What are some good cpu+mobo combo's for a cheap nas/jellyfin server/minecraft bedrock server?

[ilovecats7715]

i've seen some reccomendend 4th gen intel, old xeons, even 12th gen i3's. i've had a look at 8th gen/10th gen intel, but struggled to find affordable motherboards that aren't broken. can anyone help me?

[Dedayog]

6 minutes ago, ilovecats7715 said:

i've seen some reccomendend 4th gen intel, old xeons, even 12th gen i3's. i've had a look at 8th gen/10th gen intel, but struggled to find affordable motherboards that aren't broken. can anyone help me?

What does affordable mean to you?  How much are you willing to put into this server?

 

I wouldn't use anything older than a Ryzen 3600 or 12th gen Intel, and they're not expensive at all.

[ilovecats7715]

if a cpu+mobo is more than £125, thats a bit too much for now.

[ilovecats7715]

by the way, i don't need to use gpu transcoding because the stuff i watch is old cartoons at 480p, but i will need some sort of video output from the cpu

[ChrisLoudon]

32 minutes ago, ilovecats7715 said:

i've seen some reccomendend 4th gen intel, old xeons, even 12th gen i3's. i've had a look at 8th gen/10th gen intel, but struggled to find affordable motherboards that aren't broken. can anyone help me?

Hi buddy,

 

My NAS / Plex server runs an old i7 3770k + 16GB Ram + z77 mobo.

 

For NAS purposes, an old Intel Atom would do the trick as storage services don't really need many horses. The key component is a GPU that can do hardware transcoding for PLEX / Jellyfin and take all the heavy lifting away from the puny CPU. I find my GTX Ventus 1650 does me fine for this. Doesn't even need supplementary PCIe power. Most of my content is 4k UHD in MKV or M2TS and it transcodes without any issues to remote devices like Smart TVs and phones both inside and outside of me home network.

 

The issue you might have is the strange prices on the 2nd hand market for older hardware. You can probably find ram and a cpu for pennies but old motherboards can be quite pricey. I was trying to find a Gigabyte Z170 Gaming 5 ITX board as it had 6 SATA ports + 2 x eSATA so great for a storage server but trying to find it for cheap was nigh on impossible.

[ilovecats7715]

do you think a i7 3770 would work on a lenovo motherboard from 2012? i have an old lenovo pc from family which is what i'm currently using. (lenovo thinkcentre edge 71 type 1577)

[Needfuldoer]

Old Xeon workstations make sense if you need a lot of PCIe lanes or want to load up on cheap used server RAM. 

[tkitch]

find a used HP / Dell / Lenovo Business tower with an i7 6700 or 7700, they're REALLY cheap.

 

It'll run that just fine.  A Tower should have enough drive bays for storage, and enough CPU to run everything

 

ex:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/276262071533

[ChrisLoudon]

20 minutes ago, ilovecats7715 said:

do you think a i7 3770 would work on a lenovo motherboard from 2012? i have an old lenovo pc from family which is what i'm currently using. (lenovo thinkcentre edge 71 type 1577)

You'd need to check what socket the lenovo uses. 3770k is 1155 I think.

[Dedayog]

21 minutes ago, ilovecats7715 said:

do you think a i7 3770 would work on a lenovo motherboard from 2012? i have an old lenovo pc from family which is what i'm currently using. (lenovo thinkcentre edge 71 type 1577)

Not sure I would run a 12 year old motherboard setup in something that by design is supposed to be reliable 100% of the time...

[Overloke]

I bought a Chinese Huananzhi QD4-X99 motherboard and an Intel Xeon E5-2670v3 off of AliExpress for like $150 AUD, which is about 78 GBP.

 

Obviously you run the risk of a sketchy seller on AliExpress, but you can see the sellers that have decent reviews. I got my bits and pieces like over a year ago and they're still running perfectly fine, no hassles at all. It's running about half a dozen VMs, including both a Minecraft and Terraria server in the past.