Need advice on building a server for home & work use

fringie · July 28, 2020

Before I get into the specifics I'll provide the info outlined in the sticky:

SIMPLIFIED

Budget (including currency): No fixed budget, it's more about meeting my requirements with minimum spend apposed to a fixed budget.

Currency: GBP (British pound)

Country: UK

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for:

Hosting a CMS called "SharePoint 2019", it's very resource intensive (minimum requirements). It can run on less resource than outlined in the minimum requirements i.e. I've got it working on a dual core + 16GB of RAM before.

Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc):

- I have a good router that should be able to handle all network traffic

- I might upgrade my PC depending on the what type of performance level I should go for.. I've got an i5 9600k, 32GB of RAM (I don't need 32GB anymore, I used to do a lot of virtualisation stuff which I don't do anymore), a high end motherboard etc.

- I'll re-use my old 500 GB SSD

- As small & reasonably quiet as possible (no noisy servers)

DETAILED

I'm looking to setup a local server for both home use & to demo some of my technical skills as I'm self-employed. Currently I'm hosting a portfolio website with Hostinger ($8/month) & my SharePoint 2019 environment in Azure but the costs look fairly high for Azure - total spend looks like $200/month for less performance than if I build something myself. This also works nicely from a tax perspective as I can claim money back.

I'm not really sure what level of performance I should go for.. I want something that is more responsive and snappy than what you get from Azure (I forget the name of it but the option I'm using but it has 4 cpus (aka 2 cores, 4 threads)/16gb ram + SSD config). I do have my i5 9600k which I can use as an excuse to upgrade to one of those juicy 8 cores - I don't need an 8 core so it's mostly me looking for an excuse to upgrade. I can also re-use 16GB of my RAM for this. I have been toying with the idea of buying a NUC but I'm not sure if it can handle what I need it for.. I also have a Dell XPS 15 (i7 8700k, 16GB RAM etc) which seems like it should be fine to handle my needs but I don't want to give it an early death & I use it for watching Netflix in bed (:D) - thoughts?

I really don't want a noisy server because my flat is small & I don't want more bulk if I don't need it - I've already got a tonne of tech. That's why I love the idea of a NUC but I don't want to shell out a tonne of money and then it doesn't suit my needs. Realistically I want this to be as cheap as possible while meeting my needs, money I spend here is less money spent elsewhere - I have no qualms buying used parts, a lot of my stuff is used because it works just fine.

I might use the server for personal stuff in the future but it really depends on the load etc. The primary function for this is to host SharePoint 2019 but I can see this being useful for hosting things for smart devices for my home etc.

I'm more than capable of figuring out a good build but it's more about figuring out what's reasonable (the part I'm stuck on) & taking it from there i.e. do I buy an engineering server chip with DDR3 ram or do I go full modern specs etc..

Windows7ge · July 28, 2020

If quantity of RAM is more important than individual core performance the Intel Xeon E5-26XXv1/v2 lineup (LGA2011-0) is a great cheap platform for a lot of expandablity at a low cost. Only catch is most of it would be used hardware.

Do you want/need high single core performance or multi-core performance?

This line of CPUs can handle 384GB of RAM. More than enough.

Keeping it quiet you could buy a used barebones server and resistor mod the fans or you could build something from scratch but it'll cost more.

fringie · July 28, 2020

3 hours ago, Windows7ge said:

If quantity of RAM is more important than individual core performance the Intel Xeon E5-26XXv1/v2 lineup (LGA2011-0) is a great cheap platform for a lot of expandablity at a low cost. Only catch is most of it would be used hardware.

Do you want/need high single core performance or multi-core performance?

This line of CPUs can handle 384GB of RAM. More than enough.

Keeping it quiet you could buy a used barebones server and resistor mod the fans or you could build something from scratch but it'll cost more.

Wow, that is some excellent advice! Really good, thank you! I never even imagined that I could get an old E5 in this kind of price range but it totally make sense. An older xeon like that would definitely meet my needs. I can nab a Xeon E5 2660 V3 for only £85, that will be absolutely brilliant. The question is do I spend an extra £40 for 2 additional cores - what do you think? I think 2 extra cores could make a difference long term but I'm not sure if I'm overthinking it because 10 cores is a lot.

In my case I definitely need CPU but it's more about multi-threaded workloads, no gaming. I can buy a used motherboard & RAM and save a tonne there too. I already have an old SSD I can use so the cost is literally hundreds lower than what I was expecting.

I think I'd want minimal setup & a tower/mini tower of some sort - like mini-itx. Any ideas on a case? I imagine a hyper 212 evo should be decent enough for sound? It doesn't need to be ultra quiet, I actually still have my old custom watercooling loop I can use.. I replaced it with my AIO water-cooling because of RGB but it was an overkill cooler so it can definetly handle a server chip. Do you think a 240x30 mm radiator is enough? My other radiator is a 280x83mm which is too big for most small cases I think.

Man, I'm so hype about this - I wasn't expecting to get something this good for this type of money.

Windows7ge · July 28, 2020

Note the V3 series is LGA2011-3. This requires DDR4 RAM. I've recently heard DDR3 is becoming more expensive again so moving up to a DDR4 based platform may be your better option all around. If you're going V3 I wouldn't sweat 2 more cores unless you know you need as great of a CPU compute:cost ratio as you can get. Also with higher core counts individual core performance tends to suffer so those 2 more cores could potentially cause worse performance for applications that are very single threaded.
Yeah the used server market is great. If you have a flexible budget you can build some great stuff relatively inexpensively. What is the 12 core you were looking at? Check the base & boost clocks. For 33% more cost it's up to you if ~20% more performance is worth it (if it has lower clocks the it will be less than 20% multi-core performance gain)
How much PCIe expansion do you plan to want/need? Only go Mini-ITX if you're certain you only want as much as a single Bi-furcation supported slot will allow (1 device x16, 2 devices x8x8 or 4 devices x4x4x4x4) for a cooler that is pretty performant, not overly loud, compact, more reliable than water cooling and is moderately priced would be the Noctua NH-D9L. Great little cooler. I have 5 of them cooling a pair of E5-2698v3s, pair of E5-2670v1s, and a not yet overclocked 3930K. Everything is maintaining controlled temps. I don't immediately have motherboard & chassis suggestions but when I do get off work I can look around for you from my preferred vendors.