I would greatly appreciate help in building a server

[SkuDev]

Hello everyone, I am looking to build my first ever server, but definitely need help with parts and recommendations. I will do my best to accurately reflect my plans with this machine, but if you do have any additional questions I will be happy to answer them !

 

 

1. Budget & Location

I'm located in central europe and for this build I would like to spend around 1500€, where storage would be the least concern which I can then upgrade over time (more info on that below). I am willing to go over budget if it is necessary, since I am planning for the long future here.

 

2. Aim

Alright, so what I want to achieve is my first home server. This is not going to be some high-tech enterprise solution with server-rack in a special room for the server, but instead just a machine I have in my office/gaming space that will just be on 24/7. It does not have to be fancy with any kind of rgb. Essentially, I want to be able to host my own game servers for family and friends over the internet, install some form of cloud storage solution where I can then put all my cold and warm (not hot) storage which I can then also access anywhere from the internet without having to hand my data over to google, microsoft, etc. Additionally since I am also a developer I'd like to run some of my own creations on this machine that connect to the internet.

So really what it boils down to, or at least what I kind of thought, was that it should have a fairly good cpu to handle all of this load, a lot of ram obviously, and then a mainboard with a lot of fast sata connectors ig(?) so that I can then over time keep outfitting it with massive amounts of big HDDs.

Now, a friend of mine also recommended a fairly good graphics card may be of use for hosting game servers, however I think that isn't needed because the server itself doesn't render the games(?) but then again input on this would be appreciated.

Lastly, I know this might be an unpopular choice, but I am fairly certain I want to run a windows environment on this machine, since while I have experience with linux I have had a lot of trouble there in the past, and then not even a windows server version, but regular consumer windows 10 where I then use some software to disable all the fancy things that impact performance which a server does not need (I've heard Linus talk about something like this, but I cannot remember the name ) and then run various things in docker containers. However, I am still open for any input you guys have on that as well.

3. Monitors

No need to worry about this, I have that covered already.

 

4. Peripherals

No need to worry about this, I have that covered already (as well).

 

5. Why are you upgrading?

It's not an upgrade since, as stated earlier, this will be my first server build!

 

 

Thank you for taking your time to read this and I would be forever grateful for any help with this!

 

[Agall]

54 minutes ago, SkuDev said:

Hello everyone, I am looking to build my first ever server, but definitely need help with parts and recommendations. I will do my best to accurately reflect my plans with this machine, but if you do have any additional questions I will be happy to answer them !

 

 

1. Budget & Location

I'm located in central europe and for this build I would like to spend around 1500€, where storage would be the least concern which I can then upgrade over time (more info on that below). I am willing to go over budget if it is necessary, since I am planning for the long future here.

 

2. Aim

Alright, so what I want to achieve is my first home server. This is not going to be some high-tech enterprise solution with server-rack in a special room for the server, but instead just a machine I have in my office/gaming space that will just be on 24/7. It does not have to be fancy with any kind of rgb. Essentially, I want to be able to host my own game servers for family and friends over the internet, install some form of cloud storage solution where I can then put all my cold and warm (not hot) storage which I can then also access anywhere from the internet without having to hand my data over to google, microsoft, etc. Additionally since I am also a developer I'd like to run some of my own creations on this machine that connect to the internet.

So really what it boils down to, or at least what I kind of thought, was that it should have a fairly good cpu to handle all of this load, a lot of ram obviously, and then a mainboard with a lot of fast sata connectors ig(?) so that I can then over time keep outfitting it with massive amounts of big HDDs.

Now, a friend of mine also recommended a fairly good graphics card may be of use for hosting game servers, however I think that isn't needed because the server itself doesn't render the games(?) but then again input on this would be appreciated.

Lastly, I know this might be an unpopular choice, but I am fairly certain I want to run a windows environment on this machine, since while I have experience with linux I have had a lot of trouble there in the past, and then not even a windows server version, but regular consumer windows 10 where I then use some software to disable all the fancy things that impact performance which a server does not need (I've heard Linus talk about something like this, but I cannot remember the name ) and then run various things in docker containers. However, I am still open for any input you guys have on that as well.

3. Monitors

No need to worry about this, I have that covered already.

 

4. Peripherals

No need to worry about this, I have that covered already (as well).

 

5. Why are you upgrading?

It's not an upgrade since, as stated earlier, this will be my first server build!

 

 

Thank you for taking your time to read this and I would be forever grateful for any help with this!

 

No game server hosting that I'm aware of requires GPU horsepower. For the most part, as long as your networking and CPU can handle the network traffic to a game server, it'll be fine. The most ridiculous setup I had with minimal hardware was a 4790k hosting a file server, WoW private server, and Minecraft server all at once which was also used to host games and media to a TV. Each of those processes don't take much horsepower given the normal scope of a few users (this server was for about 40 people). Mind you that this was back in 2016, but the requirements haven't gone up.

 

You could easily snag yourself either a 12/13th gen Intel or Ryzen 5000/7000 series. If your more intensive computational work requires a lot of multithreading like code compiling, then just going with a 13900 or 7900/7950x is probably your best bet. You can find ECC compatible motherboards for any of the above, Asrock's 'Rack' lineup having various options. If you don't care for ECC, then just opt for DDR5 with its "on die ECC" and likely stick to Intel for reliability. I do have a 7950x server at work that's perfectly stable, but it runs Server 2019 Standard and is an outlier for the several AM5 system's I've personally built and the dozens I've helped troubleshoot.

[SkuDev]

3 hours ago, Agall said:

No game server hosting that I'm aware of requires GPU horsepower. For the most part, as long as your networking and CPU can handle the network traffic to a game server, it'll be fine. The most ridiculous setup I had with minimal hardware was a 4790k hosting a file server, WoW private server, and Minecraft server all at once which was also used to host games and media to a TV. Each of those processes don't take much horsepower given the normal scope of a few users (this server was for about 40 people). Mind you that this was back in 2016, but the requirements haven't gone up.

 

You could easily snag yourself either a 12/13th gen Intel or Ryzen 5000/7000 series. If your more intensive computational work requires a lot of multithreading like code compiling, then just going with a 13900 or 7900/7950x is probably your best bet. You can find ECC compatible motherboards for any of the above, Asrock's 'Rack' lineup having various options. If you don't care for ECC, then just opt for DDR5 with its "on die ECC" and likely stick to Intel for reliability. I do have a 7950x server at work that's perfectly stable, but it runs Server 2019 Standard and is an outlier for the several AM5 system's I've personally built and the dozens I've helped troubleshoot.

Thank you for the quick response! I will definitely look into the parts/series you advised and I have already in my own research seen the name "Asrock", but wasn't sure if this was like a good quality manufacturer so thank you for clearing that up too as well as the GPU thing. I will get back to you or mark your response as the solution if I have no further questions. Thank you once again for taking the time to help me out with this project (Edit: spelling)

Edited September 25 by SkuDev
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