server Best home server with low TDP

[7upTurbo]

So I'm trying to build a home server, and I'm kinda hesitant about so many things. I'm gonna list the problems which I'm facing.

 

1. As I mentioned, I would like to go with a low TDP since electricity bills are my biggest concern. We are talking about 35w CPU/APU.
2. Considering the previous point, I would prefer an integrated graphics processor. I suppose it uses less electricity. Not to mention a lot cheaper with the current situation of the GPU market but keep in mind The GPU should be able to handle 4k. 
3. I live in Bulgaria (a small country in Europe), so that's my third issue. It is almost impossible to find some of them like, AMD A12-9800E, A12-9700E, Athlon 3000G(Although I have a huge problem with core count on this one), intel i9-11900T, i9-10900T, or even i9-9900T in Bulgaria. I tried looking for them on Amazon.de, I hit a dead end. 
4. Another thing is I would like to have a 10Gb LAN on it. I don't mind if it is a NIC SFP card or a motherboard with 10Gb.
5. Also i want to have 2 PCIE x16 on the MOBO. I mean, nothing can go wrong with 2x PCIE x16!

 

So keeping all these factors in mind, can anyone tell me if they have a better idea of how to start building this server (CPU/APU/MOBO wise)? My budget is around $1k. I could push it a lil more but not a lot. I would really appreciate any kind of help, even if it is a solid answer of "waiting to see what happens to the chip shortage" but i kind need a till when I should wait and what changes if I wait.

[Nayr438]

What do you plan to do with this server?

[LAwLz]

You forgot to tell us the most important thing, what you are going to do with the server. 

 

Without knowing that, it's impossible to give good advice because we don't know what to focus on. So you even need a GPU? How much RAM should we budget for? How many HDDs? The list goes on. I assume it's for a file server since you want 10Gbps. What file system are you going to use? That determines what and how much RAM to get, which determines which CPU and motherboard. 

What type of network connection do you need? You said 10Gbps but is it SFP+ or 10GBASE-T?

[Electronics Wizardy]

6 hours ago, 7upTurbo said:

As I mentioned, I would like to go with a low TDP since electricity bills are my biggest concern. We are talking about 35w CPU/APU.

TDP != power consumption. Id just get the normal version of those chips, since they all idle at about the same power anyways, and you can easily lower tdp later if needed.

 

6 hours ago, 7upTurbo said:

Another thing is I would like to have a 10Gb LAN on it. I don't mind if it is a NIC SFP card or a motherboard with 10Gb.

These are pretty power hungry if you goal is to power power. 

 

What 10gbe standard? There are lots of them. Id go sfp+ as its normally lower power.

 

 

Can you get something likea. i5 11400? Id get something like that here. Low power esp at idle, failry cheap, should be enough io for a home server.

[mariushm]

According to this website , the most expensive energy in Bulgaria is around 0.15$ per kWh.

Let's say you build a server or computer that idles at 50w ... that means in 24 hours it's gonna consume 24 x 50 = 1200w or 1.2 kWh  and in a month (31 days) it's gonna consume 37200 watts or 37kWh ... that's 5.55$ a month.

 

Processors will consume very little when they don't do much, around 5-10 watts for a Ryzen CPU. The motherboard consumes around 10-15 watts, memory around 2-3 watts per stick, a mechanical hard drive around 8 watts when in use, around 3-5 watts idling without motor spinning.

 

AM4 processors without integrated graphics create 24 pci-e lanes : 4 are permanently fixed to chipset connection, 4 go to first m.2 connector, the remaining 16 lanes go to pci-e slot(s) for video card.

Depending on chipset and how the manufacturer designs the board, those 16 lanes may be split into 2  groups of 8 lanes, so you'll have two pci-e x16 slots each with 8 lanes.

Those chipsets are x370/x470/x570

 

AM4 processors with integrated graphics only give 8 pci-e lanes for video cards, not 16 ... so even if you get a motherboard that's designed to split 16 pci-e lanes into 2 slots each with 8 pci-e lanes, only the first slot would work, because the processor only exposes 8 pci-e lanes instead of 16.

 

Anyway, it feels like you're focusing too much on pci-e x16 ... you don't really need pci-e x16.

 

Unless you need a fancier video card to also play games on this computer, you could literally get a cheap 10$ video card from eBay and either use a riser cable or cut the edge connector to make it a pci-e x1 size, and plug the video card into a pci-e x1 slot - you have yourself a video card.

 

A 10gbps network card can work even in a pci-e x1 slot, but of course you won't get 10gbps.  That's why you see them using 4 pci-e lanes.

 

A320, B450, x370, x470 chipsets create pci-e 2.0 lanes which have a maximum speed of 500 MB/s. 

A pci-e x4 slot gives the card 2 GB/s which is more than the ~1.2 GB/s you could possibly transfer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Featherblade]

As a couple other people have asked, what do you want to do with this server? Honestly the first thing I would do is see if there are any local electronics recyclers or stores around you that have old servers and see if anything there suits your fancy, although I know that depending on where exactly you live that could be difficult.

[mineblaster]

i got couple of these supermicro boards a few years ago

https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/motherboard/X10SDV-2C-TP4F

it not quite what your looking for but its a pretty good fit.there are diffrent models skus that might fit better but it could get pricey

[jec6613]

On 12/11/2021 at 6:10 AM, 7upTurbo said:

1. As I mentioned, I would like to go with a low TDP since electricity bills are my biggest concern. We are talking about 35w CPU/APU.
2. Considering the previous point, I would prefer an integrated graphics processor. I suppose it uses less electricity. Not to mention a lot cheaper with the current situation of the GPU market but keep in mind The GPU should be able to handle 4k. 
3. I live in Bulgaria (a small country in Europe), so that's my third issue. It is almost impossible to find some of them like, AMD A12-9800E, A12-9700E, Athlon 3000G(Although I have a huge problem with core count on this one), intel i9-11900T, i9-10900T, or even i9-9900T in Bulgaria. I tried looking for them on Amazon.de, I hit a dead end. 
4. Another thing is I would like to have a 10Gb LAN on it. I don't mind if it is a NIC SFP card or a motherboard with 10Gb.
5. Also i want to have 2 PCIE x16 on the MOBO. I mean, nothing can go wrong with 2x PCIE x16!

1. TDP does not equate to power consumption - and they're not even correlated much for home servers.
2. No, you don't want an IGP unless the IGP is handling video encoding (in which case, you want Intel), what you want is onboard graphics on the motherboard, because then it can power off entirely when not in use.
3. You shouldn't be looking for very much build-your-own with power consumption being an issue.
4. You can easily add 10 GbE to most systems, but most 10 GbE cards will draw as much as a low power CPU.  If you can avoid it, NBaseT cards (2.5 or 5) will give much better power efficiency.  Oh, and you have to cool those things - are you putting this in a server chassis with proper ventilation for the card?
5. Eh, servers don't need X16.  Usually X8 is the biggest you'd need for high speed I/O.  Also, again, you're just throwing more power draw onto a system where you say you're trying to keep things low?

 

Anyway, if you really want a low power consumption but capable server, get an HPE MicroServer Gen10 Plus: https://www.amazon.de/-/en/MicroSvr-Gen10-G5420-NHP-SVR/dp/B084PZPHTH

 

This gets you an onboard Matrox G200 GPU, a dual core Pentium processor for high efficiency, low power chipsets and high efficiency PSU.  Plus, quad GbE so hopefully you don't need a 10 Gbps card right away.  Last time I built one, under normal load it pulled 55W from the wall with two SSD, two HDD, and a full OOB management interface running.