru-server just to have a play. Any thougjts

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[tdallen]

That's not an E5, it's a very old and slow system that only gets 3147 Passmarks.  

[SSD]

Not disagreeing with @tdallen that these servers are a good deal and may satisfy your requirements, but do think you should at least consider a more traditional build. Something like an Antec 900, 3 cse-m35t's, a Sky Lake or Kaby Lake Xeon (4 cores / 8 hyperthreaded). 32G RAM.

 

Those rack mount jobs are big, loud, use a lot of electricity, and are a pretty major commitment. I've seen a few buyers remorse threads. Unless you are regularly running a lot of VMs in parallel while transcoding a lot of streams and computing pi to the last decimal place, you may not need all those cores. Plus some pretty exciting technology is on the horizon with Ryzen and Intel looking to go into many more cores per CPU.

 

I'd even consider recent used with a Haswell or Brasswell setup, which are just an inch away from current offerings. Consider a move to a more modern high core CPU as they evolve, if you need it.

 

Just my $0.02.

[tdallen]

Actually I agree.  If you want to spool up 6-10 VMs, then you need a lot of cores.  My personal preference is to think differently, though.  For instance, iPads have replaced a couple of PCs in my house.  Laptops have replaced all the remaining PCs, I only have one desktop left.  I've been buying refurbished corporate laptops and throwing an SSD in them - they work great and are almost disposable at the price.  In addition many of the things that appeared to need a PC/VM running unattended can actually be satisfied with a Docker, which is much lighter weight virtualization.

 

Given this use of portable/disposable, but semi-intelligent access points, I haven't seen the need to bring any of the big, old E5's into the home.  I use plenty of them at work where heat, noise, power consumption and rack mounting are not an issue.