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Processor: (3.40 GHz) 4-Core Intel Core i7-6700 Processor
Memory (RAM): 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 PC4 U Memory (for i-series/Core Processors)
Graphics Card: Integrated Graphics (with i series processors only) +$0.00
Drive 1: 3TB HDD SATA 7.2k 3.5" Hard Drive
Drive 2: 3TB HDD SATA 7.2k 3.5" Hard Drive
M.2 Storage: 512GB M.2 SSD NVMe Drive
Price: $291.95
My main concern with this option is energy usage. The CPU’s TDP is 65W, the CPU in my current server’s TDP is 35W.
It does have a few advantages over my current setup:
- More RAM 8 → 32
- Better CPU, passmark score 4766 → 8091, threads 4 → 8
- Ability to use RAID, current setup only has the capacity for 1 drive.
Is this a good option or is there a better option? I’ve also been considering using an external drive enclosure with software RAID, but I heard that could be unreliable.
EDIT: Is the price good? Shipping is quite expensive (about $100), so I’m only planning on buying it if the deal is good.
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Depends on what you’ll be using it for. If your use case is a simple NAS with shares , torrents and whatnot it is probably overkill and will waste way more power than required. If you plan to transcode video then it might not be .
A more modern processor probably has better power efficiency. But this one should support features like turning off some of the cores or throttling down when not needed.
You could also see if you can get one with lower power consumption, like even the 6700T.
Used processors are quite reasonable on eBay. I got one with a lower TDP and it actually benchmarked higher than my previous CPU (came with my used Dell workstation).
The lowest option is the i3-6100 which brings it down to $236.95 in total.
Unless you have specific needs for compute, I’d go with that.
You really ought to look into idle power though. At $0.1/kWh, 1W is about $1/year. You can extrapolate from there.
TDP doesn’t matter here but the i3 is likely more efficient under load.The shipping cost is quite extreme though. Not sure I’d pay that.
If you are planning to use it as a jellyfin or other media server, look for 8th Gen or later Intel. They have Intel quicksync that provide hardware decoding.
Why 8th gen? Wikipedia and Plex say quicksync was added in Sandy Bridge.
QuickSync is available on earlier gen machines. I have 7th gen with it.
Intel Quick Sync video saw a lot of improvements on 8th gen & since it’s all so old the pricing differences between 7th & 8th gen are going to be negligible.
I don’t see as nearly as many used ThinkCentre Tinys for sale with post 7th gen chips. I wonder if this is why.
I think the fact that Windows 11 is only supported on 8th gen makes the previous generations quite cheap. Many companies are preparing the upgrade to windows 11 and start throwing the old stuff out.
8th gen is when support was added for HEVC I’m pretty sure
Yep, 8th gen (Coffee Lake) saw a lot of improvements in Intel Quick Sync, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quick_Sync_Video#Hardware_decoding_and_encoding
I’m running Jellyfin on 6th gen i3 and quicksync works fine.
Get a 10th/12th Gen processor so that you can transcode powerfully if you’re intending to use jellyfin.
I was worried about the power usage when I first started using my old gaming CPU for a home server (i7-4770k). I bought a kill-a-watt, ran it plugged into that for a month, saw that it was using pennies worth of energy per month and never worried about it again.
Unless you’re pegging the CPU at 100%, it’s not going to be pulling the full 65W. As far as maintenance fees go, the cost of replacing a single hard drive will likely overshadow your energy costs.
Pro tip: keep an eye out for hard drive deals on black fri. And I recommend doing a burn-in run on any new drives when you get them to push them past the initial failure window of the bathtub curve (I used
badblocks. Took nearly a week for the initial run, but I found one bad drive and was able to RMA it immediately instead of finding out the hard way).I’d buy a Dell Optiplex 5060 for about $200 off eBay and you’ll get an i7-8700 with a 630 iGPU and the NVME taken care of. Then you just need the hard drives and more RAM. My home server is just fine with 16GB of RAM, though. There’s no DE and I don’t game on it.
It seems to only have capacity for 1 drive.
Sorry for the late reply. You can replace the optical drive with a 2.5" HDD or add a sata PCI-E card since your not using the GPU slot in this case. My personal setup uses an NVME for the OS (DietPi), and two 6TB external HDDs on an Optiplex 5060 SFF.
