Looking to build a homeserver and wondering if I went overboard

[Xathon]

Budget (including currency): 1500€ - 2000€

Country: Germany

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Proxmox host with NAS, Jellyfin, software to populate Jellyfin with, Adguard, Home Assistant and various other services and VMs

Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): 

Current PCPP: https://de.pcpartpicker.com/list/yh8bjH

 

I'm not sure whether that 13700k would be overkill for my usecase. I'd like to be able to host a few VMs to train networking and pentesting, but the majority of my services would probably be in Docker containers. I've already got a thin client to serve as router/firewall, so I want to use this system for my other things. Also, how good is the processor at saving power in idle? Power isn't as cheap as in the States here.

 

Thanks for any feedback!

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

It should work fine, but I'd probably get the non-k version. Uses less power at max load, and is cheaper if your not gonna oc.

 

I'd be tempted to go stock cooler. Your probably not pushing the cpu hard.

 

CPU is probably overkill, i3/i5 should be fine here, but if you can get the i7, why not. I'd probably go amd for the no p/e cores thing. Makes it work a bit better with vms and containers. I'd try to get that asrock rack board for ipmi, and overall be a great board.

 

You can probalby save a bit of power with fewer bigger drives. LIke go with 2x 22tb hdds in raid 1 for half the drives. Also lets you add storage easily if you want later on.

 

 

[Alex Atkin UK]

25 minutes ago, Xathon said:

Budget (including currency): 1500€ - 2000€

Country: Germany

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Proxmox host with NAS, Jellyfin, software to populate Jellyfin with, Adguard, Home Assistant and various other services and VMs

Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): 

Current PCPP: https://de.pcpartpicker.com/list/yh8bjH

 

I'm not sure whether that 13700k would be overkill for my usecase. I'd like to be able to host a few VMs to train networking and pentesting, but the majority of my services would probably be in Docker containers. I've already got a thin client to serve as router/firewall, so I want to use this system for my other things. Also, how good is the processor at saving power in idle? Power isn't as cheap as in the States here.

 

Thanks for any feedback!

 

Well I only have a 12400 and its no slouch.  I sometimes run video encoding on it and its much slower than my desktop which is a 12700F.

I don't generally run VMs though, having more cores does you give more scope for that.

[McCarthy]

That ain't a server.

A decent Synology NAS will be much easier to run. Put it into a proper rack with a Cisco switch from eBay, your router / modem, and pull some CAT 7 cable through the walls.

[SorryBella]

1 hour ago, McCarthy said:

That ain't a server.

A decent Synology NAS will be much easier to run. Put it into a proper rack with a Cisco switch from eBay, your router / modem, and pull some CAT 7 cable through the walls.

I mean i incline to agree but OP also need some other stuff in VMs like Adguard and Home Assistant. Those do benefit from having more horsepower than just Celeron White. Although to be honest it depends on how much OP is into decentralization because yeah an OPNSense compatible router and an SBC to run the Home Assistant components would be a better path in terms of risk management.

[Xathon]

10 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

It should work fine, but I'd probably get the non-k version. Uses less power at max load, and is cheaper if your not gonna oc.

 

[...]

 

CPU is probably overkill, i3/i5 should be fine here, but if you can get the i7, why not. I'd probably go amd for the no p/e cores thing. Makes it work a bit better with vms and containers. I'd try to get that asrock rack board for ipmi, and overall be a great board.

Yeah, that makes sense. I switched to the i5 13500, that cuts the TDP in half

And the E cores might actually make sense for low-power VMs.

10 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

I'd be tempted to go stock cooler. Your probably not pushing the cpu hard.

The Noctua might be a bit more quiet though. But true, if the machine went in the basement, stock would do just fine.

10 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

You can probalby save a bit of power with fewer bigger drives. LIke go with 2x 22tb hdds in raid 1 for half the drives. Also lets you add storage easily if you want later on.

In the end, I went for a single 12TB for movies etc. and 2 4TB disks in raid 1 for files that I want to have uninterrupted access to (I know, raid is no backup)

 

8 hours ago, SorryBella said:

I mean i incline to agree but OP also need some other stuff in VMs like Adguard and Home Assistant. Those do benefit from having more horsepower than just Celeron White. Although to be honest it depends on how much OP is into decentralization because yeah an OPNSense compatible router and an SBC to run the Home Assistant components would be a better path in terms of risk management.

Not too high on my priorities. I have the router on seperate hardware mainly because I wanted one and didn't have the budget to do an all-in-one system like this one.

 

 

Anyway, I switched it up a bit: https://de.pcpartpicker.com/list/vgnXHG, anything glaringly wrong with that?

 

Thank you all for the feedback!

 

[Parsivan]

For less idle power maybe under volt the CPU while remaining the same clocks. I'm going to be doing the same thing I'm building a homeserver as well. So can't say how much it helps.

 

Also I'm new to server stuff; I want to learn, how is it possible to run proxmox and Nas together? Are you installing proxmox and then Nas on top? Then the rest of the stuff like jelly fin, are they all on separate instances of VM or docker?

[Alex Atkin UK]

58 minutes ago, Xathon said:

Not too high on my priorities. I have the router on seperate hardware mainly because I wanted one and didn't have the budget to do an all-in-one system like this one.

