New or old tech for a low budget server?

[Nosiie]

Hey guys,

I had the idea of building my own low budget server so I went into the google-jungle to look for a wild low budget CPU,

but I couldn´t find a single answer to my question.

A couple of friends and me are playing ARK on a private cluster so I had the idea to build a small server instead of paying 

virtual servers every year.(520€/year)

In theory this server should do the same work for less money. And of course there is way more potential to do other stuff then just

paying for one game.

Someone would say that the energy costs are to expansive, but if I pay less then 500€/year for it I can deal with it.

 

Is there any alternative for more performance or less costs? And which one should I take, finally?

 

Please excuse my bad English  I´m not using it very often.

 

Budget (including currency): 400-800

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: multiple VM, some game servers, maybe TS

Other details 

Dual Intel Xeon E5-1650 v2 (6 Cores, 3,5Ghz)   100-200€

dual cpu socket Mainboard                                 150-200€

8x8 DDR3 Ram                                                   150-200€

or 

Intel I7-9700k (8 Cores, 3,6Ghz)                         290€

B365 Board?(not sure about that)                      70€

32GB DDR4 Ram, 2666Mhz                               150€

 

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 minutes ago, Nosiie said:

Dual Intel Xeon E5-1650 v2 (6 Cores, 3,5Ghz)   100-200€

Well you can't do that, those are single socket cpus. You need a e5 2640 or simmilar for dual socket

 

 

Id go with the i7(probably get a 11700/10700 if you can) here. Most game servers like single threaded speed, and the newer systems are much better at single threaded speed.

 

[jaslion]

For that money get a ryzen cpu. Like a 5600x. Ark servers gobble up single core performance like no tomorrow so the e5 1650v2 would have SUCKED. 290 for a 9700k isn't good either as well the 5600x costs about as much but if a fair bit better AND it is a more efficient cpu. You will need a display adapter so if you can wait a little the new 5600g would be kinda epic.

 

Also a 70€ board (lemme gues the msi b365m pro?) is not going to do well with a 9700k.

 

How many players will be going at the same time, vms,...?

[da na]

Old, old, old. I use a HP z620 workstation with dual Xeon e5-2690 CPUs and could recommend it. 

[Nosiie]

3 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Well you can't do that, those are single socket cpus. You need a e5 2640 or simmilar for dual socket

 

 

Id go with the i7(probably get a 11700/10700 if you can) here. Most game servers like single threaded speed, and the newer systems are much better at single threaded speed.

 

Oh god I didn´t realize it´s a single socket CPU, but the 2640 has a to low clock speed I guess. I just thought about 10th gen, but with the other stuff it´s over my budget. Thats because I just looked for the older ones

[Dutch_Master]

Just this month I bought an AMD Ryzen 1700 (non-X!), separate AMD non-RGB stock cooler, Asus Prime B450M-A mainboard and 2x 8GB Transcend DDR4-2666 RAM for under 250 euro. Admittedly the RAM was discounted (30€ a stick) but even so, it would fit neatly within your lower budget range. Does require a separate GPU, but for pure server duty a GT710 or even a 210 suffices, unless you want to use it for video transcoding and stuff.

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, Nosiie said:

Oh god I didn´t realize it´s a single socket CPU, but the 2640 has a to low clock speed I guess. I just thought about 10th gen, but with the other stuff it´s over my budget. Thats because I just looked for the older ones

Well any of the 26xx and the 26xx chips shoudl work. But a newer chip will be much better in single threaded tasks due to the much better ipc.

[Nosiie]

5 minutes ago, jaslion said:

For that money get a ryzen cpu. Like a 5600x. Ark servers gobble up single core performance like no tomorrow so the e5 1650v2 would have SUCKED. 290 for a 9700k isn't good either as well the 5600x costs about as much but if a fair bit better AND it is a more efficient cpu. You will need a display adapter so if you can wait a little the new 5600g would be kinda epic.

 

Also a 70€ board (lemme gues the msi b365m pro?) is not going to do well with a 9700k.

 

How many players will be going at the same time, vms,...?

you´re totally right! The 5600g would be nearly perfect, but those 4 Cores... I mean I´d like to run every server for with about 2-4 Cores with 4-8 GB Ram...Thats the reason why I chose 16 Core instead of 12... Thats what the requirements told me  

[Nosiie]

6 minutes ago, Dutch_Master said:

Just this month I bought an AMD Ryzen 1700 (non-X!), separate AMD non-RGB stock cooler, Asus Prime B450M-A mainboard and 2x 8GB Transcend DDR4-2666 RAM for under 250 euro. Admittedly the RAM was discounted (30€ a stick) but even so, it would fit neatly within your lower budget range. Does require a separate GPU, but for pure server duty a GT710 or even a 210 suffices, unless you want to use it for video transcoding and stuff.

30€ for a RAM stick?! I wish I had seen those prices... but wouldn´t it be a bit inefficient for a 1700 with just 2666mhz? Another thing is the energy costs with a graphic card inside. Does it make a big difference?

[Nosiie]

18 minutes ago, jaslion said:

For that money get a ryzen cpu. Like a 5600x. Ark servers gobble up single core performance like no tomorrow so the e5 1650v2 would have SUCKED. 290 for a 9700k isn't good either as well the 5600x costs about as much but if a fair bit better AND it is a more efficient cpu. You will need a display adapter so if you can wait a little the new 5600g would be kinda epic.

 

Also a 70€ board (lemme gues the msi b365m pro?) is not going to do well with a 9700k.

 

How many players will be going at the same time, vms,...?

Yeah I was not really looking for the motherboard. I just needed a price so I took the first one I saw. 

