Home Server help

[Felixwaw]

Hey Folks,

I want to buy a home lab, budget I want to keep it under 500$CAD flexible.
 

I want a home lab to run either lightweight windows VMs or docker container. I want to run Sickgear, it downloads tv shows, I also want to run a Minecraft server, and some spear room to tinker, expand, and home automation stuff in the future.

I dont really know where to start, if I should be looking for old workstation and what kind, or build some old server parts from ebay.

Any advice would be great thanks!

[Electronics Wizardy]

How much storage do you need in tb? Do you care about power usage?

 

Id probably just get a used server/workstations and put 32-64gb of ram on it. How about something likde a dell r720

 

What os do you want to run? Id take a look at proxmox. 

 

 

[Felixwaw]

I have a NAS to store all my data, a few tb would probably be plenty. I dont care about power usage but quieter would be nicer.

 

Yah probably proxmox.

[Felixwaw]

I found these two servers, do you think they would be good options?
https://www.kijiji.ca/v-serveurs/ville-de-montreal/ibm-system-x3550-m3-server-dual-x5620-2-40ghz-32gb-2x-300gb-10k/1527468977
https://www.kijiji.ca/v-serveurs/ville-de-montreal/ibm-system-x3650-m3-server-dual-x5649-2-53ghz-112gb-7x-600gb-10k/1527481603

[Pixel5]

1 hour ago, Felixwaw said:

I found these two servers, do you think they would be good options?
https://www.kijiji.ca/v-serveurs/ville-de-montreal/ibm-system-x3550-m3-server-dual-x5620-2-40ghz-32gb-2x-300gb-10k/1527468977
https://www.kijiji.ca/v-serveurs/ville-de-montreal/ibm-system-x3650-m3-server-dual-x5649-2-53ghz-112gb-7x-600gb-10k/1527481603

both of these fit well into you not caring about power consumption as these are crazy power hogs but they will also sound like a jet engine constantly so its not really what you wanna get.

 

Also a minecraft server cares a lot more about single core performance then having many cores so getting any more modern CPU with less cores is not only going to be quieter but its also going to provide you much better performance for your server.

[Helpful Tech Witch]

8 hours ago, Pixel5 said:

both of these fit well into you not caring about power consumption as these are crazy power hogs but they will also sound like a jet engine constantly so its not really what you wanna get.

 

Also a minecraft server cares a lot more about single core performance then having many cores so getting any more modern CPU with less cores is not only going to be quieter but its also going to provide you much better performance for your server.

yeah, no point getting a 12c server for just mc, unless you want to run 12 servers really. A 5600x or 11600k would demolish one of those old xenons for a mc server