So I am looking to mainly use unraid as a storage server/NAS. I am going to use some combination of spare parts I have and one of the computers I got from my schools surplus center. My main thing I need help with is deciding on which one to use, the first computer has a Xeon E3-1220 V1 and has 32gb of ECC DDR3, the other machine is an old server running two amd opteron 2376's (like the xeon have 4 cores in 4 threads per cpu) with 16gb of ECC DDR2. So with the little knowledge I have on exactly how unraid uses the hardware I am wondering what would be the better config. I plan to use this almost entirely as a storage server with a handful of hard drives and one or two ssds as a cache. My initial thinking is that having more ram would be better for a storage server, but part of me also thinks that having some extra cpu cores would be nice in the event I want to run a VM for something. Any and all feedback is very much appreciated

2 hours ago, thedangerine said:

My initial thinking is that having more ram would be better for a storage server,

As a pure storage server, additional RAM doesn't make much of a difference.  The barebones minimum unRaid RAM is 2G, (but 4G is highly recommended)

 

Once you expand into docker applications running, and VMs, then more RAM, and faster CPUs are advised depending upon what you want, and what you expect.  No one-size-fits-all answer for what you're asking.