DIY Server / Homelab Upgrade

[Alastair Hellard]

Hi all,

Fairly new poster - had my eye on some ES 3rd gen on ebay, but looks like this is a bad route. So doing what I probably should have done before getting excited - and asking for a bit of advice straight off the bat.

I am looking to upgrade my ageing server/homelab. Currently runs Unraid and I use a number of VMs for work and then a load of docker containers for family streaming, media, minecraft servers etc.

Current specs are:

X10SRH-CLN4F-B
Xeon E5-2630V4
64gb DDR4
Logic case 16 bay (not sure on exact model but purchased in 2015)
LSI HBA (can't remember exact model)
Various storage HDD etc.

Hoping to keep all the drives, and will add to them as I need more space, but would like the option for some NVMe. Which may mean a new case (possibly a 846 or similar) but for now the main aim is to upgrade cpu/board/ram

I basically haven't kept up with current server hardware - so looking for advice on which way to go.

I'd quite like to stick down the Xeon route (although open to EPYC if it makes sense?) - the child in me thinks it would be cool to go dual CPU if I can afford it - but someone tell me this is silly and I'll happily back down

Looking to spend around £3k GBP for board, proc & ram, if I can get a case in there too for a little more then great, but not the priority. I am UK based - which seems to make sourcing some hardware difficult!

I've been looking at possibly an X13 board with a gen 4/5 CPU - but again not hugely clued up.

In the future I'd like to look at the possibility of chucking a GPU in it and running a gaming VM - but thats a bit down the line.

I would appreciate any guidance/thoughts

TIA

 

[Alastair Hellard]

So doing a bit more digging looks like I can fit a dual 4677 (possibly and X13DEI or an Asus Z13PE-D16) and then a single 5512U for now, and look to add a second when I need to / budget allows. Stick 128gb RAM and that comes to around £2.5k - leaving me a bit to look for a better chassis.

Any recommendations of the Supermicro over the ASUS or vice versa? And also any (available in the uk) 24 bay 4u chassis' with NVMe backplane support?

 

[zachj]

Don’t do dual CPU; there’s precious little incentive to scale up these days and even less so in a home lab scenario.

A single 32-core Epyc Rome or Milan will last you a decade.

Xeon 3647 can be had for a song right now; not a huge upgrade in performance over broadwell (v4) xeons, though.

unless you need more than 128gb of ram or fancy yourself needing more pci slots than can be got with a consumer platform, I’d strongly recommend you go with a Ryzen 7000 series or ryzen 9000 series. If you want to stick with Intel you could look at the 13th/14th gen but with their crashing issues I dunno if I would want to go down that route (and the heterogeneous cores don’t play well with virtualization [especially with vmware]).

sapphire rapids Xeon is about the only one I would consider at the moment but if your current hardware works fine then any upgrade is pure overkill.

 

[Alastair Hellard]

Thanks - good food for thought.

Nah current hardware is a bit funky and slow for my needs - 9 years old too.

Might look down the epyc route but not that clued up on it. Fairly keen to get current/last gen so sapphire rapids or emerald if it fits in budget will work.

 

[mattventura]

The 24-bay NVMe backplanes (for the 846 or front of 847) are hard to find and generally expensive when you do find them. Much easier to find them for the 12-bay LFF format (826 or rear of 847). If you get an X13SEM, you'll have support for 8 NVMe and 10 SATA on-board, though you'll be a bit more constrained on slots for that GPU down the line.

 

[zachj]

The cost of DDR5 is obnoxious right now…I’d say both the best and worst reason to go with ice lake Xeon or epyc Rome/milan is “price of ddr4”; both platforms let you either keep your current memory or get a lot more for much cheaper.

128gb ddr4 lrdimms can be purchased for $170 per module on eBay.

that’s stupid cheap but it’s also money in the garbage because you’ll never be able to use the memory in any newer platform.

 

[zachj]

I’ve got an epyc Milan 48-core with 512gb of ram. I literally can’t fathom what I could possibly need in excess of this for the next decade…it’s sad but every time I look at upgrading it just seems pointless. I honestly think I should sell it and just use my 3647 Xeon until the wheels fall off

 

[ca3y6]

If you go the epyc route, you mind find some suggestions I posted on another thread useful: https://forums.servethehome.com/ind...-on-building-a-home-server.46172/#post-449084