Homelab Advice

[Unstoppable_RTR]

Hello all,

I have a question, should I get one of those Xeon workstations made by Dell, HP, or Lenovo. I currently have a desktop computer with a AMD 5600 CPU 32gb RAM and an Intel arc A750. If I sell, I could probably get $800 to $900 for it and buy something more server like. But do I need to? Is it better to have more cores or less cores. I have been looking at the Lenovo P920 barebones. I was thinking about getting two xeon 6148 with 64gb of RDIMM ECC RAM each and a RTX 3060 12gb. I was also thinking about getting four used 12tb HDD for main storage and 10 used Intel Optame M.2 16 GB memory sticks for boot drives and maybe Cache or LOG drives. The Intel 6148 has about the same multicore score as the AMD 5600 but I would have two of those CPUs with 20 cores each instead of just 6. Plus the P920 has remote access/control. Would you think it would be a better option to sell my desktop and get the P920? The total cost for the P920 build is $1,400. If I kept my desktop I would have to spend about $450 on the four 12tb HDDs.

 

To bring the price of the P920 system down, I could only buy one of the 6148 CPUs and 64gb of RAM which would bring the price down to just $1,200

 

So, would it be a good idea to sell my desktop and get the P920 system I talked about or keep my desktop and throw some HDDs in it? What do you think?

 

I hope to run some virtual machines, Plex, Nextcloud, Homeassistant, and a Minecraft Server.

 

Edited July 13, 2024 by Unstoppable_RTR
Forgot GPU price in the workstation build and what I am going to be using this system for.

[Electronics Wizardy]

21 minutes ago, Unstoppable_RTR said:

I hope to run some virtual machines, Plex, Nextcloud, Homeassistant, and a Minecraft Server.

 

What are these virtual machines?

 

From the sounds of this workload your current 5600 system would work better. Many programs like Minecraft want single threaded performance, it will use much less power too. Maybe add some ram and drives too. You don't seem to have tasks that need the ram or multithreaded performance that the xeons would do well with.

[kuva]

I personally would keep the desktop computer and throw drives into it. Cheaper and easier option.
You could switch out the case, for one with more drive bays, though, might not need to depending on what case it has.

[Crunchy Dragon]

Xeon-based workstations in a home lab tend to draw more power than their performance is worth. I would only consider one if it's *dirt* cheap, basically free.

Stick with the Ryzen system, get a case that can support a bunch of drives(my home server is in a Define R5, but a Define 7 would be a good choice), and maybe a CPU upgrade.

 

I'd recommend grabbing a pair of 1TB SSDs and throwing Proxmox on those in a ZFS RAID1 array, then passing through your spinning drives for mass storage to your virtual machines like Plex.

 

If you set up Tailscale properly, everything on your network can have remote access. It doesn't need to be baked into the hardware.

[Unstoppable_RTR]

Thanks everyone for your suggestions! I will keep my desktop and get some drives for it. Later I will upgrade the RAM and I am definitely looking at getting a different case. Right now my case only supports two 3.5in drives.

[Unstoppable_RTR]

15 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

What are these virtual machines?

 

From the sounds of this workload your current 5600 system would work better. Many programs like Minecraft want single threaded performance, it will use much less power too. Maybe add some ram and drives too. You don't seem to have tasks that need the ram or multithreaded performance that the xeons would do well with.

The virtual machines include a windows 10 VM for tinkering and also an Ubuntu one. Thanks for your advice!

[Unstoppable_RTR]

I do have one more question, should I keep the intel arc GPU or get a Nvidia GPU? I am wanting to pass it through to my virtual machines. I will be running poxmox to host the virtual machines. I have heard that GPU pass through with intel arc can be a bit problematic. Is that true?

[Electronics Wizardy]

3 hours ago, Unstoppable_RTR said:

I do have one more question, should I keep the intel arc GPU or get a Nvidia GPU? I am wanting to pass it through to my virtual machines. I will be running poxmox to host the virtual machines. I have heard that GPU pass through with intel arc can be a bit problematic. Is that true?

Probably doesn't matter here.  I'd guess your can get away with any Plex transcoding on the CPU. If you want GPU transcoding, the ARC card is probably better transcoding wise.

 

I'd be tempted to get a CPU with a iGPU as it will likely have less power usage, and the iGPU can do the transcoding needs.

[UnawareBlaire]

I'm not sure how Arc handles virtualization but it has been pretty seamless for me as a transcoder in Arch Linux. I would lean towards using what you have and only buy other stuff if you feel like you "gotta have it".

[Unstoppable_RTR]

Awesome, thanks guys for your help! I will use what I have right now and adjust if I have to. I might get the Ryzen 5600G if the the arc GPU doesn't work correctly as "Electronics Wizardy" suggested. Thanks!