Proxmox Server Upgrade

[CuriousSloth]

Budget (including currency): <£450 (amazon only, for simplicity and the return policy)

Country: United Kingdom

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Proxmox host - running plex media server (hw transcoding), torrent client, and other general lightweight homelab utilities

Other details: I recently upgraded my main PC and I have a few parts sitting on a shelf: CPU (Ryzen 7 3700x), RAM (16GB Corsair Vegeance Pro RGB 3200MHz), and motherboard (MSI B450 Gaming Plus Max). I have put together a parts list on PCPartPicker which I intend to purchase to complete the server and act as an upgrade to my very low powered mini-pc (celeron j4125, 6GB RAM, 128GB NVME), which is currently running most of my homelab utilities. I have noticed some instability and general poor performance recently due to the low specs. Additionally, I'd like to have more headroom for experimentation in future.
 

I aim for a compact build which remains quiet under load and maintains low temperatures/power consumption in general. The heaviest anticipated computation workloads will be plex transcoding (multiple streams from 1080p source content). Note that media storage is not an issue as it will be saved to my NAS on the LAN.
Please let me know if there are any caveats with my choices or if there are any optimizations you would make.
 

The part list is as follows in the link: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/gt9k2x

Note: I am aware that it is warning about PSU compatibility with the motherboard but I had a search and saw that it is due to an obselete -12V rail being absent in the PSU and shouldn't be an issue.

 

Many thanks in advance for any input given
 

[Dutch_Master]

You're spending too much, frankly. First, get a boxed cooler from AMD, shouldn't be more then 20 quid. Then look in the local used market places for an old gaming or workstation PC and reuse PSU, fans and case. As long as the fans turn on, the rest of the system might be boot-looping: don't care, fans + PSU work. Don't bother with glass side panels either: they add weight but do nothing for performance of the system. Another 80 quid should suffice and even then you've probably been ripped off All those savings allow for a GPU upgrade to an Intel B570 or even B850. I take it you'll be reusing the NVMe drive of the old server. If not, a 1-2TB PCIe gen 3 (!!) SSD gives your home automation systems plenty room to grow. It'll be about half the price of the gen 5 SSD in your list (should be, anyway) and practically no notable performance difference.

[CuriousSloth]

10 hours ago, Dutch_Master said:

You're spending too much, frankly. First, get a boxed cooler from AMD, shouldn't be more then 20 quid. Then look in the local used market places for an old gaming or workstation PC and reuse PSU, fans and case. As long as the fans turn on, the rest of the system might be boot-looping: don't care, fans + PSU work. Don't bother with glass side panels either: they add weight but do nothing for performance of the system. Another 80 quid should suffice and even then you've probably been ripped off All those savings allow for a GPU upgrade to an Intel B570 or even B850. I take it you'll be reusing the NVMe drive of the old server. If not, a 1-2TB PCIe gen 3 (!!) SSD gives your home automation systems plenty room to grow. It'll be about half the price of the gen 5 SSD in your list (should be, anyway) and practically no notable performance difference.

Thanks a lot for your advice, I'll have a look at downsizing some components where possible
Do you think AMD's boxed coolers would be good enough for temps/noise for the 3700x, since the hyper 212 is only around £15 more?
I've always heard that you should buy a new PSU and I felt this was the way to go for longevity's sake - I applied this thinking to many of the other components too because, frankly, I don't want to have to spend another penny on it for at least 5 years or so, and I have had some bad experiences in the past with used parts failing quite soon 
In regards to the case, I think I might just bite the bullet and treat myself with the expensive one because I think it looks great and would really fit the overall aesthetic 
I had a look at some older gen NVME SSDs but I figured since I'm kind of trying to future-proof, shelling out an extra £20 (from what I found) couldn't hurt too much, and for now I think 1TB will suffice - I may install a SATA SSD in future if I find I need to expand.

[CuriousSloth]

12 hours ago, CuriousSloth said:

Thanks a lot for your advice, I'll have a look at downsizing some components where possible
Do you think AMD's boxed coolers would be good enough for temps/noise for the 3700x, since the hyper 212 is only around £15 more?
I've always heard that you should buy a new PSU and I felt this was the way to go for longevity's sake - I applied this thinking to many of the other components too because, frankly, I don't want to have to spend another penny on it for at least 5 years or so, and I have had some bad experiences in the past with used parts failing quite soon 
In regards to the case, I think I might just bite the bullet and treat myself with the expensive one because I think it looks great and would really fit the overall aesthetic 
I had a look at some older gen NVME SSDs but I figured since I'm kind of trying to future-proof, shelling out an extra £20 (from what I found) couldn't hurt too much, and for now I think 1TB will suffice - I may install a SATA SSD in future if I find I need to expand.

Actually, disregard this. After having properly looked at old workstations I can configure one for £55 in all with a 365W PSU. Only downside I guess is the ugly case 
Thanks for saving me a bunch of money lol @Dutch_Master