I built the server I’m using now over a decade ago, with much worse specs, for way more money.
This will last you a long while depending on your requirements.
I didn’t see anyone else say this, but 7200 rpm disks are way louder than 5400. Where my server is it would be annoying, but if it’s in a closed room somewhere you’ll be fine.
Also, these drives are probably not made to run 24/7/365. First 1 or 2 years or so it will probably be fine, but after you can expect some sudden dead drives.
The “designed for 24/7” thing is a myth. Yes, some server/enterprise parts have a lower failure rate, but it has nothing to do with 8 hours a day vs 24.
Also, my setup is almost entirely the cheapest consumer drives available, and I’ve never had any significant failure rates outside of the one bad supplier. If you are seeing anything like that, you should examine your setup. I suspect you either have cooling issues or (more likely) vibration that’s causing premature failures.
I have never known RPM of a drive to affect its noise level. The fan(s) will be far more significant in noise level. Most drives run pretty quietly, though some can get noisy during I/O, like my HGST Ultrastar He6 drives.
Also, without knowing the model, I wouldn’t say they’re not made to run 24/7. But even on desktop drives, it’s rarely run time that kills them, it’s start-stop cycles. Everything will be fine, but one day you’ll shut it down and some drives won’t spin up. That’s why power outages can be deadly to an old server.
I always dissuade anyone from buying Intel for any purpose. A backdoored CPU undermines your security and privacy to an unacceptable degree.
A backdoored what? As if AMD is any more or less secure.
Why would PSP be better than IME?
PSP allegedly does not have internet acces so it can’t call home while IME does.
What are the use cases? More RAM is nice but could be overkill if you’re bottlenecked by CPU, and if this is for running a few simple VMs or as storage then you may not need much of this.
RAID is generally a good thing but don’t get complacent, follow the 3-2-1 method. I.e. you might be better off saving the cash and using a backup script to push stuff you really care about to the cloud, and pay for cloud fees vice hw.
Use case is a few simple VMs, Nextcloud, storage, maybe a minecraft server and probably something like Jellyfin later on.
This will be fine. But assume you’ll want to swap out the hard drives in the future for more, larger, NAS appropriate disks.
If you’re as paranoid as me about data integrity, SAS drives on a host adapter card in “Initiator Target” (IT) mode with write-cache on the disks disabled is the safest. It will degrade performance when writing many small files concurrently, but not as badly as with SATA drives (that’s for spinning disks, of course, not SSD). With a good error-correcting redundant system such as ZFS you can probably get away with enabled write cache in most cases. Until you can’t.
RAID is generally a good thing but don’t get complacent, follow the 3-2-1 method
To expand on that: Redundant drive setup and backups serve completely different purposes. The only overlap is in case of a single disk failure, where RAID (or similar) may save the data.
Redundancy is all about reducing downtime in case of single hardware failures. Backups not only protect you from data loss in case of multiple simultaneous failures, but also from accidental deletion. Failures that require restoration of data almost always involve downtime. In short: You always need backups (unless it’s strictly a local cache, and easily recreatable), but if you want high availability, redundancy may help.
3-2-1-rule for backups, in case you’re unfamiliar: 3 copies of important data, on 2 different media, with 1 off-site.
TDP doesn’t have much to do with idle power draw, that’s more based on the age of the CPU and specific type (standard, U, or T skus)
Exactly. Just as a real world example for OP, my home server has an i5 7400 with the same TDP. At idle the whole system draws around 10.5W, measured from the wall.
Seems decent but depends on your usage. Memory could be a bit excessive unless you’ll actually have a lot of simultaneous users. I’d also look into the features of the integrated graphics card. If you’re doing some streaming a low cost GPU might give you better options for hardware decoding/encoding.
If RAID is what you’re after, don’t mind the premium for SSD storage and have available 5.25" bays, I highly recommend 5.25" mobile racks. The one I’m using is a a cheap 4 drive one, but if you want something more premium there is always ICY DOCK.
I doubt a 5.25” rack will fit in my closet but thanks for the suggestion 😄
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters NAS Network-Attached Storage PCIe Peripheral Component Interconnect Express Plex Brand of media server package RAID Redundant Array of Independent Disks for mass storage SATA Serial AT Attachment interface for mass storage SSD Solid State Drive mass storage
6 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 4 acronyms.
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