First Home Server Build

[shonen787]

Budget (including currency):  $1800 USD +/- $400

Country: FL,United States

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Primarily for a NAS and a homelab. Need the VMs to perform test for my job, Pentesting and Forensics. 

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): 

Currently i have the following build on PCPartPicker. 

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor	$324.99 @ Newegg
CPU Cooler	Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler	$29.99 @ Newegg
Motherboard	Asus TUF GAMING X570-PLUS (WI-FI) ATX AM4 Motherboard	$192.99 @ Amazon
Memory	G.Skill Ripjaws V 64 GB (2 x 32 GB) DDR4-2666 CL18 Memory	$299.99 @ Newegg
Storage	Samsung 970 Evo 500 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive	$89.99 @ B&H
Storage	Seagate IronWolf NAS 6 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive	$139.99 @ Newegg
Storage	Seagate IronWolf NAS 6 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive	$139.99 @ Newegg
Video Card	PNY Quadro P400 2 GB Video Card	$199.99 @ Amazon
Case	Fractal Design Meshify 2 XL ATX Full Tower Case	$179.99 @ B&H
Power Supply	EVGA SuperNOVA GA 550 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply	$87.23 @ Amazon
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total (before mail-in rebates)	$1695.14
	Mail-in rebates	-$10.00
	Total	$1685.14
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2021-04-12 13:49 EDT-0400

 

I'm looking to see where i can cut the price while still maintaining the performance to run multiple (5+) virtual machines. 

The storage is just a place holder as i will probably be adding more. I'm looking for a minimum of 8 3.5" drives. 

 

Any and all help will be appreciated, thank you!!!!

[Electronics Wizardy]

What are you using the gpu for? Id get a cheaper model as the quadro doesn't seem to be used for your uses.

 

Id probalby get a 10700 here. Has a igpu so you don't need to get a different one.

 

Id probably get a seperate boot drive. What hypervisor are you using?

[manikyath]

few things:

 

- i love my ryzen desktop, i'm not convinced of using it for a home server just yet. the long term stability just does not seem there quite yet. lots of interesting quirks if i dont reboot my pc every few days 

- two hard drives is the worst possible combination to go for. it's either JBOD, RAID1, or RAID0. so you either have no redundancy at all, or you're losing half of your capacity to redundancy. 3TB drives have been a really solid choice for me so far. the more drives, the faster things will go, and the less capacity you will lose to redundancy.

- the SSD choice may be less than ideal depending on which OS you're going with.

- get a cpu with an iGPU if you dont necessarily need the dedicated GPU. (if you need it for rendering tasks, it doesnt necessarily matter)

- a motherboard with less features (like wifi...) may actually be a better option, in the "less stuff to break" mindset.

[shonen787]

1 hour ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

What are you using the gpu for? Id get a cheaper model as the quadro doesn't seem to be used for your uses.

 

Id probalby get a 10700 here. Has a igpu so you don't need to get a different one.

 

Id probably get a seperate boot drive. What hypervisor are you using?

 

I'm actually planning on use that for video encoding. Nothing too crazy.

I'm actually planning on getting a beefier GPU for password cracking. Part of the job.

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, shonen787 said:

 

I'm actually planning on use that for video encoding. Nothing too crazy.

I'm actually planning on getting a beefier GPU for password cracking. Part of the job.

Well the intel igpu does hardware encoding for video too, just about as well as that quadro, and its built in, so Id still go intel here. you can add that big gpu later if you want.

[shonen787]

38 minutes ago, manikyath said:

few things:

 

- i love my ryzen desktop, i'm not convinced of using it for a home server just yet. the long term stability just does not seem there quite yet. lots of interesting quirks if i dont reboot my pc every few days 

- two hard drives is the worst possible combination to go for. it's either JBOD, RAID1, or RAID0. so you either have no redundancy at all, or you're losing half of your capacity to redundancy. 3TB drives have been a really solid choice for me so far. the more drives, the faster things will go, and the less capacity you will lose to redundancy.

- the SSD choice may be less than ideal depending on which OS you're going with.

- get a cpu with an iGPU if you dont necessarily need the dedicated GPU. (if you need it for rendering tasks, it doesnt necessarily matter)

- a motherboard with less features (like wifi...) may actually be a better option, in the "less stuff to break" mindset.

Thanks for your points! The ryzen suggestion seems like a good one. I do plan on having very few down time with the server. As for the OS, i'm planning on slapping unraid to manage everything. Seen a lot of videos and guides around it so i'm curious.

I agree with the motherboard idea, i don't really need wifi.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, shonen787 said:

Thanks for your points! The ryzen suggestion seems like a good one. I do plan on having very few down time with the server. As for the OS, i'm planning on slapping unraid to manage everything. Seen a lot of videos and guides around it so i'm curious.

I agree with the motherboard idea, i don't really need wifi.

Id give proxmox a shot for the os. Much more control over vms, and does things like vm networking, backups, snapshots, migration much better in my experience.

[shonen787]

3 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Well the intel igpu does hardware encoding for video too, just about as well as that quadro, and its built in, so Id still go intel here. you can add that big gpu later if you want.

That's good to know!! Thanks!