Current hardware recommendations for enthusiast home build

[stubbo66]

I've only been running Proxmox now for a couple of months having moved all of my servers from various machines onto a single hardware platform, and realising that the hardware itself is a limiting factor for my expansion, and also if I have a hardware failure I also need to have a plan for a new build to get back up and running quickly.

I've got about 20 LXCs and a couple of VMs running Windows server and MAC OS, but want to add a few more for windows 11 development etc.

I have to say I'm very happy having made the move from discrete hardware platforms to virtualisation, it's working out far better than I hoped....but I need to look at the hardware for my next phase.

Currently I am on an old X99 motherboard, and my short term goal is to try and max out the memory to 64GB as that seems to be my immediate limiting factor, though more cores would also be very much the way I also want to go.

My goal is to use a single server, as I want to reduce my Kwh usage for my home, and consolidating has helped to do that already, but I'd love to move to a lower TDP CPU and cut that usage even further, but keep a high core count.

I'm thinking intel CPU with onboard graphics, I only have limited need for video encoding (mostly Frigate) and I also have a USB coral so hardware passthrough of a full blown video card isn't really somewhere I want to go, also it helps to reduce the power consumption that way as well.

Now the bigger question is about storage management. I have 5 x 2TB nvme drives using zfs2-0 so need a system with a lot of PCI lanes, and either plenty of M.2 support on board, or where I can use bifurcation. I also have 5 SATA drives, but adding that support through PCIE is easy enough if there aren't enough sockets on board, I have 5 drives currently including a pair of SSD mirrored I use as the proxmox OS drives.

Modern enthusiast or home build PCs seem to have very few PCIE slots, and bifurcation is a bit of a minefield still. I'd probably stick with DDR4 as well, just to keep the costs down, but probably want to up my current 32GB to 128GB.

So what is everyone using to build with for new servers today? Are you using intel Z90 motherboards, or at least something using socket 1700.
How are you handling larger numbers of nVME drives, in future I may want to ad a few more to expand from 5 to 7 or 8.
What is your experience with low power CPUs with onboard graphics from intel.

Or is AMD the better platform now? They don't seem to look for on chip graphics so much which is why I was looking more to intel, and again AMD don't focus much on low power parts either.

I will stick a budget on here, let's say £1000 to include, motherboard, CPU, RAM

I know I'm putting all my eggs in one basket hosting everything on a single PC, but I do have a cold standby machine with proxmox on I can get up and running in an emergency with the key VMs I backup offline, so I'm not completely without a failure strategy...just don't want to over invest as a home lab user.

So what are the current trends and recommendations?

 

[justinclift]

With those constraints (wanting to reduce Kwh usage), I'd probably look at something like this:

• ASRock B550M Pro4 motherboard (link)
  • Cheap, has 6x SATA ports, 2x NVMe slots, and does ECC ram + PCIe bifurcation
• Ryzen 5950X CPU
  • 16 cores, fairly efficient
• 4x 32GB UDIMM ECC ram sticks
  • Preferably 3200MTs or better
• be quiet! Dark Rock Slim cpu cooler
  • Works fine for the Ryzen 5950X
• be quiet! Pure Base 500 Black ATX case

That's pretty much a copy of mine, except I'm using 4x 16GB Kingston UDIMM sticks (64GB total). You'd need to figure out an appropriate power supply as well. Didn't include one above because I've added an overkill one to mine for an Nvidia graphics card.

You'd probably want to throw in some kind of entry level graphics card too, for initial setup purposes and/or just to have a console available when needed.

That specific ASRock motherboard supports PCIe bifurcation on the first PCIe slot (the x16 one), so you'd be able to add something like an ASRock Hyper Quad m.2 card: https://www.asrock.com/mb/spec/product.asp?Model=HYPER QUAD M.2 CARD

I haven't personally tried that Hyper card out though, as I'm using the primary PCIe slot for an Nvidia graphics card instead.

---

Chucking the above part list into scan.co.uk gives about £900, so looks pretty on target.

 

[stubbo66]

I need a CPU with onboard geaphics, so if I went AMD it would need to be a G series. The biggest problem is the motherboard as I want at least 32 PCI lanes free to handle the nvme drives.

The problem I have with nearly all boards I’ve looked at is they have very few PCIe slots, and those they have rarely support bifurcation (4x4x4x4), and certainly only none supporting on more than one slot.

I’m fine with sourcing all other components, it’s the motherboard that’s really causing me a headache.

Or do most users avoid nvme drives? Certainly SATA would pose less of an issue….but I’m down the nvme road now.

Oh, and I would add the need for a minimum 2.5Gb Ethernet connection, ideally 10Gb.

 

[leesteken]

I need a CPU with onboard geaphics, so if I went AMD it would need to be a G series. The biggest problem is the motherboard as I want at least 32 PCI lanes free to handle the nvme drives.

Ryzen only has 28 lanes and a G variant takes 8 away for the integrate graphics. You probably need a server CPU (or Threadripper) for more lanes.

 

[stubbo66]

That’s why I was looking at intel, I already have a 40 lane cpu for my current config with 5 nvme drives, plus I gave my gps and a 2.5gb Ethernet card….i know I’m squeezing non server tech to the limit….just looking to see how possible it is.

 

[justinclift]

Ahhh. Maybe do some research into PCIe m.2 adapters that have their own PCIe switch chip onboard then? That'll let you use motherboards that don't offer bifurcation.

Pretty sure I bookmarked an article about exactly that recently (maybe on ServeTheHome?), but I'm not remembering the right keywords to find it.

This link turned up as I think one of the things that article was linking to: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001889076788.html

That one's just PCIe 3, though there would have to be PCIe 4 versions of it too.

 

[justinclift]

Aha, found it: https://forums.servethehome.com/ind...apters-that-do-not-require-bifurcation.31172/

 

[justinclift]

I need a CPU with onboard geaphics

Errr, why?

 

[Ramalama]

Passthrough with amd onboard gpu's doesn't work.
You can use it only in LXC Containers, for Plex for example.

PS: I would build a Home-Server based on the new AMD 4004 Series.
Thats a relative Cheap Plattform with 28 Lanes. Everything else has only 16/20/24 Lanes, and above that are only Servers or Threadripper.

Cheers

 

[justinclift]

I would build a Home-Server based on the new AMD 4004 Series

For the use case here, what's the benefit over Ryzen? This build is already budget constrained, and 28 lanes doesn't seem worth it for this use case unless it's split out properly for things to use.

 

[Ramalama]

For the use case here, what's the benefit over Ryzen? This build is already budget constrained, and 28 lanes doesn't seem worth it for this use case unless it's split out properly for things to use.

you're right not much, other as guaranteed ecc.
But my ecc on my 5800x home-server works without issues either. Maybe ecc will get disabled with bios updates in future for ryzen, who knows...