DDR3 Budget Server Help

[toomanyxeons]

Hi folks.

 

I have an idea to build a server out of older DDR3-gen parts just for the sake of having it be as cheap as possible. I'm wondering (for the particular scenario), what the best / most cost effective option would be or if it be better to bite the bullet and do a more modern DDR4 system.

 

What I'm about to list here might sound unrealistic, stupid, over-demanding, etc. Whatever. It's a thought in the back of my head and feedback as to the best way of going about this would be more helpful than being called an idiot.

 

I'm hoping for the system to act as a hybrid HTPC/glorified Minecraft Server box, with two MC server instances always running (FTB or some flavour/vanilla, probably no more than 8-10 players at one time) and the ability to player lighter titles in no more than 1080p60. The point of the system is for this to be done as cost effectively as possible. I'm not after the best frames for the gaming aspect as it'll likely be a seldom use case for the box and I don't have the expectation of it being able to do a lot with the two servers hogging a lot of resources. But I want a cheap system that can effectively act as a not-so-demanding server as well as a light gaming box with a 1060.

 

My thoughts are that this can be done with a Xeon (say, E5-2697 v2) or i7 (4790k, 4960k, 6700k, 7700k, etc) and get a shit load of DDR3 RAM since it's mostly dirt cheap (32/64 depending on generation). Is this feasible? pricing for these older generation sockets seem cheap enough, and though boards might be a risk factor or difficult to come by, I see no reason why the use case of a server can't be done with this older hardware. The problem with consumer i7 I feel is the low core count which will be the biggest factor when it comes to low performance when trying to use the thing to game. 

 

DDR4 i'm sure will fall in price in the next years to come and it would be better future proofing wise to go that route, but a DDR4 system will have much more expensive parts. Basically, for the sake of my wallet, If I want to do this now it'll have to be DDR3. 

 

tl;dr - Xeon E5 / i7 7700k with a shit load of DDR3 good enough to be game server / occasional living room game machine on the cheap? GPU would be 1060 6gb, which is probably the bigger bottleneck for 1080p out of any of those older parts. What would be the downfall of this system when it comes to trying to game on it while being a server at the same time?

[toomanyxeons]

Just now, 8tg said:

For the cost of a decent haswell server system you could just build a super budget i3 10100 based pc for less money and have it perform better with less power consumption.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/v246jZ

This is $250 before storage drives and you already have a gpu for it.

going cheaper than this can first be done with used parts, or just scavenging some stuff, make a case out of cardboard or whatever 

If you’re talking about Kaby lake a 7700K alone will cost about half of the entire above pcpartpicker list 

I imagine single core will perform a lot better but an issue with the i3 build is it's still limited to only 4 cores, where as this use case would probably benefit from having more than 4 cores. If I were to do a DDR4 system I think I'd go more used Ryzen simply because of that. A lot of these older Xeon / i7 chips can be had with mobo/ram combos for around $200 as well (maybe not the 7700k anyway). 

 

Also, will an i3 with 16GB DDR4 really outplay a 7 year old Xeon with 64GB DDR3? Just my current thoughts. The server functionality is more important in this case. 

[SupaKomputa]

1 minute ago, toomanyxeons said:

will an i3 with 16GB DDR4 really outplay a 7 year old Xeon with 64GB DDR3?

If you don't need 64gb, it wont run any faster than 16gb. More ram doesn't equal more speed.
unless you use a memory intensive activity like serving website for 1000 people at a time.

49 minutes ago, toomanyxeons said:

HTPC/glorified Minecraft Server

16GB is more than enough for this purpose.

 

[toomanyxeons]

If 16GB is more than enough for the set out purpose, is the 10th Gen i3 really a better play than say a 4th-6th Gen i7? will DDR4 make that much of a big difference?

[NF-A12x25]

14 minutes ago, toomanyxeons said:

If 16GB is more than enough for the set out purpose, is the 10th Gen i3 really a better play than say a 4th-6th Gen i7? will DDR4 make that much of a big difference?

yep

[V8power]

Check out aliexpress for the x99 deals. Less than 200$ for CPU, MB and RAM. Get a cheap cooler, decent used PSU, GPU and your off to the races for as little as 400$

 

[toomanyxeons]

See, my thought was to go with an older Xeon single socket board. Yes, more power draw but more cores which for server functions which seems more beneficial.

 

the 10th gen i3, while good enough if it was just a gaming box, lacks more cores. So, what would be a similar performance but higher core count at the same cost alternative. Could go Ryzen 5? or get a huge fuck-off 20 core Xeon. There's multiple ways to approach this...