davidst95 Posted October 3, 2019 Share Posted October 3, 2019 Hi, I'm looking to set up another home server with Unraid. I'm looking at either using a used 4-core I7-6700K or a getting a 8-core 2700X. I plan to running 4 or 5 VMs at the same time plus a few dockers. Will a I7-6700K be adequate or should I go for a 2700K. I'm not sure if the extra cores with be beneficial. Thanks! David Quote Link to comment
mrbilky Posted October 3, 2019 Share Posted October 3, 2019 I can only add that my I7 6700 is running very strong with plex and 10 dockers running its rock solid I can't comment on VM's as I don't run any but more cores will be beneficial for sure Quote Link to comment
Hoopster Posted October 3, 2019 Share Posted October 3, 2019 (edited) 16 hours ago, davidst95 said: Hi, I'm looking to set up another home server with Unraid. I'm looking at either using a used 4-core I7-6700K or a getting a 8-core 2700X. I plan to running 4 or 5 VMs at the same time plus a few dockers. Will a I7-6700K be adequate or should I go for a 2700K. I'm not sure if the extra cores with be beneficial. Thanks! David If you are going to run 4 or 5 VMs simultaneously (of course, depends a lot on what they are and what they are doing), even an 8-core/16-thread Ryzen 2700X may not be enough. For lots of dockers, either will work fine. You will want to pin cores/threads to VMs if running them simultaneously. Remember unRAID still needs CPU cores allocated to it as well. You may be OK with an 8-core/16-thread CPU if your VMs are light use, but, 4-5 simultaneously + unRAID could put you in a CPU crunch if the VMs demand a lot of CPU power. Edited October 4, 2019 by Hoopster Quote Link to comment
davidst95 Posted October 3, 2019 Author Share Posted October 3, 2019 Thanks for the replies and advice! I think I am going to go with the 2700X and scale back the amount of VMs and try to use more Dockers. Quote Link to comment
Zonediver Posted October 3, 2019 Share Posted October 3, 2019 (edited) Each VM need at least a dedicated core... 4-5 Cores away. Your unraid basesystem need at least one (better two) cores. If you need "really" 5 VMs (for whatever), take a Xeon with 10-12 Cores or more because in such a config, you need also ECC-RAM. And beware the RAM-size - you will need a lot of RAM... Edited October 3, 2019 by Zonediver Quote Link to comment
Arbadacarba Posted October 3, 2019 Share Posted October 3, 2019 When you say the base system needs one or two cores do you mean core and hyperthread pairs? Or One core plus it's hyperthread? I have the 6700k and was just thinking I should go through my VM's and make sure to leave a set of cores out of all of them... Basically leave it for the unraid server. Quote Link to comment
davidst95 Posted October 4, 2019 Author Share Posted October 4, 2019 1 hour ago, Zonediver said: Each VM need at least a dedicated core... 4-5 Cores away. Your unraid basesystem need at least one (better two) cores. If you need "really" 5 VMs (for whatever), take a Xeon with 10-12 Cores or more because in such a config, you need also ECC-RAM. And beware the RAM-size - you will need a lot of RAM... Thanks for the info. I thought you don't really need ECC Ram in the Zen chips because they automatically correct errors in the cache. Quote Link to comment
Zonediver Posted October 4, 2019 Share Posted October 4, 2019 (edited) 17 hours ago, Arbadacarba said: When you say the base system needs one or two cores do you mean core and hyperthread pairs? Or One core plus it's hyperthread? I have the 6700k and was just thinking I should go through my VM's and make sure to leave a set of cores out of all of them... Basically leave it for the unraid server. First of all, i dont use VMs - i use all the cpu-power for Plex-transcoding. But what i did: I pinned the cores to different functions - you can do this at the docker settings - each docker has its own cpu-pin setting. The i7-3770 has 4 cores + 4 HTs. I use the first core + HT for unraid and my dockers - beware: unraid preferes the lower core numbers starting from core 0! VERY IMPORTANT: Do not mix the physikal cores with "wrong" HT-cores. Example: Core 0 and core 6 (on my CPU) - thats a NOGO because it is slowing down things. Always match the "right" cpu-pair. The other three cores (+HT) are pinned to Plex for transcoding. This setting gives the base system enough air to work - even if Plex is 100% transcoding. Core-pinning: 1st Pair - Core 0 and 4 (HT) ... unraid and all dockers except Plex 2nd Pair - Core 1 and 5 (HT) ... Plex 3rd Pair - Core 2 and 6 (HT) ... Plex 4th Pair - Core 3 and 7 (HT) ... Plex INFO: There is no way to restrict or determine cores for unraid itself. Unraid starts at core 0 and uses as many as needed - normaly up to 2 or the first pair (physical and HT), sometimes a third. If you do a parity check, it is recommended to turn off all VMs and dockers (if possible) to give unraid itself "more power" to work. Edited October 4, 2019 by Zonediver Quote Link to comment
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