I have a z270 board to use in a multi purpose home server, what is the most bang/buck cpu to get?

[StiggyAzalea]

The mobo is an Asus prime z270a for those curious. Got it for cheap for an old mining rig project so the cpu is a celeron g3900, which idles at around 100% utilization lol. As for the build, basically I just want something to work as a NAS, but Ill probably want to play around with Plex and hosting a personal minecraft server. What would be the most optimal 6/7th gen cpu to get? Should I go ahead and get a 16gb kit of ram too? Also, while Im asking, would software raid be good enough or should I get a raid card? Nothing extremely critical will be saved here and either way it would be better than what Im doing now. 

[manikyath]

i mean.. depending on how intense you want to go with plex and minecraft, that g3900 might suffice.

[aren332]

5 minutes ago, StiggyAzalea said:

The mobo is an Asus prime z270a for those curious. Got it for cheap for an old mining rig project so the cpu is a celeron g3900, which idles at around 100% utilization lol. As for the build, basically I just want something to work as a NAS, but Ill probably want to play around with Plex and hosting a personal minecraft server. What would be the most optimal 6/7th gen cpu to get? Should I go ahead and get a 16gb kit of ram too? Also, while Im asking, would software raid be good enough or should I get a raid card? Nothing extremely critical will be saved here and either way it would be better than what Im doing now. 

probably a 6700k, u can find those for around 70 dollars on ebay, and yeah get like a cheap but good 16gb kit ddr4

[StiggyAzalea]

10 minutes ago, manikyath said:

i mean.. depending on how intense you want to go with plex and minecraft, that g3900 might suffice.

what if I wanted to play around with pihole or home automation like home assistant? Would that require an upgrade, especially if I want to multiple of these at once?

[aren332]

38 minutes ago, StiggyAzalea said:

The mobo is an Asus prime z270a for those curious. Got it for cheap for an old mining rig project so the cpu is a celeron g3900, which idles at around 100% utilization lol. As for the build, basically I just want something to work as a NAS, but Ill probably want to play around with Plex and hosting a personal minecraft server. What would be the most optimal 6/7th gen cpu to get? Should I go ahead and get a 16gb kit of ram too? Also, while Im asking, would software raid be good enough or should I get a raid card? Nothing extremely critical will be saved here and either way it would be better than what Im doing now. 

6700k - 70$ on ebay + if you are fine with overclocking u can get it to 7700k ($110) speed if not faster

or a 7600k - 55$, its just as fast but only has 4 threads, so its slower for multicore tasks like a server, you can also oc it, but it is newer

 

for budget option you can get i5 7600 for 35$

 

for ram get a cheap but reliable 16gb ddr4 kit

 

 

[Tetras]

i5-7400-7600 are pretty affordable and they have MBEC (6th gen doesn't) which lessens the overhead of Windows 11's security features, if that's ever likely to matter to you.

[bal723]

51 minutes ago, StiggyAzalea said:

The mobo is an Asus prime z270a for those curious. Got it for cheap for an old mining rig project so the cpu is a celeron g3900, which idles at around 100% utilization lol. As for the build, basically I just want something to work as a NAS, but Ill probably want to play around with Plex and hosting a personal minecraft server. What would be the most optimal 6/7th gen cpu to get? Should I go ahead and get a 16gb kit of ram too? Also, while Im asking, would software raid be good enough or should I get a raid card? Nothing extremely critical will be saved here and either way it would be better than what Im doing now. 

literally anything is dirt cheap for this platform

[m9x3mos]

8 hours ago, StiggyAzalea said:

The mobo is an Asus prime z270a for those curious. Got it for cheap for an old mining rig project so the cpu is a celeron g3900, which idles at around 100% utilization lol. As for the build, basically I just want something to work as a NAS, but Ill probably want to play around with Plex and hosting a personal minecraft server. What would be the most optimal 6/7th gen cpu to get? Should I go ahead and get a 16gb kit of ram too? Also, while Im asking, would software raid be good enough or should I get a raid card? Nothing extremely critical will be saved here and either way it would be better than what Im doing now. 

I can vouch for the 6700k. That will ruin the majority of nas tasks with no sweat.

Depending on the os you go with you can get decent idle power usage as well. 

I used one for years and am just now replacing it with my last gaming machine. 

As far as ram, 16 should be fine. 

Truenas will take as much ram as you can give it as it uses it for cache. 

But for personal media file storage, 16 will be fine. 

As far as a raid card, it isn't required unless you want to connect more drives that the motherboard supports. 

 

[Bersella AI]

There have been someone modding the BIOS on 100/200 series motherboards, to gain support for 8th/9th gen Core processors, Xeon E3 v5/v6 processors, certain mobile models, or even their engineering samples (such as QL3X, the engineering sample of Core i7-7980HK), as appeared in Chinese forums. By BIOS modding, these processors would undoubtedly smash regular ones out in performance per $, but modders may risk from failure in BIOS flashing or ES/repurposed processors.

Recommendations for 6th/7th gen have been made above. It depends on you anyway.