home server CPU for home server

[TheWestWing]

I want to make a home server whose main uses will be file storage, game and web hosting. Nothing too critical or important. Which CPU should I use? How many cores, how much cache and what should be a min Ghz? Is Xeon much better for home servers? Max cost is 150 USD. I'm a complete beginner so sorry if these questions are stupid or the wrong ones to ask. Thanks.

 

AMD - Ryzen 5 1400 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/s8h9TW/amd-cpu-fd8320frw8khk
how would you rate this cpu?

[Electronics Wizardy]

What board? 

 

Total budget?

 

Id probably get something like this for the home server .http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-Optiplex-3010-D12M-Core-i5-3470-3-2GHz-250GB-2GB-DVD-RW-Mid-Tower-Desktop-/302304337631?hash=item4662be1edf:g:ZwQAAOSw~y9ZCe2E

 

Then add some more ram and drives and your good.

 

That cpu that you linked is a old chip, that uses lots of power.

 

GHZ and chip clock don't matter, the speed of the chip does.

[RadiatingLight]

that CPU is ancient - don't get it (a motherboard for that puppy would cost a lot if you wanted to buy new anyway)

 

if you have an old PC with a mid-high end CPU purchased in the last 10 years, it should be fine for a NAS.

NAS CPUs don't need to be strong. a G4560 will work just fine.

[sazrocks]

Is ECC necessary? If not you could pick up a RYZEN R5 which has 4 cores and 8 threads. Specifically this one: 

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/72wqqs/amd-ryzen-5-1400-32ghz-quad-core-processor-yd1400bbaebox

(the extra $10 is offset by the included cooler)

Even if you do need ECC, Ryzen does kinda support it, on some boards.

[TheWestWing]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

What board? 

 

Total budget?

 

Id probably get something like this for the home server .http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-Optiplex-3010-D12M-Core-i5-3470-3-2GHz-250GB-2GB-DVD-RW-Mid-Tower-Desktop-/302304337631?hash=item4662be1edf:g:ZwQAAOSw~y9ZCe2E

 

Then add some more ram and drives and your good.

 

That cpu that you linked is a old chip, that uses lots of power.

 

GHZ and chip clock don't matter, the speed of the chip does.

Total budget 500 USD

[The Benjamins]

are you doing anything that would leverage a good CPU like Plex or game servers ect.

 

I think a ryzen chip would be nice and you can upgrade to the 1700 if needed down the road.

 

Most home users will not need things like ECC, my board supports it but I just use standard ram to save money.

[TheWestWing]

Just now, The Benjamins said:

are you doing anything that would leverage a good CPU like Plex or game servers ect.

 

I think a ryzen chip would be nice and you can upgrade to the 1700 if needed down the road.

 

Most home users will not need things like ECC, my board supports it but I just use standard ram to save money.

I might do game servers. Probably no plex

[The Benjamins]

1 minute ago, TheWestWing said:

I might do game servers. Probably no plex

most game servers are fairly light. I think a 4 or 6 core ryzen would work best. you defiantly don't need anything fancy.

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

18 minutes ago, TheWestWing said:

Total budget 500 USD

id probably just get that used system above then and add more ram and drives.

[System Error Message]

with regards to server it depends on how much you're running, for example with minecraft players and world size matters.

 

You can use xeons and ECC in a consumer board so getting a used xeon could work if its compatible with a desktop board(if you want to overclock) or even server board.

 

Any gen iseries xeons will do fine, but for consumer CPUs from intel go with quad core at least, sandybridge and newer. from AMD side their ryzen/threadripper CPU

 

ECC unbuffered is the most expensive ram, ECC registered/buffered is cheaper than consumer ram so going with a 2nd hand server build is an option. If you use xeon in consumer board and overclock and want ECC it can get expensive. Most consumer boards will work with xeon and ECC even without the option, you can use memtest to verify.

[TheWestWing]

4 minutes ago, System Error Message said:

with regards to server it depends on how much you're running, for example with minecraft players and world size matters.

 

You can use xeons and ECC in a consumer board so getting a used xeon could work if its compatible with a desktop board(if you want to overclock) or even server board.

 

Any gen iseries xeons will do fine, but for consumer CPUs from intel go with quad core at least, sandybridge and newer. from AMD side their ryzen/threadripper CPU

 

ECC unbuffered is the most expensive ram, ECC registered/buffered is cheaper than consumer ram so going with a 2nd hand server build is an option. If you use xeon in consumer board and overclock and want ECC it can get expensive. Most consumer boards will work with xeon and ECC even without the option, you can use memtest to verify.

AMD - Ryzen 5 1400 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/s8h9TW/amd-cpu-fd8320frw8khk
how would you rate this cpu?

[The Benjamins]

Just now, TheWestWing said:

AMD - Ryzen 5 1400 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/s8h9TW/amd-cpu-fd8320frw8khk
how would you rate this cpu?

No one should recommend this CPU. it may be 8 cores but it is slow 8 cores were a 4c can be just as good or better. AMD's new CPU's is a MASSIVE boost in per core performance.

It is also using a old socket that will no longer be supported.

[System Error Message]

Just now, TheWestWing said:

AMD - Ryzen 5 1400 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/s8h9TW/amd-cpu-fd8320frw8khk
how would you rate this cpu?

it really depends on how much you are using the server for, your requirements sound like this CPU would fit but even a webserver serving 100 people at a time can require a lot of CPU. Your main pick should be the game you will host and how many players, Hosting a personal file and webserver doesnt use much CPU but a media server can if you do real time encoding.

 

So the quad core ryzen would be the bare minimum.

