Server Hardware Upgrade - Any Advice Welcome

[pauloj]

I am about to upgrade my unraid server and I was hoping I could get some advice or possible better options from those who have had more experience. Any advice is really appreciated.

Currently Im running 

Procesor: i3-2100

Mobo: MSI H61M-P21

Memory: 16GB DDR3 (cant remember the brand)

Hard Drives: 6 x WD 4TB Red    1 x WD 2TB Green 

Cache Drives: 2 x SSD WD 120GB Green

 

 

Im going to move the motherboard, processor & memory to my offsite backup server as that hardware is failing.

So im going to upgrade those components.

 

 

Im looking at going with

Procesor: Ryzen 7 2700 ( R3,349  [$226} )

Mobo: MSI - X470 Gaming Pro Carbon  ( R3,979  [$269} )

Memory: Corsair Vengeance RGB PRO 16GB (2 x 8GB) 3200MHz DDR4 ( R2,000 [$135] )

 

 

Im considering the Ryzen 7200. As my current processor, though it is functioning adequately, I am seeing it hover at 50% - 90% on some of its cores. 

I feel more cores is going to help me expand on my virtual machines and docker containers where needed. 16GB of ram seems to be fine where im operating at 20% and I can always expand later.

Im running 3 virtual machines and 5-6 dockers. Not using the server to serve as a plex server, but it does serve movies directly to machines playing with VLC and other media players. 

 

Currently my budget is R10,000 (South African Rand - im located in South Africa) or $675 approximately. 

 

 

With this budget am I looking at a decent machine?  Are there any recommendations for a possibly better hardware round about the same price?

Im a little nervous going with the AMD processor. Though all the reviews of the Ryzen chips seem to be quite positive these days.

 

My budget is not set in stone so its a little flexible, but I cant spend much more than that.

 

Any advise is welcome and appreciated. Thanks everyone.

Edited September 4, 2019 by pauloj
bad grammer

[testdasi]

14 hours ago, pauloj said:

Im considering the Ryzen 7200. As my current processor, though it is functioning adequately, I am seeing it hover at 50% - 90% on some of its cores. 

I feel more cores is going to help me expand on my virtual machines and docker containers where needed. 16GB of ram seems to be fine where im operating at 20% and I can always expand later.

Im running 3 virtual machines and 5-6 dockers. Not using the server to serve as a plex server, but it does serve movies directly to machines playing with VLC and other media players. 

The i3-2100 is dual core quad thread 3GHz. So 50%-90% on "some" of its (logical) cores (i.e. threads) does not scream upgrade to me (unless it's like that ALL the time).

 

What VM / docker do you plan to use the server for?

 

Given what you said about your use case (which needs further details), the 2700 is a massive overkill.

No Plex = practically anything works so you need to elaborate a bit.

[pauloj]

Thank Testdasi,

 

The VM is currently used to host windows services that dont run on mac or linux. Certain printing programs, java programs, as well as hosting a webportal for a personal tracking system. Nothing to crazy.

 

If with the new hardware I could use it for a little gaming that would be awesome but not necessary, (i have a mac book pro, gaming options are limited). But thats just if there is extra capacity for it.

 

Im not a huge fan of plex (my experience is limited to a few years ago so things might have changed).  Im not a fan of the server re encoding the video to suite other hardware. From the apple tv I use elmedia to play all formats of video from the SMB share, from the ipad / iphone I use nPlayer, laptop or projector pc I use VLC. All of these players decode the video using the hardware they are playing on. 

Also the cataloging of Plex is not great, especially if you have a lot of obscure tv shows or episodes. If Plex doesn't recognize it then it doesn't seem to list it. Again I might be outdated in my understanding of the plex system these days.

 

The goal with this hardware really is to future proof especially in the way of VMs I might run. Im getting more and more out of my ubuntu VM as im tinkering with it. So having room to grow would be ideal.

Id like to upgrade with hardware if Im buying new vs get the same hardware as I previously had.

Just looking to see if im making a sensible purchase for what im paying.

 

 

[testdasi]

Given "a little gaming" is in the pipeline, the 2700 may still be an overkill.

You need a GPU for the VM. To save yourself headaches, you might want 2 GPU, 1 cheap one for Unraid and 1 to pass through to the VM.

 

So a more economical option in my mind may be B450 motherboard + Ryzen 2400G.

• X470 does not offer any significant improvement for Unraid-based uses (e.g. no need extreme VRM for overclocking, no need SLI etc.) over B450. So B450 will save you a bit.
• 2400G has built-in GPU that can be used for Unraid (see the point above about saving yourself headaches). It's also cheaper than the 2700. If you just need a VM for "a little gaming", you can assign 2 cores for the gaming VM, 1 core for the utility VM and 1 core for Unraid (half of which is cpu 0, the other half to pin the VM emulator to). That should be sufficient for "a little gaming".
• Cost saving can be spent on a dedicated GPU for the gaming VM.

Not necessarily the best option but something for you to consider.

[pauloj]

Hey Testdasi,

I really appreciate the advice. The builtin-GPU feature of the 2400G is a nice feature, I have a cheaper GPU that I was going to throw in the system to get around the fact that the 2700 has no graphics capabilities, but it might make sense to save the PCIE slot and go with a more economic processor.

 

The reason I selected the B450 was that it had 8 SATA ports on the board vs 6 from the X470. Just trying to maximize the number of direct SATA ports on the motherboard, even though I have a SATA expansion slot on the current system.

 

I had built a spreadsheet of the available boards & processors hence what brought me to my original consideration.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1SL4itHvIfLWKmFi8XCjsCI_lapCH9AyZ5rFPtp9UdRk/edit?usp=sharing