Its high on my priorities because if the server breaks during an OS update (which is hard enough to schedule around other people in the house as they use it as central storage) its a whole worlds of pain if that breaks the Internet too, given that's where you go to try to figure out what went wrong.

Granted I have a backup connection that can do that (a 5G router) but then I not only had the time crunch updating the server while nobody is using it, I'm then rushing to fix it before anyone else needs it.  If the server is broken but the Internet still works, that means everyone can still browse just not save anything to the main storage.

[Electronics Wizardy]

3 hours ago, Xathon said:

Yeah, that makes sense. I switched to the i5 13500, that cuts the TDP in half

And the E cores might actually make sense for low-power VMs.

Well the tdp doesn't matter unless your hitting it, so it probably won't matter here.

 

The e cores are kinda a pain to manage, so I'd just go amd here if you can.

 

3 hours ago, Xathon said:

In the end, I went for a single 12TB for movies etc. and 2 4TB disks in raid 1 for files that I want to have uninterrupted access to (I know, raid is no backup)

Id just get dual 16TB drives in that case with raid 1. I think making one big array makes sense here.

 

3 hours ago, Xathon said:

 

Anyway, I switched it up a bit: https://de.pcpartpicker.com/list/vgnXHG, anything glaringly wrong with that?

 

Id change the psu to one with a back fan. There isn't room in 2u for that psu to intake air.

 

 

[TubsAlwaysWins]

IMO go buy some used Dell poweredge servers. You can get lots of cores (VMs like cores), lots of RAM, and sometimes lots of storage for not alot of money. Gives you the feeling like you are doing things legitimatly since you get Xeons, ECC, and SAS.

Biggest downsides are they are heavy, consume electricity, and can be loud. They work well as white noise or space heaters though. 

Not sure what power consumption is for the standard PC, but my R610 consumes ~120W at idle. 

IMO Wish I got a R720 or something for 3.5" HDDs.

 

I got a steal when i bought mine, but I got 3 R610s, 5 Xeons, ~80GB RAM, a switch, and a 2 post rack for $80. I sold one, broke another while trying to get a GPU in a 1U server, and still have the other. 

[Xathon]

3 hours ago, Parsivan said:

Also I'm new to server stuff; I want to learn, how is it possible to run proxmox and Nas together? Are you installing proxmox and then Nas on top? Then the rest of the stuff like jelly fin, are they all on separate instances of VM or docker?

I'll probably just have the storage handled by Proxmox and use NFS/SMB to mount it to my clients/VMs/containers.

Also, I'll containerize everything that makes sense, but in some cases I'll go the VM route. Depends on the software really.

 

4 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Well the tdp doesn't matter unless your hitting it, so it probably won't matter here.

 

The e cores are kinda a pain to manage, so I'd just go amd here if you can.

I'll have another looks at the AMD options, thanks.

4 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Id just get dual 16TB drives in that case with raid 1. I think making one big array makes sense here.

Fair, but that's gonna be some 200€ more than what I currently have. I'll think about whether that added comfort is worth the extra money for me.

 

4 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Id change the psu to one with a back fan. There isn't room in 2u for that psu to intake air.

Do you happen to have a recommendation that fits in the case (ATX formfactor)? I couldn't really find any.

[Xathon]

4 minutes ago, TubsAlwaysWins said:

IMO go buy some used Dell poweredge servers. You can get lots of cores (VMs like cores), lots of RAM, and sometimes lots of storage for not alot of money. Gives you the feeling like you are doing things legitimatly since you get Xeons, ECC, and SAS.

Biggest downsides are they are heavy, consume electricity, and can be loud. They work well as white noise or space heaters though. 

Not sure what power consumption is for the standard PC, but my R610 consumes ~120W at idle. 

IMO Wish I got a R720 or something for 3.5" HDDs.

 

I got a steal when i bought mine, but I got 3 R610s, 5 Xeons, ~80GB RAM, a switch, and a 2 post rack for $80. I sold one, broke another while trying to get a GPU in a 1U server, and still have the other. 

I actually tried a DL380e Gen8 before I planned this one, but it was way too loud for my apartment and too big for the small server cabinet that I have (depth).

[TubsAlwaysWins]

4 hours ago, Xathon said:

I actually tried a DL380e Gen8 before I planned this one, but it was way too loud for my apartment and too big for the small server cabinet that I have (depth).

Yeah I could understand that. They are pretty loud. My R610 isnt terrible once boot has completed but I also have it in the corner of my living room. 

Ive not messed with any of the HP servers. Only Dell or Synology, and technically a supermicro but im not counting that. 

 

The other thing I dont like and why I prefer to buy used server hardware is that I haven't seen alot of good DIY rack mount cases. Maybe im not looking or my budget isnt high enough. I like the ones Protocase makes but im not forking out cash for one. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

5 hours ago, Xathon said:

Do you happen to have a recommendation that fits in the case (ATX formfactor)? I couldn't really find an

There really aren't many. If you look for 2u psus there are some options out there.

 

One other option that may work well here is a barebones unit. Id get something like this https://www.newegg.com/asrock-1u4lw-x470-amd-am4-socket-ryzen-series-cpus-and-ryzen-7nm-cpus/p/N82E16816775005?Item=N82E16816775005. You can also set the fans to be pretty quiet if you want.

 

Or go 4u if you got rackspace to fit a bigger server.