Which PC for First Home Server

[TechNoob9]

Trying to decide what to do for my first home server:

 

Option 1: Old PC from friend. Has a 4th gen i5, 32GB DDR3, 1 TB HDD - Free

If I were to upgrade the i5 to the i7 (4770)... Probably around $50 (used). Have additional storage lying around so that's not a problem.

 

Option 2: Buy a cheap brand new B450M Mobo + 16GB of DDR4 RAM to use with my old Ryzen 5 2600 CPU, old PSU, etc. Price is $120.00.

 

Which one would you choose? I feel both will serve me well. With the R5, I gain 2 more cores and 4 more threads. Or does AMD do virtualization different than Intel? I know Intel's hyperthreading is different from AMD's Cluster multi-threading, but I am unsure if this impacts anything.

 

Or I just do both lol.

 

Edit: Plans for this server: setting up a Plex server, a few VMs - A couple Ubuntu, Windows 10, file storage, SQL Server database.

[LIGISTX]

3 hours ago, TechNoob9 said:

Trying to decide what to do for my first home server:

 

Option 1: Old PC from friend. Has a 4th gen i5, 32GB DDR3, 1 TB HDD - Free

If I were to upgrade the i5 to the i7 (4770)... Probably around $50 (used). Have additional storage lying around so that's not a problem.

 

Option 2: Buy a cheap brand new B450M Mobo + 16GB of DDR4 RAM to use with my old Ryzen 5 2600 CPU, old PSU, etc. Price is $120.00.

 

Which one would you choose? I feel both will serve me well. With the R5, I gain 2 more cores and 4 more threads). Or does AMD do virtualization different than Intel? I know Intel's hyperthreading is different from AMD's Cluster multi-threading, but I am unsure if this impacts anything.

 

Or I just do both lol.

 

Edit: Plans for this server: setting up a Plex server, a few VMs - A couple Ubuntu, Windows 10, file storage, SQL database.

The i5 Will be plenty of power for quite a while. For free, that’s a hell of a homelab. 
 

I ran similar VM’s plus home assistant and pihole in an i3 6100 for years. My CPU was never the issue, I only upgraded for more PCIe and more RAM. 

[TechNoob9]

3 hours ago, LIGISTX said:

The i5 Will be plenty of power for quite a while. For free, that’s a hell of a homelab. 
 

I ran similar VM’s plus home assistant and pihole in an i3 6100 for years. My CPU was never the issue, I only upgraded for more PCIe and more RAM. 

Interesting. Yeah, I feel regardless either option will be fine. The performance difference is likely not that noticeable. But I won't know until I try it out.

[LIGISTX]

11 minutes ago, TechNoob9 said:

Interesting. Yeah, I feel regardless either option will be fine. The performance difference is likely not that noticeable. But I won't know until I try it out.

Ya, it really will be fine. Most “server” workloads we run at home are not demanding at all. 
 

I ran 3x Ubuntu server, windows LTSC, truenas, Plex server in one of the Ubuntu’s, half a dozen to a dozen docker containers, home assistant, pihole, few other random but very light weight VM’s, CPU was never the issue. 

[voyager_]

I would go to the Ryzen platform, it will give you a few more upgrade options down the road. With Ryzen you'll have to plan to add a GPU but for your uses you don't need much, in my plex server i'm running a quadro k2200 that I picked up on ebay for $100 to allow it to boot and to handle transcoding.

[TechNoob9]

7 hours ago, voyager_ said:

I would go to the Ryzen platform, it will give you a few more upgrade options down the road. With Ryzen you'll have to plan to add a GPU but for your uses you don't need much, in my plex server i'm running a quadro k2200 that I picked up on ebay for $100 to allow it to boot and to handle transcoding.

 

Is that card made for video transcoding in particular? Or just you found a used one that fit your price range?

[LIGISTX]

23 hours ago, voyager_ said:

I would go to the Ryzen platform, it will give you a few more upgrade options down the road. With Ryzen you'll have to plan to add a GPU but for your uses you don't need much, in my plex server i'm running a quadro k2200 that I picked up on ebay for $100 to allow it to boot and to handle transcoding.

Ryzen is extremely expensive when compared to free… no reason not to use the hardware OP has access to for free for this. When an upgrade is needed, OP can decide what to do. But a 4th gen i5 will be plenty for quite a while. Then once OP has a better idea of needs, the right upgrades can be made. 
 

For instance, I went from my i3 6100 and 28GB of hard to get ECC RAM to a xeon mostly so I can run 128GB of easy to get RAM and a LOT of PCIe. I run pfsense virtually, truenas virtually, have a 10gbe nic for truenas to my desktop, nvme carrier card for proxmox boot, HBA, SAS expander AMD the quad gigabit nic for pfsense. This would have been a struggle on consumer mobo’s. 
 

Using what you have available to start and then once you know what your needs are and upgrading accordingly is the best option IMO. 

[TechNoob9]

5 hours ago, LIGISTX said:

Ryzen is extremely expensive when compared to free… no reason not to use the hardware OP has access to for free for this. When an upgrade is needed, OP can decide what to do. But a 4th gen i5 will be plenty for quite a while. Then once OP has a better idea of needs, the right upgrades can be made. 
 

For instance, I went from my i3 6100 and 28GB of hard to get ECC RAM to a xeon mostly so I can run 128GB of easy to get RAM and a LOT of PCIe. I run pfsense virtually, truenas virtually, have a 10gbe nic for truenas to my desktop, nvme carrier card for proxmox boot, HBA, SAS expander AMD the quad gigabit nic for pfsense. This would have been a struggle on consumer mobo’s. 
 

Using what you have available to start and then once you know what your needs are and upgrading accordingly is the best option IMO. 

My friend misspoke or I misheard. It's a Intel core Quad core Q6600, 2GB of RAM (one stick malfunctioned), NVIDIA GeForce GT 610 is the build. Sounds like a pre-built machine.

[LIGISTX]

33 minutes ago, TechNoob9 said:

My friend misspoke or I misheard. It's a Intel core Quad core Q6600, 2GB of RAM (one stick malfunctioned), NVIDIA GeForce GT 610 is the build. Sounds like a pre-built machine.

Oh, hmm. A q6600 while one of the epic CPU's of its time... thats a chip from ~2008. I would usually say use what you have, but that may be a little too old. And 2 GB of RAM is not at all enough, these days for almost any OS worth messing around with, you will need 4+GB, 8 really is what you want even to just get going. 

[TechNoob9]

57 minutes ago, LIGISTX said:

Oh, hmm. A q6600 while one of the epic CPU's of its time... thats a chip from ~2008. I would usually say use what you have, but that may be a little too old. And 2 GB of RAM is not at all enough, these days for almost any OS worth messing around with, you will need 4+GB, 8 really is what you want even to just get going. 

 

Yeah. I'll just spend the low amount of money to get my old AMD build up and running.

I can use the old GPU though, so that's nice. Can any GPU do video transcoding? (in case I get into that)? Is there certain GPUs that are recommended for video transcoding? I keep seeing Quadro GPUs being recommended. What about a used GTX 1060 6GB? I see them used for $85.00 - $100.

[LIGISTX]

13 minutes ago, TechNoob9 said:

 

Yeah. I'll just spend the low amount of money to get my old AMD build up and running.

I can use the old GPU though, so that's nice. Can any GPU do video transcoding? (in case I get into that)? Is there certain GPUs that are recommended for video transcoding? I keep seeing Quadro GPUs being recommended. What about a used GTX 1060 6GB? I see them used for $85.00 - $100.

Any nvidia GPU with nvenc will work, 1060 is fine.