cheap server for personal use - HELP

[branb]

i need a pretty cheap server but ive never actually built a server before so i dont know if i need a special power supply or something could somebody please help pick out like a part list much appreciated.

[Wh0_Am_1]

7 minutes ago, branb said:

i need a pretty cheap server but ive never actually built a server before so i dont know if i need a special power supply or something could somebody please help pick out like a part list much appreciated.

Welcome to the LTT forums! Any computer can be used as a server, even your phone, what dictates the design and setup of a server is the task(s) that one would want to perform on said server and the reliability that such task(s) dictate. If you want help assembling a server, there are two things we need to know: What is your budget? and: What do you intend to do with this server?

[Windows7ge]

A server could be built entirely from desktop parts. It's just not the standard in the enterprise to do so. Fine for home use it just depends on what you plan for the server to do and if it will be handling anything important.

 

So long as it's a reputable brand with good components any PSU will do. You don't need a Zippy brand mini-redundant PSU.

[RAGNES7]

25 minutes ago, branb said:

i need a pretty cheap server but ive never actually built a server before so i dont know if i need a special power supply or something could somebody please help pick out like a part list much appreciated.

just tell ur requirements, and budget, and people over here are very good at this stuff. You will be guided by them

[rx590overclocker]

what makes a computer a server, is just the OS/software most of the time.  

[branb]

1 hour ago, Windows7ge said:

A server could be built entirely from desktop parts. It's just not the standard in the enterprise to do so. Fine for home use it just depends on what you plan for the server to do and if it will be handling anything important.

 

So long as it's a reputable brand with good components any PSU will do. You don't need a Zippy brand mini-redundant PSU.

yeah i know but i need the extra cores and ram

[branb]

48 minutes ago, RAGNES7 said:

just tell ur requirements, and budget, and people over here are very good at this stuff. You will be guided by them

i dont need an os i just need 2 cpus preferably xeons and everything else i dont know the form factors

[Slayer3032]

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-OptiPlex-9020-MT-Intel-i7-4790-3-60GHz-16GB-DDR3-1TB-HDD-WIN10COA-No-OS/264592664294

 

Add some drives depending on your use case.

https://www.amazon.com/SK-hynix-Gold-500GB-Internal/dp/B07SK5BNM1/

 

If you're looking for storage, you can't beat the value of shucking the WD 8TB drives.

https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Desktop-Hard-Drive-WDBWLG0080HBK-NESN/dp/B07D5V2ZXD

 

Unless you specify what you're actually looking for your hardware to do and the profile that you're looking for it to fit, "cheap server for personal use" means something like the above. Cheap, capable hardware being used as a server.

 

Or to me, it means what I built which is an X58/LGA1366 machine built out of spare parts I had laying around with a brand new PSU and a mix of new drives, used ones of my own and a couple $5 500gb drives from a local recycler. It also includes a bunch of ram that I got from a garage sale, a cpu that lived in my flash drive bowl for a year and a SM951 128gb NVMe that cost me about $15 total including the adapter off amazon which I knocked the green drive activity LED off of using a flathead screwdriver.

[Windows7ge]

6 minutes ago, branb said:

yeah i know but i need the extra cores and ram

All depends on your needs. If you want something cheap you can look into retired Supermicro servers on ebay.

 

Single socket, Dual socket, some Quad-Socket.

Redundant PSUs.

Support for 32GB or 64GB sticks of RAM.

 

However much power you need eBay will hook you up cheap.

[branb]

3 minutes ago, Slayer3032 said:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-OptiPlex-9020-MT-Intel-i7-4790-3-60GHz-16GB-DDR3-1TB-HDD-WIN10COA-No-OS/264592664294

 

Add some drives depending on your use case.

https://www.amazon.com/SK-hynix-Gold-500GB-Internal/dp/B07SK5BNM1/

 

If you're looking for storage, you can't beat the value of shucking the WD 8TB drives.

https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Desktop-Hard-Drive-WDBWLG0080HBK-NESN/dp/B07D5V2ZXD

 

Unless you specify what you're actually looking for your hardware to do and the profile that you're looking for it to fit, "cheap server for personal use" means something like the above. Cheap, capable hardware being used as a server.

