First Home Lab

mtkoc · February 6, 2021

Budget (including currency): Probably around $1000, but I'm flexible a few $100 here and there. Drives I have already.

Country: US

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

Other details: Looking for a bit of advise. I'm looking building my first home lab for virtualization. I have no real goal out of this build other than to educate myself and/or play around with as a toy. I currently have a TripLite SRW12USDP in my home that I use to house my network, so I will be limited to a compact case. I currently like the Silverstone RM21-308, but I'm open to alternatives. Most importantly, I need thoughts on my current CPU and motherboard choices. I'm planning on picking up a used Xeon, maybe a E5-2670V3 due to the higher core count. The board I have my eye on is a Supermicro X10SRM-F. I know there are cheaper options, but I won't have to worry about low RAM limitations and it has a IPMI port, which I would like to learn to use. Afterall, I am building this project to better familiarize myself (and maybe my kids) with server architecture on a budget. Any thoughts?

Electronics Wizardy · February 6, 2021

Id look at those asrock rack x470 boards, you get the nice impi, and a lower power, newer and faster cpu.

What storage do you plan on using?

mtkoc · February 6, 2021

Sure! I'll take a look and I appreciate the advice,

I have a bunch of drives laying around: some 3.5 WD reds and a few SSDs. Since it won't be storing anything critical, it's kinda been an afterthought at this point. If it evolves into a NAS at some point, I will be more picky.