Need some help building new Server for selfhosting/homelabbing.

[hosted-on-a-laptop]

Hello everyone,

I'm currently trying to move away from my Thinkpad T480 Laptop Proxmox Server to a more expandable and flexible build. I've been searching for hardware for more than a year and recently got a little impatient and simply ordered a Fractal Define 7 Case and a 550W modular Gold PSU just to get going. I'm still uncertain if I regret buying those components, because I still can't decide on a Mainboard and CPU and if it would've been better to just buy a tiny/mini/micro mini or sff PC. The reason i got the Define 7 is because of it's expandability and because it's sound dampening as I live in a flat and am kind of sensible about that.




Currently im just hosting a Homeassistant VM and a docker VM with just 2 containers on the T480

My goals with the new build are:

• Consolidate all VMs of the T480 into the new Server
• have nice playground to learn about networking with virtualised routers etc.
• try out new containers that are useful (PiHole etc.)
• maybe try out Plex/Jellyfin if I get enough storage.
• shouldn't be too power hungry though i have a relativly good electricity contract (0,26€/kwh)
• Parts shouldn't be too costly though I'd be willing to spend more money if the build is something that lasts a long time

Stuff i've got laying around:

• 4xRdimm DDR4 16GB Sky Hynix Server Ram
• a couple of 2,5'' low capacity Sata SSD, HDD and NVME

I'm currently undecided as I don't know if I really need hardware transcoding, and if I really need ECC ram that AM4 boards could provide. I've also seen cheap used Epyc boards that take the RDIMM ram, but it seems to be too much fidgeting.

Thanks for the help in advance.

 

[Prof Theorie]

Dont know why noone has answered you yet but some of my thoughts:

at 26ct/kWh and 24/7 uptime you pay 2,3€ per year for each added Watt and definitely want to keep power consumption down. That doesnt mean you would want to spend hours to minimise the last 5 Wh but I would avoid large server platforms such as Xeon Scalable or

You dont necessarily need transcoding if you have Media in h264/h265 and somewhat decent upload speed, direct play will work if you force it and can sustain a stable internet connection. Getting transcoding ability through either an added Quadro P600 (for h265, its cheap and low idle power consumption) or Arc 310 (if you want AV1) or an iGPU is a good option if you want to give out access to other people who may want to watch on their phones etc.

ECC or no ECC is a long debate. The tangible benefits for mainly media storage and tinkering around are marginal imo and depending on the platform it isnt worth the price increase. Others will swear up and down that you definitely need it and personally my main servers + backup server run ECC platforms (Intel C236/C246 + i3/ Xeon and B550 + Ryzen 4750g) simply for peace of mind as I am basically the primary backup for my extended family (they should have their own backups primarily but they probably dont keep them up to date) and it didnt add much more cost vs non-ecc platforms at the time. Once you look at more modern platforms/ features and/or higher performance ECC will add a significant cost though (DDR5 ECC is basically unobtanium at this point, AM4 non-APUs have higher power consumption and no iGPU, Intel + ECC after 9th gen becomes really expensive).

How many drives are you looking to connect in total?

From your description I dont see any application that sth like a C236 + Xeon/ C246 board + i3-9100 or (if you want more cpu performance) B550+ Ryzen 4650g wont cover. Both platforms would require you to buy UDimms but 16GB 2133-2666 mt/s can be had relatively cheap still. C246 boards pop up on Ebay from time to time at good prices, C236 boards can basically always be bought cheap.

If you can/ want to forgo ECC any 8th gen or newer i3/i5 with a cheap board would be my pick. Cheap, low power consumption, good transcoding ability. AM4 isnt worth then unless you want to have >8 cores.

If you dont necessarily want to use the case + PSU you bought there are plenty of C246 workstations that can be bought reasonably cheap (<100€ for a barebone with board/PSU/case).

Lastly, another cheap "tinker around" option if you can get by with 6 sata drives or less would be a Lenovo P410 or P520c. These are compact Lenovo workstations with LGA 2011-3 and 2066 that can reuse your existing RDimms and offer lots of PCIe lanes for added cards down the line, be it GPUs or NICs. They are also surprisingly power efficient thanks to a 12vo power design: I have a P410 board that runs <30w headless with a 16core 2682v4 Xeon and 4x32GB Ram. You can also get a P410 board in the german Lenovo Parts Sale although I would recommend just grabbing the whole system, there is plenty of proprietary BS and buying necessary parts piecemeal will come out at a similar price.

