New Home Server

mgibsonsign · August 19, 2022

I'm looking into building a home server. I'm looking at what specs people recommend for my situation. The plan is to have this server act as a plex server, run Home Assistant in a docker and run (1) Windows VM used mainly for simple tasks (not gaming) and run Blue Iris for security cameras (could run this in a docker if people think it is better that running it in the Windows VM). I've been looking at UNRAID and the OS, but I'm open to suggestions if there is something better, I'm new to Servers.

I would like to use a current gen CPU and would probably allocate 4 cores to the VM. What would everyone recommend for the total cores and Intel vs. AMD.

Probably going to use 32GB of RAM in case I want to transcode Plex using RAM.

The GPU is where I'm struggling the most. I don't really know what this system needs here. I don't think it would need much power here but I could be wrong, I'm really new to this.

My plan for storage is at least (3-4) 12TB drives and then (1) 12-16TB parity drive. I don't have a ton of Media for the Plex server at this time but I'm hoping to expand in the future. Also I will probably be running (4-5) 8MP cameras in Blue Iris and would need enough room for those files.

Budget for this project is up in the air, I'm thinking somewhere around $1200-1500 USD for the system and then storage drives on top of that.

I'm really open to any suggestions people have and again I'm really new to servers so if there is something better let me know.

Here is a pcpartpicker link for most of the components i was thinking about. https://pcpartpicker.com/list/qT7qNc

Chassis I'm looking at the the https://www.newegg.com/rosewill-rsv-l4412u-black/p/N82E16811147330

KingTdiGGiTTy · August 19, 2022

Your probably not gonna overclock this so I don't think a K CPU is worth having.

Because DDR5 has some sort of ECC I would consider going with a DDR5 platform.

If you're running ZFS I would recommend going with 64 GB of RAM and so you're other applications have enough.

I don't now if or how much GPU power a security system uses, but I'll assume that it uses a bit for encoding. It'll also be useful to have some GPU grunt for the Plex server for encoding and decoding.

At this time IDK how the support if for Intel's integrated graphics, but those could be useful for this. Something like a Quadro M2000 or P400 would be good for NVENC or anything newer than a GTX 1050

I'm unsure of how P and E cores work with virtualization and/or if it's helpful or detrimental.

LIGISTX · August 19, 2022

32 minutes ago, mgibsonsign said:

I'm looking into building a home server. I'm looking at what specs people recommend for my situation. The plan is to have this server act as a plex server, run Home Assistant in a docker and run (1) Windows VM used mainly for simple tasks (not gaming) and run Blue Iris for security cameras (could run this in a docker if people think it is better that running it in the Windows VM). I've been looking at UNRAID and the OS, but I'm open to suggestions if there is something better, I'm new to Servers.

I would like to use a current gen CPU and would probably allocate 4 cores to the VM. What would everyone recommend for the total cores and Intel vs. AMD.

Probably going to use 32GB of RAM in case I want to transcode Plex using RAM.

The GPU is where I'm struggling the most. I don't really know what this system needs here. I don't think it would need much power here but I could be wrong, I'm really new to this.

My plan for storage is at least (3-4) 12TB drives and then (1) 12-16TB parity drive. I don't have a ton of Media for the Plex server at this time but I'm hoping to expand in the future. Also I will probably be running (4-5) 8MP cameras in Blue Iris and would need enough room for those files.

Budget for this project is up in the air, I'm thinking somewhere around $1200-1500 USD for the system and then storage drives on top of that.

I'm really open to any suggestions people have and again I'm really new to servers so if there is something better let me know.

Here is a pcpartpicker link for most of the components i was thinking about. https://pcpartpicker.com/list/qT7qNc

Chassis I'm looking at the the https://www.newegg.com/rosewill-rsv-l4412u-black/p/N82E16811147330

I have not used blueiris, but the rest of what you want will run on a potato.

My previous homelab was a i3 6100, and with that I ran ESXi as my hypervisor, truenas vm with 10x4TB in RAID Z2, Ubuntu VM for plex, Ubuntu VM for multiple docker containers, home assistant vm, windows VM, and a few other random small VM’s, and everything was happy as could be. I was able to easily transcode a few 1080p to 720p files at once, and my plex VM was only given 1.5 gb of RAM and 2 of the 4 threads the i3 6100 had.

You probably need way, way less power then you think you need.

Last I looked into blueiris I think a i5 would have been plenty of power, this was back in the i5 4000 series days. So any current gen CPU would be much, much faster.

You almost certainly don’t need a GPU, and really only need 1 SSD to be used as your boot drive/VM/docker drive. I am not as familiar with how unraid works boot drive and VM/container storage wise though.

You definitely don’t need a k SKU chip. You won’t be OCing… and I would be shocked if you couldn’t get away with a 12000 series i3, but I suppose nothing wrong with an i5.

The one big thing I would look into is how does unraid deal with E vs P cores. I am not sure if whatever kernel unraid is currently on has support for E and P cores - it will work without kernel updates, but it will not be optimal as it may not “smartly” know what to throw on what core. For the short term you could always just disable E cores in BIOS, and when unraid officially supports it (it may already, I am just not sure), turn it back on.

I guess I should also note, I had no GPU, and had 28GB of total system RAM, 16 of which was dedicated to truenas. So the rest of the VM’s only had 10 GB to play with between them all, with about ~2GB reserved for ESXi itself.