CPU Recommendations for Home Server

[brandon_57]

I'm planning on building a server that I would use for multiple game servers, NAS, home assistant and anything else I think of doing in the future. I was originally was thinking of using a 1920x threadripper because of how cheap they have gotten, but I decided to not go with that because of how expensive and how few motherboards are for it. After scrounging for a while I found a Xeon E5-2690 V4 that looked pretty decent. What are your thoughts on what CPU I should get or be looking at?

[StDragon]

It depends on how robust you want the server to be. You can have a desktop PC take on the role of a "server", or use real server hardware with fault-tolerances; such as ECC RAM, dual power supplies, and multiple drives in a RAID array.

If you're going with a Xeon or TR, you're really doing so for ECC memory support. In which case, you can get a used Dell PowerEdge server for a decent price (T series is Tower, R is rackmount).

[Oshino Shinobu]

My home server uses an E5-2690 V3, never had any issues with performance on the CPU side for what I use it for. The V4 should be plenty capable of most tasks, though it would also depend on the load from the game servers. 

 

Primary use for me is a high bandwidth file server. With write caching, it hits 1GB/s transfers over a 10Gb NIC pretty consistently. Other stuff is domain controller, web servers, VPN/remote access, WSUS, various applications, Certificate authority, AV server and network controller. With all of that running it generally sits at the below usage.

 

[manikyath]

it depends, really.

 

some game servers (modded minecraft, for example) REALLY like high single core performance, and while synthetic tests wont show that much difference, the complete lack of short time boost performance on xeons has a huge effect here.

 

the theoretically mostly similar single core performance between my i7-4770, and my friend's 24 core dell poweredge means nothing when the game will choke hard on a lack of peak performance.

it's difficult to explain, difficult to put into figures, and HIGHLY game-dependant.

 

if you already have a good idea of what you'll be putting on this thing, look for what the software's specific requirements are, and base yourself off of that.

 

if it's mostly a "i'll see what i end up needing it for" build, there's really two ways to go:

- the cheapskate route: save money now, so you have budget to upgrade if needed later

- the well prepred route: buy whatever ends up being the best all-rounder, with the most options.

 

[brandon_57]

6 minutes ago, manikyath said:

it depends, really.

 

some game servers (modded minecraft, for example) REALLY like high single core performance, and while synthetic tests wont show that much difference, the complete lack of short time boost performance on xeons has a huge effect here.

 

the theoretically mostly similar single core performance between my i7-4770, and my friend's 24 core dell poweredge means nothing when the game will choke hard on a lack of peak performance.

it's difficult to explain, difficult to put into figures, and HIGHLY game-dependant.

 

if you already have a good idea of what you'll be putting on this thing, look for what the software's specific requirements are, and base yourself off of that.

 

if it's mostly a "i'll see what i end up needing it for" build, there's really two ways to go:

- the cheapskate route: save money now, so you have budget to upgrade if needed later

- the well prepred route: buy whatever ends up being the best all-rounder, with the most options.

 

The kind of games I would be putting on it would probably be vanilla minecraft and modded minecraft. Those are the only games I could think of right now. It really depends on what games my friends would be interested in playing.

 

Do you think the Xeon E5-2690 V4 is really overkill for what I plan on using it for? My thought was that I would get something that had a bit more cores than I probably need so if I planned to run any other applications on it I had the resources for it.

[manikyath]

2 minutes ago, brandon_57 said:

The kind of games I would be putting on it would probably be vanilla minecraft and modded minecraft. Those are the only games I could think of right now. It really depends on what games my friends would be interested in playing.

 

Do you think the Xeon E5-2690 V4 is really overkill for what I plan on using it for? My thought was that I would get something that had a bit more cores than I probably need so if I planned to run any other applications on it I had the resources for it.

if it's mostly for minecraft, the xeon is a waste. if you can find something ZEN based on the cheap with at least 8 cores, it's gonna be great 

 

as for the debate on using desktop hardware as a home server... as long as it's "home lab" stuff, that's for yourself, your family, and your direct friends.. it's fine. i've been running desktops as home server for the past 6 or 7 years, and the biggest pain is limited expandability.

 

this is also the place where i usually put in a lecture on "if you plan on running anything for public access, it should be in a datacenter", but i suppose you dont need that lecture.

[brandon_57]

30 minutes ago, StDragon said:

It depends on how robust you want the server to be. You can have a desktop PC take on the role of a "server", or use real server hardware with fault-tolerances; such as ECC RAM, dual power supplies, and multiple drives in a RAID array.

If you're going with a Xeon or TR, you're really doing so for ECC memory support. In which case, you can get a used Dell PowerEdge server for a decent price (T series is Tower, R is rackmount).

Do you have a suggestion/recommendation of a model of a Dell PowerEdge server?

[brandon_57]

1 minute ago, manikyath said:

if it's mostly for minecraft, the xeon is a waste. if you can find something ZEN based on the cheap with at least 8 cores, it's gonna be great 

 

as for the debate on using desktop hardware as a home server... as long as it's "home lab" stuff, that's for yourself, your family, and your direct friends.. it's fine. i've been running desktops as home server for the past 6 or 7 years, and the biggest pain is limited expandability.

 

this is also the place where i usually put in a lecture on "if you plan on running anything for public access, it should be in a datacenter", but i suppose you dont need that lecture.

Do you think a Ryzen 2700 would be good then?

 

I only plan to use the game servers for my friends (probably around 15 people).

[manikyath]

1 minute ago, brandon_57 said:

Do you have a suggestion/recommendation of a model of a Dell PowerEdge server?

whatever you can find as 'close to the source' as possible. i know folks who've managed to score a relatively recent HP ProLiant for 50 bucks because he bought it as-is without disks. Essentially the more prepped you buy them, the more you're leaving on the table. a lot of datacenters let them go for dirt cheap, if you can get your hands on them.

 

also keep in mind that both Dell PowerEdge and HP ProLiant arent really built for silence, to put it lightly.

 

2 minutes ago, brandon_57 said:

Do you think a Ryzen 2700 would be good then?

 

I only plan to use the game servers for my friends (probably around 15 people).

that's gonna be a whole lot faster than an old xeon for single-core stuff.

[StDragon]

14 minutes ago, manikyath said:

whatever you can find as 'close to the source' as possible. i know folks who've managed to score a relatively recent HP ProLiant for 50 bucks because he bought it as-is without disks. Essentially the more prepped you buy them, the more you're leaving on the table. a lot of datacenters let them go for dirt cheap, if you can get your hands on them.

 

also keep in mind that both Dell PowerEdge and HP ProLiant arent really built for silence, to put it lightly.

 

that's gonna be a whole lot faster than an old xeon for single-core stuff.

^This. If you don't source the server used locally, you're going to pay a substantial amount in shipping!

Rackmount servers are inherently higher pitched noisy due to the small but high RPM fans. That's why for home use, I recommend a tower configuration. That said, newer used models can be surprisingly quite at idle. Just be forewarned that if you install an "unsupported" card into the server, a Dell PowerEdge will default to a high airflow profile so as to be sure that device is cooled properly. It's a fail-safe of theirs, and exceedingly annoying to work around.

[manikyath]

1 minute ago, StDragon said:

a substantial amount in shipping!

and you pay for the guys 'refurbing' the server for you, and you risk shipping damage.

(protip: dont fedex it, appareantly fedex really hates shipping servers, even their own...)