 

[etorix]

I'm still uncertain if I regret buying those components, because I still can't decide on a Mainboard and CPU

Well, you should certainly define your needs and decide on a motherboard before getting a case.

You have not described any NAS function, so I do not see the point for a large case. The virtualisation stuff can be done in a mini-PC or equivalent.

4xRdimm DDR4 16GB Sky Hynix Server Ram

In the current market this strongly points towards using these RDIMMs. Xeon D-1500 boards (Supermicro X10SDV) make for nice small servers. You might find one locally in the EU, but there are plenty on eBay coming from China (now even including the 16 core variants, but unless you plan for a high number of VMs, you might be better served by a D-1518/1521/1541).
If you don't mind 3D-printing your I/O plate and mostly forget about attaching a small Arc dGPU for transcoding, the MJ11-EC1 is a low cost option that is worth considering.

If you dont necessarily want to use the case + PSU you bought there are plenty of C246 workstations that can be bought reasonably cheap (<100€ for a barebone with board/PSU/case).

Very good advice, but mind the RAM! (Don't buy a barebone if you don't have some UDIMM at hand.)

 

[TrevorH]

Be aware that AM4 requires unbuffered ECC RAM (UDIMM) and will not work with registered ECC RDIMMs.

 

[louie1961]

I have had a number of Proxmox servers. I always moved on to the next one for various reasons, but none of them because they weren't good servers. My first server was a refurbished HPZ40 that I bought cheap from Newegg. It had 64GB of RAM and a Xeon E5-2699 V3 CPU. I moved on from it because it was a bit loud and consumed 200 watts at idle. My second box was a HP Elite mini 800 G9. That was good, but I ended up wanting more drives. My third box was a DIY build using a Gigabyte B550I Aorus Pro AX B550 Mini-ITX motherboard, Ryzen 5 Pro 5650GE CPU, and 64 gb of ECC UDIMM memory. That machine was fantastic. The only reason I sold it was because I wanted a GPU AND 10gbe networking and I couldn't easily do both on a mini ITX motherboard. My current Proxmox box is an AsRock Rack X570 D4U motherboard, Ryzen 7 CPU and 128GB of ECC UDIMM RAM in a 4U rack mount chassis. I also have a couple of spare/experimental Proxmox servers, based on old Datto storage servers. I was able to buy them for around $300 each, with plenty of RAM included. One is based on the D1541D4U-2T8R motherboard, and the other is based on the D2143D8UM motherboard. Both make really nice Proxmox nodes.

All of that is to say that you have many options. Here is a great example of a decent Datto server: https://www.ebay.com/itm/307196309098

My only advice is to perhaps re-home it in a 2U or tower chassis with different fans. Those 1U systems are very loud.

 

[etorix]

Mind that Xeon D-1500 is sub-10 W at idle but Xeon D-2100 is 50-60 W idle.

 

[louie1961]

Mind that Xeon D-1500 is sub-10 W at idle but Xeon D-2100 is 50-60 W idle.

That has not been my experience with these two ASrock boards. The D1541D4U-2T8R has the Intel X540 NIC built in, and even with this disabled in bios, both PHYs still draw power and generate heat. Same for the built in LSI-9300 8i HBA. The D2143D8UM on the other hand doesn't have these same built in components. I swapped out the Intel X557 mezzanine card for a ConnectX-4 dual port SFP+ card, and I am saving 15 watts at the wall versus the Xeon D-1541 board.

 

[mattventura]

Mind that Xeon D-1500 is sub-10 W at idle but Xeon D-2100 is 50-60 W idle.

I haven't found that to be true. Here's the numbers (at the wall) that I get with my X11SDV-8C-TP8F with one DIMM:

• Powered off (i.e. BMC and PSU idle losses only): 15W
• Idle with C6 state: 45-48W (CPU contributes 22-23W before PSU loss)
• Idle with all 4 10gb NICs on: 53-55

An X10SDV with the same core count will use less as a baseline, but you're also getting half the NICs and you can't DAC it to an SFP+ switch. I see about 52w at the wall with my X10SDV 4-core that has an average load of around 1 logical core, one optane M10 (uses very little), one WD Red HDD, and two DIMMs.