Advice needed: "Mutant" i3 13100ES + b760 or i9 11900ES + Z590 for NAS/Virtualization?

[Drecks Schubert]

Hello everyone,

 

I would love to hear your thoughts on my current hardware considerations.

I am currently in China for my studies and will be returning home (Europe) soon. Here, you can find many so-called "Mutant CPUs" – engineering samples or notebook chips that have been repurposed for use in desktop motherboards. These CPUs are significantly cheaper than their desktop equivalents while often offering a similar performance.

For my Homelab, I'm considering getting some of these CPUs and bring them back home. I currently have a "mutant" i7 10700ES in a Lenovo ThinkCentre case and I'm quite happy with it. However, it lacks PCIe or SATA ports, making it unsuitable for use as a NAS.

 

Now I'm considering two alternatives that I have found here for sale:

1. Setup 1: i3 13100ES

   • Motherboard: b760 ITX

   • RAM: 16GB (2666 MHz)

   • Cost: ~110€ (converted)

2. Setup 2: i9 11900ES

   • Motherboard: Asus Prime Z590-V

   • RAM: 32GB

   • Extras: 2x 4TB hard drives, 4-port 2.5 Gbit LAN PCIe card

   • Cost: ~230€ (converted)

In both cases, I would be using UnRaid as the operating system.

 

Here are my two ideas:

• For the i3 setup: I would run UnRaid NAS on the i3 and use the i7 for a Proxmox virtualization server, which I would power down outside of usage times to save energy.

• For the i9 setup: I would build an "All-in-One" server, combining both NAS and virtualization under UnRaid.

 

What I'd like to know from you guys:

• Which setup do you think is the better deal or the better idea?

• How do both options compare in terms of idle power consumption? Keeping this low is important, as the system will be running 24/7.

I'm looking forward to your opinions and suggestions! Thanks in advance!

[ki8aras]

6 minutes ago, Drecks Schubert said:

What I'd like to know from you guys:

• Which setup do you think is the better deal or the better idea?

• How do both options compare in terms of idle power consumption? Keeping this low is important, as the system will be running 24/7.

i can't really comment on which is the better idea performance wise,

but on the power side, a whole second system basically guarantees higher power consumption

[Bersella AI]

I have rather a plan C that repurposes the i7-10700 ES processor and installs it onto the Z590 board. All the three plans are expected to have reasonable power consumption in idle, although it may become slightly higher for Core i7/i9, and when in heavy (or even light) load, the Core i7/i9 will definitely draw more power than i3; a possible mitigation is to under-volt processors, thus reducing overall power consumption. An offset of -100 mV is good to start with, but depending on silicon quality, this offset may be tuned more aggressively as long as it remains stable, or more conservatively when any instability occurs.

[Drecks Schubert]

55 minutes ago, ki8aras said:

i can't really comment on which is the better idea performance wise,

but on the power side, a whole second system basically guarantees higher power consumption

Yes I have a point with that, my idea was to turn off the second system during night, so I could offset some of that higher consumption. But probable it'll still be higher in total, than one system.

[Drecks Schubert]

9 minutes ago, Bersella AI said:

I have rather a plan C that repurposes the i7-10700 ES processor and installs it onto the Z590 board. All the three plans are expected to have reasonable power consumption in idle, although it may become slightly higher for Core i7/i9, and when in heavy (or even light) load, the Core i7/i9 will definitely draw more power than i3; a possible mitigation is to under-volt processors, thus reducing overall power consumption. An offset of -100 mV is good to start with, but depending on silicon quality, this offset may be tuned more aggressively as long as it remains stable, or more conservatively when any instability occurs.

Oh yes, that is also a good idea, thank you!

Probably, buying a MB with the BIOS modifications installed would be almost as expensive as the i3, I guess. So in terms of initial cost, I wouldn't save that much.

But either way, the idea with undervolting for higher efficiency is really good. That would make any of the options viable, as power draw should be reduced for any of them.

[jaslion]

31 minutes ago, Drecks Schubert said:

than one system.

Absolutly. Also keep in mind 11th gen is NOT efficient. Like at all. Its why amd used to have DOUBLE the battery life on mobile if you wanted the same cpu performance. At idle they also tend to be higher but not too much more.

 

 

[Drecks Schubert]

16 minutes ago, jaslion said:

Absolutly. Also keep in mind 11th gen is NOT efficient. Like at all. Its why amd used to have DOUBLE the battery life on mobile if you wanted the same cpu performance. At idle they also tend to be higher but not too much more.

 

 

Interesting point! So is the idle power draw of the 11th gen i9 also way higher than 13th gen i3? That would probably be most important for me, as homeservers tend to idle most of the time.

[LIGISTX]

I’d just run the i3 as your one and only server… run everything you need on it, storage and whatever VM’s and containers are required. 1 system is more efficient than 2, and this way you have everything always on. That i3 will be plenty powerful unless you have some seriously heavy CPU tasks in mind.