 

Or to me, it means what I built which is an X58/LGA1366 machine built out of spare parts I had laying around with a brand new PSU and a mix of new drives, used ones of my own and a couple $5 500gb drives from a local recycler. It also includes a bunch of ram that I got from a garage sale, a cpu that lived in my flash drive bowl for a year and a SM951 128gb NVMe that cost me about $15 total including the adapter off amazon which I knocked the green drive activity LED off of using a flathead screwdriver.

its going to be for mostly game servers with some web application hosting

[Slayer3032]

3 minutes ago, branb said:

its going to be for mostly game servers with some web application hosting

What kind of game servers, minecraft has very different resource requirements than say a source engine game. Other game servers for some terrible reasoning don't support linux like space engineers or wreckfest and will happily demolish any resources allocated to them. Secondly, how many of them? If you're planning on having say 10 empty servers and only plan on playing one at a time with friends, that needs far different resource requirements than say someone who's planning on running 5 full 64 slot servers or something.

 

As far as web hosting, that can wildly vary as your needs might be anywhere from very bandwidth heavy to cpu heavy or so lightweight that it could probably run off of a low power ARM device.

 

If you're just wanting to get into rackmount and server hardware as a hobby, that's fine. That's buying hardware for having the hardware though and as much as you can afford/best bang for your buck is usually what you would be looking for.

[branb]

1 minute ago, Slayer3032 said:

What kind of game servers, minecraft has very different resource requirements than say a source engine game. Other game servers for some terrible reasoning don't support linux like space engineers or wreckfest and will happily demolish any resources allocated to them. Secondly, how many of them? If you're planning on having say 10 empty servers and only plan on playing one at a time with friends, that needs far different resource requirements than say someone who's planning on running 5 full 64 slot servers or something.

 

As far as web hosting, that can wildly vary as your needs might be anywhere from very bandwidth heavy to cpu heavy or so lightweight that it could probably run off of a low power ARM device.

 

If you're just wanting to get into rackmount and server hardware as a hobby, that's fine. That's buying hardware for having the hardware though and as much as you can afford/best bang for your buck is usually what you would be looking for.

its more just to have i sometimes just get into random hobbies that need to be run on a server its more just to have probably more minecraft oriented though

[Blue4130]

If you can handle the noise, it sounds like a used Dell r7xx series would fit your needs. 

[Salacious B Crum]

5 hours ago, Blue4130 said:

If you can handle the noise, it sounds like a used Dell r7xx series would fit your needs. 

X2 look at a poweredge R710 it seems to be the sweet spot, 6 3.5 spinners dual xeon cpu's loaded with ram muliple pcie slots and configurable, relatively quiet and can be had for a few hundred dollars ready to go mine is currently an unRAID backup server and works well nice to have iDRAC on board for remote access

[NelizMastr]

A tower server like the HP ML350 G8 would also be a good option. They are becoming rather cheap while offering much improved performance and efficiency over the ancient G6/G7 servers and the Dell R700/710 and tower equivalents.

 

If you don't need remote management, you can get by with a DIY solution with a cheap board from
AliExpress and a used Xeon E5v2 CPU, an HBA and a case.

 

 

[Stu_Bear]

any gen 7 or newer HP server will be up to the task...more cpu cores the better...more ram the better.  I bought a HP DL380 G7 with 2x 5690x (12c/24t total) with 144gb ram delivered to my door for $450 2 years ago...so you could find same for probably less now.  I think most any SSD will work with gen7 and newer HPs too.

[Wh0_Am_1]

On 1/14/2020 at 8:03 PM, branb said:

its more just to have i sometimes just get into random hobbies that need to be run on a server its more just to have probably more minecraft oriented though

Then as far as that goes, the best CPU available at the moment is a destop Intel 9900KS  (although the Ryzen 3800, or any I7 since skylake would work quite nicely, and depending on the size of the server many slower chips may also work) as Minecraft Java servers currently only take advantage of a single core thereby they care more about per core speed than the overall speed of the processor, which is why even large servers such as 2B2T run on some variant of the 9900K.