[System Error Message]

1 minute ago, The Benjamins said:

No one should recommend this CPU. it may be 8 cores but it is slow 8 cores were a 4c can be just as good or better. AMD's new CPU's is a MASSIVE boost in per core performance.

It is also using a old socket that will no longer be supported.

He was talking about ryzen not bulldozer. ryzen is a totally different CPU boasting multi threading rather than the shared core approach of bulldozer.

[The Benjamins]

1 minute ago, System Error Message said:

He was talking about ryzen not bulldozer. ryzen is a totally different CPU boasting multi threading rather than the shared core approach of bulldozer.

He linked a 8320 that is not ryzen.

 

his text was black and couldn't see it on night theme, my statement stands on the linked processor.

[System Error Message]

2 minutes ago, The Benjamins said:

He linked a 8320 that is not ryzen.

yeah he must've had it confused.

The bulldozer architecture isnt ryzen, the numbering is different.

 

At all cost avoid the bulldozer architecture for game hosting. This is from experience with physics heavy games that even my lowerclocked 1st gen iseries xeon is faster for much less frequency and single thread. for web/media/files the bulldozer is ok.

 

[TheWestWing]

1 minute ago, System Error Message said:

yeah he must've had it confused.

The bulldozer architecture isnt ryzen, the numbering is different.

 

At all cost avoid the bulldozer architecture for game hosting. This is from experience with physics heavy games that even my lowerclocked 1st gen iseries xeon is faster for much less frequency and single thread. for web/media/files the bulldozer is ok.

 

Yea sorry, i wanted the CPU that was linked rated. But how is the described CPU anyway?

[System Error Message]

Just now, TheWestWing said:

Yea sorry, i wanted the CPU that was linked rated. But how is the described CPU anyway?

for game hosting, absolutely horrible. I once hosted space engineers on a 4.2Ghz piledriver 8 core, when i switched it to a 6 core xeon, even with the xeon running at 2.4Ghz it was faster, this was before space engineers got their physics multi threaded. Sim speed would drop on the 8 core but on the xeon players could sometimes have trouble keeping up if their cpus were slower. Even with the game's current multi threaded physics, the 8core fx is still a horrible CPU for game hosting.

[Rinsworth]

Ryzen works well, and the amount of cores can let you set certain cores to run certain things only (game server on cores 0-3, plex on 4-5)

[TheWestWing]

2 minutes ago, System Error Message said:

for game hosting, absolutely horrible. I once hosted space engineers on a 4.2Ghz piledriver 8 core, when i switched it to a 6 core xeon, even with the xeon running at 2.4Ghz it was faster, this was before space engineers got their physics multi threaded. Sim speed would drop on the 8 core but on the xeon players could sometimes have trouble keeping up if their cpus were slower. Even with the game's current multi threaded physics, the 8core fx is still a horrible CPU for game hosting.

Thanks for all the help. I might turn a desktop into a server. Is this CPU good?

Intel Core i5 (3rd Gen) 3570S / 3.1 GHz?

http://ark.intel.com/products/65701/Intel-Core-i5-3570S-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3_80-GHz

[TheWestWing]

11 minutes ago, The Benjamins said:

He linked a 8320 that is not ryzen.

 

his text was black and couldn't see it on night theme, my statement stands on the linked processor.

Thanks for all the help. I might turn a desktop into a server. Is this CPU good?

Intel Core i5 (3rd Gen) 3570S / 3.1 GHz?

http://ark.intel.com/products/65701/Intel-Core-i5-3570S-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3_80-GHz

[System Error Message]

2 minutes ago, TheWestWing said:

Thanks for all the help. I might turn a desktop into a server. Is this CPU good?

Intel Core i5 (3rd Gen) 3570S / 3.1 GHz?

http://ark.intel.com/products/65701/Intel-Core-i5-3570S-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3_80-GHz

not particularly great but better than the fx. more cache is better for both games(some) and web. You can find quad core 1st gen iseries xeons that have 12M cache with only 4 or 6 cores.

 

If you could mention what games you're hosting i could tell you if more cache would help.

[The Benjamins]

1 minute ago, TheWestWing said:

Thanks for all the help. I might turn a desktop into a server. Is this CPU good?

Intel Core i5 (3rd Gen) 3570S / 3.1 GHz?

http://ark.intel.com/products/65701/Intel-Core-i5-3570S-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3_80-GHz

should be ok, nothing you said that you will be doing seems to be that demanding. so what ever fites your budget.

 

I don't have time right now to really look for a good CPU for your price point.

[System Error Message]

to put it simply heres how to determine the cpu.

Files - use very little CPU, software raid that isnt 1,0,10 can use some CPU

web - very dependent on visitor count and website. Websites barely do much math but SSL and visitor count can require a CPU with hardware encryption acceleration  for SSL, for just a few at a time not an issue and even a pentium 4 can handle a few visitors using SSL.

Games- there are 3 types of games, physics or high end, medium end or player based (like fps and rpgs), low end (like turn based games, very few things happening).

With higher end games you need both a fast CPU for physics (no bulldozer here), more cache helps but more importantly more memory bandwidth as well. the 1st gen iseries in consumer board is a good option as you have 3 memory channels, you can overclock the cache and ram and CPU all at once giving you very good boost. Example would be space engineers.

medium end games require a fast CPU to keep updates going, and a NIC that is both low latency and can handle the load (onboard realtek and intel are good here). MMORPGs and some FPS games i would put here. Most FPS games need to update fast but use very little CPU.

Media - dependent on the feature. Plex can do live transcoding and you will need to check your CPU choice with the require compute power for the quality. My phenom x4 at 3.2Ghz can do 3 1080p streams with a little CPU to spare.

 

Remember that you need a CPU that can handle all, so make sure to add their requirements together.