Advice for a first time nas/home server

[Voidswell]

Hi there

 

As title suggests i'm looking to setup my first nas/home server and i'm after some advice

 

The use case will be a media server eg jellyfin, a game server i'm looking to run minecraft 1.7.10 heavily modded and for a game called vrising finally most critically file storage and backups.

i'd also like to run virtual machines for experimentation home lab (though i don't need high performance AI gear), networking

 

in terms of case i would like it to be fairly compact though i want micro atx compatibility so i was looking at the silverstone CS381 or the jonsbo n4 (only hangup with the jonsbo n4 is the half height pcie)

in terms of cpu i'm thinking a ryzen 7800

not sure on motherboard but i'm wanting to stick with micro atx  because its still fairly compact but still provides good connectivity and flexibility (nice to have IPMI though not needed)

drive wise i'm thinking something like the jonsbo n1 build from LTT in the past 3 high capacity drives and expand from there

 

Should i just go with the jonsbo n4 or would people recommend a different case or different setup that fits my use case better?

 

[Tetras]

4 minutes ago, Voidswell said:

in terms of cpu i'm thinking a ryzen 7800

 

Do you mean a 7700 or 7900? 7800X3D wouldn't make sense for this use case.

[Voidswell]

not a 3d because i don't want to worry about the lower max temps i'm thinking something like a 7840U mainly i do just also want integrated graphics as a precaution

[Zalosath]

13 minutes ago, Voidswell said:

not a 3d because i don't want to worry about the lower max temps i'm thinking something like a 7840U mainly i do just also want integrated graphics as a precaution

Minecraft and many other game servers are quite reliant on a single core, so you'll want something that is very quick per core. Honestly you'd be better off with Intel, not only for a server, but also for transcoding on Jellyfin.

[Voidswell]

alright what would you recommend in the intel range then a i7?

also my major issue i'm having is deciding on the case the main criteria i have is that i don't want to go below micro atx because pcie becomes more limited on itx

 

and thank you for the info

[Overloke]

Personally (and I had a lot of pushback on this when I mentioned I had done this new build) you can get old Xeons and Chinese-branded X99 motherboards from AliExpress. I got a Xeon E5 2670-v3 (12c/24t, single-core boost to 3.1GHz) and a Huananzhi QD4 X99 motherboard for like $150 AUD - and the Xeon itself was like $12! I still have my original server, an mITX box running a Pentium and other consumer parts, but that didn't offer a lot in terms of virtualisation and things like that.

 

A lot of people were saying that the motherboard would crap out, I'd experience crazy issues, going through warranty would be an absolute nightmare, etc, etc. And yeah, I'm sure that's a possibility, but it's not what I've experienced. It's been rock solid, running about five VMs pulling a variety of duties (webserver, Plex server, Tailscale subnet router endpoint, etc), and it was running modded Minecraft and Terraria servers simultaneously without too much grief. I suppose it depends on how many players you're expecting to have.

 

Throughout all this, it's been running Windows Server 2016, and I know in terms of 'What's the best server OS', unless you have a specific use case (AD, etc), Windows is pretty far down the list. However, it's what I'm used to and it's been perfectly fine. Some of my VMs run terminal-only Ubuntu server though.

 

If you absolutely need nutso-fast single-core performance - or if you just don't trust potentially sketchy Chinese hardware - then it's not for you, but it is a way to get decent, if old, server hardware that you can hide away somewhere and forget about.

[Voidswell]

I mean right now just getting started i'm getting stuck when it comes to the case i just noticed theres a silverstone cs382 which looks nice.

basically case wise do drive bays make sense as in does a cs 381, 382 make more sense then a fractal or corsair 4000D and why

I want something compact that fit on a desk or in a corner