Home Server Build

[Zalosath]

Hi,

 

Looking at building a home server for:

- Jellyfin

- Home Assistant

- MariaDB

- General File Storage

- Game Server Hosting

 

I've seen the big thread about different NAS builds and I came up with this list based on it: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/Xm6vH2

Although, this doesn't seem like it's going to be powerful enough to do everything I want.

 

The games I will be hosting will need a discrete GPU, but that will be a later upgrade, so for now I just want the first 4 checked off.

 

Is the parts list good enough to handle everything I want? Is it still a good bang for the buck? Can I get something better for a similar price?

[voyager_]

Have you looked into the cpu requirements for the games you plan to host? Home assistant and file servers take very little to run but that cpu only has 2 slower cores and is from 2014. It may also struggle with video streaming especially if any transcoding is required. It may be worth looking for a newer system.

[Zalosath]

5 minutes ago, voyager_ said:

Have you looked into the cpu requirements for the games you plan to host? Home assistant and file servers take very little to run but that cpu only has 2 slower cores and is from 2014. It may also struggle with video streaming especially if any transcoding is required. It may be worth looking for a newer system.

I'll be upgrading my regular PC very soon to DDR5 so that basically leaves me with a 3900X and 32GB of RAM, the only issue there is that I'd need to buy a discrete GPU on-top of that, and it won't fit in a small form factor case. That doesn't mean to say I can't sell the old system for smaller form factor parts.

 

If you were designing this system, with say a £1500 limit, including a GPU, what would it look like?

 

Run on the assumption that an ARK server is the most tasking server I'll be hosting.

[LIGISTX]

1 hour ago, Zalosath said:

I'll be upgrading my regular PC very soon to DDR5 so that basically leaves me with a 3900X and 32GB of RAM, the only issue there is that I'd need to buy a discrete GPU on-top of that, and it won't fit in a small form factor case. That doesn't mean to say I can't sell the old system for smaller form factor parts.

 

If you were designing this system, with say a £1500 limit, including a GPU, what would it look like?

 

Run on the assumption that an ARK server is the most tasking server I'll be hosting.

You need to figure out what is needed for the game server, the rest will be no issue. You can run a NAS and HA off basically any CPU from the last decade. But depending on game server needs, you will need more, or lots more CPU power. 

[Zalosath]

2 hours ago, LIGISTX said:

You need to figure out what is needed for the game server, the rest will be no issue. You can run a NAS and HA off basically any CPU from the last decade. But depending on game server needs, you will need more, or lots more CPU power. 

ARK only requires a 670 so realistically any will do. In this build I've gone for a 1650, but even that may be overkill. I'm reusing components (3900X, RAM, HDDs etc)

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/G497cb

 

What do you think?

[LIGISTX]

24 minutes ago, Zalosath said:

ARK only requires a 670 so realistically any will do. In this build I've gone for a 1650, but even that may be overkill. I'm reusing components (3900X, RAM, HDDs etc)

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/G497cb

 

What do you think?

It’s fine, except for the mismatched harddrives. What is the reasoning for that?

 

I would potentially run unraid and virtualize whatever containers or VM’s needed to run games and such, and then use unraid as the mass storage for everything, including NAS duty. 

[Zalosath]

8 hours ago, LIGISTX said:

It’s fine, except for the mismatched harddrives. What is the reasoning for that?

 

I would potentially run unraid and virtualize whatever containers or VM’s needed to run games and such, and then use unraid as the mass storage for everything, including NAS duty. 

It's just what I have laying around, I could get a second matching 4TB. 

 

I'm thinking JBOD, the data I'll have isn't going to be majorly important, even for the game servers, which will just be for me and my friends. With that being said, could I have the HDDs as a JBOD, and get a second NVMe, and run them both in unraid?

[LIGISTX]

5 hours ago, Zalosath said:

It's just what I have laying around, I could get a second matching 4TB. 

 

I'm thinking JBOD, the data I'll have isn't going to be majorly important, even for the game servers, which will just be for me and my friends. With that being said, could I have the HDDs as a JBOD, and get a second NVMe, and run them both in unraid?

Ah, gotcha. Didn’t realize you already had those. 
 

I would definitely use unraid because once you start storing data, it’s difficult to pivot to a different file system due to having to store the data somewhere as you migrate. I’d pick a solution that you think will work for a long time to come for your needs, and do that.