unraid Very new to this, contemplating of building a Ryzen unRAID server

[szernex]

Hello fellow enthusiasts, I'm a first time poster and very new to the whole server side of things, so please forgive me if I sound naive or ask possibly stupid questions  (and english isn't my first language...)

 

So, here's the deal: I currently have a small mini ITX FreeNAS build which I use mostly for network shares and Resilio Sync. It consists of an ASRock J3710-ITX mainboard with 8GB RAM and 2x 2TB WD Reds which effectively offers 2TB of storage because ZFS. It served me somewhat well over the past year or so but ever since I learned about unRAID and what you can do with it I started wondering if it'd make sense to upgrade to something bigger and more powerful.

The things I thought of using an unRAID server for are the following:

• NAS (obviously) with some fail-save in the form of parity disks
• Virtualization for
  • a Linux machine for maybe hosting a webserver, Resilio and just generally tinkering around
  • a Windows machine (probably Windows Server 2012 R2) which I need for my work and which I'm currently using on my main PC with VMware
  • possibly another small Windows Server machine for Active Directory (not sure if unRAID itself supports that, hence a VM)
  • possibly sometime in the future a Windows 10 machine for use as a streaming machine (I know I'll need a capture card for that) 

My idea for the VMs would be to RDP/SSH/VNC/whatever into them instead of hooking up displays directly to them because I still want to use my main machine for working on, but have work and gaming/other stuff more physically separated from each other, if that makes any sense.

 

Unfortunately I'm on a bit of a tight budget so I'd like to save as much money as possible while still getting a system where I won't have to replace parts in like 3 months or so. So I figure and can at least re-use the WD Reds and USB thumb drives to boot unRAID off of, here's the rest of the build I came up with so far: https://de.pcpartpicker.com/list/2k8dhq

I know the RAM isn't ECC but considering how damn expensive RAM is these days I don't see how I could afford a build like this without having to save up until next year. I currently have 4x8GB DDR4 in my main rig from which I could spare 2 sticks for the server since I really only got this much RAM because I had to run the VMs + other stuff in the background, so I'd just have to get another set of 2x8GB. I went with a Ryzen 5 1600 because it currently looks like the best bang/buck and I figure 12 threads should be enough for the aforementioned purposes. I also know that with 2 HDDs I won't get really good performance for now, and I do plan to add more drives later on, but right now I want to get at least the basic framework set up for as cheap as possible.

 

So now my question would be: Does this build even make sense in terms of what I want to use it for? Or am I going too big/small? Any advice and help would be appreciated  

[LienusLateTips]

Don't get a Hyper 212 EVO.

[porina]

 

12 minutes ago, JDE said:

Don't get a Hyper 212 EVO.

Agreed, the stock cooler is sufficient for stock clocks.

 

The only other alternative I can think of right now is looking at an old used server to reuse.

[szernex]

6 hours ago, JDE said:

Don't get a Hyper 212 EVO.

 

6 hours ago, porina said:

 

Agreed, the stock cooler is sufficient for stock clocks.

 

The only other alternative I can think of right now is looking at an old used server to reuse.

Okay, I guess I'm just used to the Intel stock coolers which are kinda garbage once the CPU is under load, at least in terms of noise. Which reminds me that I forgot to mention that this server will most likely be in my living/work room, so how quiet are the stock AMD fans these days? 

[GDRRiley]

got rid of the 212 evo and the expensive mobo and got you another 2tb drive so that you can have 4tb of space https://de.pcpartpicker.com/list/Fb9rbj

[szernex]

1 hour ago, GDRRiley said:

got rid of the 212 evo and the expensive mobo and got you another 2tb drive so that you can have 4tb of space https://de.pcpartpicker.com/list/Fb9rbj

Thanks! I went with the more expensive mainboard because it has a lot of SATA ports, what would be my options to use more than 4 drives on the ASrock you put in?

[GDRRiley]

3 minutes ago, szernex said:

Thanks! I went with the more expensive mainboard because it has a lot of SATA ports, what would be my options to use more than 4 drives on the ASrock you put in?

no but you can add in hba cards or flash raid cards for 100$ used for nice ones

[szernex]

3 minutes ago, GDRRiley said:

no but you can add in hba cards or flash raid cards for 100$ used for nice ones

Okay, I'll consider it, thanks  

[LienusLateTips]

4 hours ago, szernex said:

 

Okay, I guess I'm just used to the Intel stock coolers which are kinda garbage once the CPU is under load, at least in terms of noise. Which reminds me that I forgot to mention that this server will most likely be in my living/work room, so how quiet are the stock AMD fans these days? 

AMD fans are very quiet, very cool and magic

[szernex]

So here's another question: since Ryzen don't have an iGPU, will I have to always have some weak GPU in the build for the system to boot? Or will I just need a GPU for the initial setup and then I can just remove the GPU and run the system without one?

[GDRRiley]

1 hour ago, szernex said:

So here's another question: since Ryzen don't have an iGPU, will I have to always have some weak GPU in the build for the system to boot? Or will I just need a GPU for the initial setup and then I can just remove the GPU and run the system without one?

you will need a gpu in it at all times. 

[szernex]

11 hours ago, GDRRiley said:

you will need a gpu in it at all times. 

okay, thanks!

[MicrowavedGerbil]

Okay, here we go. Don't build a server, and definitely don't build one based on Ryzen. Ryzen, while it has matured quite a bit since release, is still not nearly as mature as Intel's Xeon platform, and with Xeon you get ECC support which provides many different benefits that I'm not going to do into. Since you have ~650EUR, I would recommend buying a Dell R710 or R720 on Ebay, preferably the R720 as it is about 15db quieter than the R710. The R710 and R720 are also a bit more powerful in multi threaded applications because they usually come with 2 quad-core processors. Here's an R710 with 12 cores @ 3.06Ghz for 100EUR less than what you planned out, and it also has 4TB of storage included, which is a bit of a bonus. I think it will suit you much better than that PC, and it will also give you tons of room for expansion in the future.