Need help with choosing parts for a server (from scratch)

Psatch · June 28, 2021

Budget (including currency): ~$1000 (give or take 10%) excluding peripherals

Country: United States

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

- Run a Minecraft Bedrock edition server for ~10 of my friends (maybe a few different servers?)

- Host my own FoundryVTT server to run Dungeons and Dragons virtually with video conferencing (like Skype, but through Foundry itself) for my group of <10 people

- Have a file sharing system that automatically uploads images (up to 8K) and music files (up to ~1h sound files) to my Foundry server

- Back-up the files for all of my devices automatically

- I want to preserve the integrity of my files

- The server should be low profile and energy efficient / low power draw if possible

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 no existing parts -- this server will be made from scratch

- Monitor, keyboard, and other peripherals will be bought cheaply (no need to consider for build)

- I plan to run Linux (Ubuntu?) as the OS, but I'm open to suggestions

- I have never built a computer before and I'm know nothing about IT but I have money to burn and I want to learn!

Tentative Parts:

CPU: Intel Xeon E-2174G 3.8 GHz Quad-Core Processor

CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler

Motherboard: Asus WS C246M PRO Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard

RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-2400 CL14 Memory

SSD: Western Digital Blue SN550 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive

HDDs: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive x 2

Power Supply: Corsair SF 600 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully Modular SFX Power Supply

UPS: CyberPower CP1500AVRLCD UPS (900 W / 1500 VA)

Case: Cooler Master MasterBox NR400 (w/ODD) MicroATX Mid Tower Case

When picking parts I kinda just chose the ones with high ratings pretty much. For the CPU, it seems that the E-2174G has a decent single core speed, which I believe is good for Minecraft which runs on a single thread. The CPU supports ECC / SMT (I like the ECC, I'm not sure what SMT is but maybe I'll need it in the future? I'm not sure). The motherboard also supports ECC and RAID (I think RAID is needed for backing up stuff?), and it's small. As for storage, I'm cool with just the 1TB SSD and 2 of the 1TB HDDs for now. The build doesn't have any incompatibilities on pcpartpicker so that's cool.

The build is ~$1100, which I am OK with. What does everyone else think? Am I an idiot? Am I missing something? Is this overboard? Feedback is much appreciated!

Somerandomtechyboi · June 28, 2021

4 minutes ago, Psatch said:

Budget (including currency): ~$1000 (give or take 10%) excluding peripherals

Country: United States

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

- Run a Minecraft Bedrock edition server for ~10 of my friends (maybe a few different servers?)

- Host my own FoundryVTT server to run Dungeons and Dragons virtually with video conferencing (like Skype, but through Foundry itself) for my group of <10 people

- Have a file sharing system that automatically uploads images (up to 8K) and music files (up to ~1h sound files) to my Foundry server

- Back-up the files for all of my devices automatically

- I want to preserve the integrity of my files

- The server should be low profile and energy efficient / low power draw if possible

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 no existing parts -- this server will be made from scratch

- Monitor, keyboard, and other peripherals will be bought cheaply (no need to consider for build)

- I plan to run Linux (Ubuntu?) as the OS, but I'm open to suggestions

- I have never built a computer before, but I have money to burn and I want to learn!

Tentative Parts:

CPU: Intel Xeon E-2174G 3.8 GHz Quad-Core Processor

CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler

Motherboard: Asus WS C246M PRO Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard

RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-2400 CL14 Memory

SSD: Western Digital Blue SN550 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive

HDDs: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive x 2

Power Supply: Corsair SF 600 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully Modular SFX Power Supply

UPS: CyberPower CP1500AVRLCD UPS (900 W / 1500 VA)

Case: Cooler Master MasterBox NR400 (w/ODD) MicroATX Mid Tower Case

When picking parts I kinda just chose the ones with high ratings pretty much. For the CPU, it seems that the E-2174G has a decent single core speed, which I believe is good for Minecraft which runs on a single thread. The CPU supports ECC / SMT (I like the ECC, I'm not sure what SMT is but maybe I'll need it in the future? I'm not sure). The motherboard also supports ECC and RAID (I think RAID is needed for backing up stuff?), and it's small. As for storage, I'm cool with just the 1TB SSD and 2 of the 1TB HDDs for now. The build doesn't have any incompatibilities on pcpartpicker so that's cool.

The build is ~$1100, which I am OK with. What does everyone else think? Am I an idiot? Am I missing something? Is this overboard? Feedback is much appreciated!

You can get a much older haswell based xeon like the e3 1220 v3 a 4c 4t cpu, pretty easy to find these old xeons at aliexpress and i even have them locally,

Much much cheaper going with an older xeon like this and will have similar parformance to that e2174g.

Ive only looked at consumer boards which dont support ecc but damn the cheapest of the cheap are almost the size of mitx, so potential goldmine for cheap sff (in my area atleast).

An lga 1150 server board can also be found on aliexpress but im unsure of the price.

If you are gonna buy the cpu and the board mightaswell buy the entire freaking server

I think there are some storage servers on ebay that are either lga 1155 or lga 1150, lga 1151 is prob overpriced to crap.

Just find a storage server on ebay and upgrade the cpu if lga 1155 to a 1220 v2, and for 1150 prob doesnt need any upgrading but if its a crappy l cpu thats a freaking dual core then get an e3 1220 v3.

Now just have to put all the hdds in the system, and with a platform this old it doesnt support nvme natively but with a pcie adapter it might work considering ive seen x79 boards work with nvme