Multi-purpose Home Server

[Rooster77_77]

I've never personally built a PC or server so this might not make a lot of sense. Hoping someone can help me flesh out this idea somewhat.

 

I want to have a server that does these things:

 

• NAS
• Hosts a couple website
• Hosts an Email Server
• Renders 3D Modeling ( mostly Inventor ).

I mainly use a laptop and carry it with me so my plan was to connect the server through Ethernet to my router then remote into it in order to use intensive software. I was looking into specific hardware and am not sure what to get either. I have a pretty decent budget so I was thinking about getting a thread ripper because why not and a 3050. That might be overkill though and I don't really want to draw unnecessary power because I plan on leaving it on almost constantly.

 

This probably looks like a ramble. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I'll respond with more info to anyone that says anything.

 

Thanks!

[LIGISTX]

5 minutes ago, Rooster77_77 said:

I've never personally built a PC or server so this might not make a lot of sense. Hoping someone can help me flesh out this idea somewhat.

 

I want to have a server that does these things:

 

• NAS
• Hosts a couple website
• Hosts an Email Server
• Renders 3D Modeling ( mostly Inventor ).

I mainly use a laptop and carry it with me so my plan was to connect the server through Ethernet to my router then remote into it in order to use intensive software. I was looking into specific hardware and am not sure what to get either. I have a pretty decent budget so I was thinking about getting a thread ripper because why not and a 3050. That might be overkill though and I don't really want to draw unnecessary power because I plan on leaving it on almost constantly.

 

This probably looks like a ramble. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I'll respond with more info to anyone that says anything.

 

Thanks!

Some key words to start your search…

 

Proxmox, virtualization, truenas, wiregaurd

 

Proxmox as a hypervisor to virtualize multiple OS’s under, truenas is a great ZFS storage appliance, WireGuard for a VPN to tunnel into your network when away, and then really the world is your oyster.

 

There is a lot to learn if this is new to you… but those key words should help you start to narrow in on what you actually want to do. Once you have a little more idea of what your after, we can definitely help you get there

[Rooster77_77]

1 minute ago, LIGISTX said:

Some key words to start your search…

 

Proxmox, virtualization, truenas, wiregaurd

 

Proxmox as a hypervisor to virtualize multiple OS’s under, truenas is a great ZFS storage appliance, WireGuard for a VPN to tunnel into your network when away, and then really the world is your oyster.

 

There is a lot to learn if this is new to you… but those key words should help you start to narrow in on what you actually want to do. Once you have a little more idea of what your after, we can definitely help you get there

Ok, thank you! I was hoping someone could point me in the right direction. Will look into it.

[emosun]

12 minutes ago, Rooster77_77 said:

I was thinking about getting a thread ripper because why not

Because whatever apps you may be using may not support that many cores thus your higher cost cpu ends up being slower than a ryzen cpu. Thats why not.

[LIGISTX]

1 minute ago, Rooster77_77 said:

Ok, thank you! I was hoping someone could point me in the right direction. Will look into it.

Also check out unraid. I personally prefer truenas for its ZFS implementation, and I use proxmox as the hypervisor, but unraid could do this all as well. Proxmox and truenas are totally free, unraid has a 1 time very affordable cost. But personally I like proxmox as it’s more designed around hosting VM’s, unraid is more of a NAS with some VM stuff as an afterthought (a very, very well thought out and implemented afterthought). 

[LIGISTX]

Also, you can but used server hardware for affordable prices. 
 

I run a 28 thread Xeon with 64GB or ECC on a Supermicro board, 512 nvme ssd with a Supermicro PCIe riser card which I needed since this mobo is older, and a 90 dollar noctua heatsink, and that all cost me ~550 bucks. So if you need a lot of cores, this is a solid option. They are not especially fast cores tho, but there are many of them (and they are fast enough for server workloads…. At least fast enough for mine)

[Rooster77_77]

9 minutes ago, LIGISTX said:

Also, you can but used server hardware for affordable prices. 
 

I run a 28 thread Xeon with 64GB or ECC on a Supermicro board, 512 nvme ssd with a Supermicro PCIe riser card which I needed since this mobo is older, and a 90 dollar noctua heatsink, and that all cost me ~550 bucks. So if you need a lot of cores, this is a solid option. They are not especially fast cores tho, but there are many of them (and they are fast enough for server workloads…. At least fast enough for mine)

I remember looking at the Intel Ultra Low Voltage CPU a while back. Is this good for servers at all? I don't want to have super high power consumption when it is idle. Can I just underclock the CPU and GPU really hard when I'm not doing anything intense? Do you know how much power you use a month? I don't pay the utilities and think it would be a little inconsiderate to run up the electric bill.

[LIGISTX]

1 hour ago, Rooster77_77 said:

I remember looking at the Intel Ultra Low Voltage CPU a while back. Is this good for servers at all? I don't want to have super high power consumption when it is idle. Can I just underclock the CPU and GPU really hard when I'm not doing anything intense? Do you know how much power you use a month? I don't pay the utilities and think it would be a little inconsiderate to run up the electric bill.

I personally wouldn’t do a low power solution, although they do make low power Xeon’s that are soldered onto mobo’s…

 

I believe my homelab uses somewhere in the 100-150 watt range. I’m not entirely sure, but a good chunk of that is just the harddrives. 

[LIGISTX]

Also, I would advise against hosting webpages. Unless you really put in the work to learn what your doing, hosting public facing sites drastically increases huge threat surface… this is why things like digital ocean and other hosts exist. 

[Rooster77_77]

3 hours ago, LIGISTX said:

Also, I would advise against hosting webpages. Unless you really put in the work to learn what your doing, hosting public facing sites drastically increases huge threat surface… this is why things like digital ocean and other hosts exist. 

I was worried about that. The websites I would be hosting would get no traffic really besides myself. I agree that it would be easier to use a host.

[LIGISTX]

3 hours ago, Rooster77_77 said:

I was worried about that. The websites I would be hosting would get no traffic really besides myself. I agree that it would be easier to use a host.

Even if no one uses it, bots will find it doing port scans on your firewall, and they will attempt to get it… and they may phone home saying “hey check this out”. And if your things were not set up correctly, you could be in for a bad time.