Replacing my Workstation with a server

[GENTcz]

Budget (including currency):  less than 100K CZK (approximately 4000 USD)

Country: Czech Republic

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Primarily an NAS server, game/service server with ability to be used as gaming PC.

Other details Currently I have two PCs. One is an daily laptop, an macbook air M2, and 10 years old desktop workstation. Even with few upgrades, example new GPU, C and D drive, however the CPU i7-5820K is really starting to show its age. At the same time I dont play games that often anymore, since Im at the university or work. I was thinking about building new computer, this time in the server chassis, while being future-proof for next 5 years. Its important to note that the primary OS will propably be Unrais, since I want to use it as NAS, to deduplicate and still have access to my files, but still be able to turn windows up and play some games.  At the hardware side, I was thinking about AMD CPUs, atleast 64GB DDR5, Propably some mid range GPU, like 4070 or 3070 but AMD is still posibility

 

Would someone have suggestions for this?

[Blue4130]

28 minutes ago, GENTcz said:

Budget (including currency):  less than 100K CZK (approximately 4000 USD)

Country: Czech Republic

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Primarily an NAS server, game/service server with ability to be used as gaming PC.

Other details Currently I have two PCs. One is an daily laptop, an macbook air M2, and 10 years old desktop workstation. Even with few upgrades, example new GPU, C and D drive, however the CPU i7-5820K is really starting to show its age. At the same time I dont play games that often anymore, since Im at the university or work. I was thinking about building new computer, this time in the server chassis, while being future-proof for next 5 years. Its important to note that the primary OS will propably be Unrais, since I want to use it as NAS, to deduplicate and still have access to my files, but still be able to turn windows up and play some games.  At the hardware side, I was thinking about AMD CPUs, atleast 64GB DDR5, Propably some mid range GPU, like 4070 or 3070 but AMD is still posibility

 

Would someone have suggestions for this?

So for the windows side, do you plan on dual booting or trying to run as a VM? That would cause issue for many live service games and trigger a VAC ban likely.

 

How many other machines need to connect to the NAS? What type of data and services? Plex?

[XenifyStudios]

1 hour ago, GENTcz said:

Budget (including currency):  less than 100K CZK (approximately 4000 USD)

Country: Czech Republic

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Primarily an NAS server, game/service server with ability to be used as gaming PC.

Other details Currently I have two PCs. One is an daily laptop, an macbook air M2, and 10 years old desktop workstation. Even with few upgrades, example new GPU, C and D drive, however the CPU i7-5820K is really starting to show its age. At the same time I dont play games that often anymore, since Im at the university or work. I was thinking about building new computer, this time in the server chassis, while being future-proof for next 5 years. Its important to note that the primary OS will propably be Unrais, since I want to use it as NAS, to deduplicate and still have access to my files, but still be able to turn windows up and play some games.  At the hardware side, I was thinking about AMD CPUs, atleast 64GB DDR5, Propably some mid range GPU, like 4070 or 3070 but AMD is still posibility

 

Would someone have suggestions for this?

Probably a Ryzen 9 9950x and RTX 4070 should be fine

[GENTcz]

1 hour ago, Blue4130 said:

So for the windows side, do you plan on dual booting or trying to run as a VM? That would cause issue for many live service games and trigger a VAC ban likely.

 

How many other machines need to connect to the NAS? What type of data and services? Plex?

No more than 10 different devices at the same time. Services show include: NAS, something for video streaming, did not decide what. Plus possible Minecraft server for friend and family, SteamCMD servers etc.
Regarding the Windows I did not know about the VAC ban thing. Since I would like to keep it all in one device. Is there any better way to solve this issue even without dedicated second machine? With fast network, I hopefully could remotely connect to the machine, so easier to manage my data etc.

[GENTcz]

Question for you guys. Is it worth it to build one super server, that will host everything, or would it be better to use dedicated machines for each use case? Would be Unraid even good for my case?