I can´t tell how many players there will be, but I guess up to 10. And we like to have about 4-5 maps in this cluster

[jaslion]

12 minutes ago, Nosiie said:

you´re totally right! The 5600g would be nearly perfect, but those 4 Cores... I mean I´d like to run every server for with about 2-4 Cores with 4-8 GB Ram...Thats the reason why I chose 16 Core instead of 12... Thats what the requirements told me  

The 9700k is a 8core 8 thread cpu. NOT a 16thread cpu.

[Nosiie]

3 minutes ago, jaslion said:

The 9700k is a 8core 8 thread cpu. NOT a 16thread cpu.

Yes, but I can use a thread as a core in a vm

[Nosiie]

23 minutes ago, Mel0nMan said:

Old, old, old. I use a HP z620 workstation with dual Xeon e5-2690 CPUs and could recommend it. 

So can you tell me how many watts it needs?

[Dutch_Master]

The 1700 is a 1st gen Zen proc, so speed is less of a concern. For me, price most definitely was! This is a budget build/replacement for my desktop so low cost had very much priority over performance. Had I had the budget, I'd definitely chosen a different CPU (APU, rwally) in the form of the AMD R7 Pro 4750G, but I had to make do with the 1700 instead.

 

Just now, Nosiie said:

Yes, but I can use a thread as a core in a vm

But that doesn't make it a 16 thread CPU

[da na]

1 minute ago, Nosiie said:

So can you tell me how many watts it needs?

That specific workstation has a 800w psu. My config is:

CPU 1: 135w

CPU 2: 135w

GPU 1: 75w

GPU 2: 65w

Ram/drives/usb card/sound card, etc ~100w

Of course you wouldn't need two GPUs and a USB/sound card so it'd be less for you most likely.

The whole config is 410 watts.

[Nosiie]

3 minutes ago, Mel0nMan said:

That specific workstation has a 800w psu. My config is:

CPU 1: 135w

CPU 2: 135w

GPU 1: 75w

GPU 2: 65w

Ram/drives/usb card/sound card, etc ~100w

Of course you wouldn't need two GPUs and a USB/sound card so it'd be less for you most likely.

The whole config is 410 watts.

ok this would need 3-4 times more than the i7  I´m pretty sure it would work fine, but my wife would kill me with my electricity bill

[jaslion]

15 minutes ago, Nosiie said:

Yes, but I can use a thread as a core in a vm

Yeah but it still only has 8 threads. Not 16. The 9700k does NOT have hyperthreading. You can't make a thread out of nothing.

 

The 5600(g) is a 6core/12thread cpu. The 9900k is a 8core/16thread cpu.

[da na]

5 minutes ago, Nosiie said:

ok this would need 3-4 times more than the i7  I´m pretty sure it would work fine, but my wife would kill me with my electricity bill

A small price to pay for 16 cores 32 threads.

 

But seriously though, my whole machine with those specs cost me under $1000. So if you're looking for a good system on the cheap, get a retired workstation. Businesses usually replace them after 6-8 years. 

[jaslion]

5 minutes ago, Nosiie said:

ok this would need 3-4 times more than the i7  I´m pretty sure it would work fine, but my wife would kill me with my electricity bill

I'm currently running 2 minecraft servers a valheim server and a space engineers server on a lenovo mini pc with a i7 4875t and it consumes about 40w on average an hour.

[Nosiie]

8 minutes ago, Dutch_Master said:

The 1700 is a 1st gen Zen proc, so speed is less of a concern. For me, price most definitely was! This is a budget build/replacement for my desktop so low cost had very much priority over performance. Had I had the budget, I'd definitely chosen a different CPU (APU, rwally) in the form of the AMD R7 Pro 4750G, but I had to make do with the 1700 instead.

 

But that doesn't make it a 16 thread CPU

oh pls not...shame on me...I didn´t realized it ...of course its not a 16 thread cpu... and I can´t undo my words

[Nosiie]

1 minute ago, jaslion said:

I'm currently running 2 minecraft servers a valheim server and a space engineers server on a lenovo mini pc with a i7 4875t and it consumes about 40w on average an hour.

ok that's pretty tough... valheim should take half of your cpu. But I think I need more than a double of the power to run 4-5 ark servers in a cluster

[Nosiie]

9 minutes ago, Mel0nMan said:

A small price to pay for 16 cores 32 threads.

 

But seriously though, my whole machine with those specs cost me under $1000. So if you're looking for a good system on the cheap, get a retired workstation. Businesses usually replace them after 6-8 years. 

I´m totally with you! If I had the money for that kind of bills, I would buy it immediately. But for a 24/7 server it would cost 850€ per year! A tiny bit too much 

[da na]

5 minutes ago, Nosiie said:

I´m totally with you! If I had the money for that kind of bills, I would buy it immediately. But for a 24/7 server it would cost 850€ per year! A tiny bit too much 

Oof... well yeah that makes a bit more sense...

[Nosiie]

20 minutes ago, jaslion said:

Yeah but it still only has 8 threads. Not 16. The 9700k does NOT have hyperthreading. You can't make a thread out of nothing.

 

The 5600(g) is a 6core/12thread cpu. The 9900k is a 8core/16thread cpu.

I´m sorry I didn´t realized what you were teling me. Shame on me I didn´t double check that first

[Nosiie]

So I finally compared the I7-10700 vs. the AMD R7 3700x and the  I7 wins in a few points...

The price class was kind of the same and with Intel I don´t need a graphic card.

I don´t know really the real world efficiency of both of them, but on the paper the I7 is better as well.

With the cheapest components I could find it´s possible to build it under 600€, but only with 16Gb of RAM.

This might not be enough, but for the start it´s ok I guess.

Does anyone have any recommendation for me, cause I´m not very familiar with the new Intel CPU´s or boards or ram.