Hardware upgrade - not sure what to get

[julianhj]

I've been running Unraid on an HP Proliant Microserver (7th gen, N54L) for about 6-7 years. It's got an AMD Turion II Neo CPU, 4GB RAM and it's fairly anaemic. It's used primarily as a file and media server (including Plex). I'd like to update it, as it's pretty slow. I'd also like to move away from the small form factor so that I can add more drives and I'm after a system with low power draw at idle.

I was considering an Intel Core i3-10100 or an i5-10400, or possibly an AMD Ryzen 3 3200G or Ryzen 5 3400G.

Will systems based on the above CPUs draw considerably more power at idle, or is it more of a case of choosing other components carefully to maximise efficiency? I need to consider long-term running costs.

I may be expanding my horizons in the future, such as occasionally running VMs, so that's a factor I'm also considering.

Can anyone advise on a reasonable balance between decent power and high efficiency?

 

[Avalon]

A little more info will help here...

Plex wise, do you envisage much transcoding? Obviously what you have now simply won’t, but if you don’t currently and likely won’t in future, then it’s a non issue. If you do plan on needing to, are you a PlexPass subscriber? Just if you do it, doing it in hardware is massively more efficient than doing it in software.

Form factor wise something like the Fractal Design R2 or similar cases make very decent file servers for lots of drives and decent cooling, the thing is drive sizes are now at 20TB, the need for lots of drives is limited at this point - it’s not like when you likely got the N54L and 3-4TB was the optimum choice, making 20TB usable in total the maximum you could easily fit (6x4TB using single drive parity). Now 8-12TB is the usual sweet spot, per drive, so how many drives do you want/need?

VM’s is subjective, best practice is to run it on mirrored cache drives, obviously those would be NAND based as this stops the array spinning up and is much faster, those i3’s pack a decent punch now, as does the Ryzen, but the deciding factor is often RAM as you scale this up, on Ryzen ECC is a thing, same with the i3’s usually, not so much the i5’s and not on consumer boards (thanks Intel).

Power wise (from memory) you have about 25-30w of idle depending on peripheral/RAM config with drives spun down, that’s the same as an older desktop with iGPU and a single mechanical drive + HBA (I took a reading of this for an UnRAID comparison on a 6100 yesterday). I’ve seen 3400G systems idle as low as 6w (no HBA), so it’s easily possible to get low numbers and still have decent performance. The other consideration with VM’s is do you actually need a full VM? Docker can be a more efficient choice.

For a mixed workload server I generally prefer AMD, my 3600 is circa twice the CPU mark of my 8400, that’s potentially significant (depending on workload), the ECC support (APU Pro required on APU models for this) and low price made it a decent buy, especially if you have something like a 1050 kicking about for NVEnc (adds 15w or so idle). If you are more Plex orientated and want quiet/efficient, Intel + iGPU wins. You loose ECC, performance tends not to be quite as good in some areas, but can be better in others and price wise it’s often higher than I’d like, but iGPU is built for transcoding and that single feature leaves your CPU to do other stuff, which can more than make up for not being an outright performance winner.

Have you considered thy the N54L still makes an ideal storage box? You are limited to LAN speed anyway and UnRAID is single drive read, but with that in mind you could use the N54L for storage and just move the VM/Plex side of things to a new box which may be cheaper and more flexible? Also consider that a full VM may not be required depending on your plans, docker can be a better option.

 

[julianhj]

Thanks for your detailed reply Avalon, in terms of your questions:
- I am a PlexPass subscriber and I may be transcoding in the future
- I've been considering the Node 804 case; I currently have an old PC (specs in sig) from which I could take some components if I run a Windows VM on the new system - the Coolermaster 690II would be fine as an alternative if I decide to sell my old CPU/MB/RAM
- I have quite a few 3TB drives at the moment ( I actually have a second N54L which is used as a backup stored at my parents' house); over time I intend to phase these out in favour of 8-14TB drives, depending on what offers best value. I've recently bought a 14TB WD external drive which I'm going to back everything up to (currently around 10TB of data), so I may decide to get rid of both N54Ls.
- I've budgeted for a couple of M.2 drives for cache
- As I'm considering replacing the i5-2500k system, a full VM is preferable. Day to day I use a Macbook Pro, so I don't often need a Windows box, but it's needed periodically for various things. I've run Parallels previously, but I'm expecting to upgrade to the next generation MBP when they're released later this year - I'm not sure whether Parallels will be a decent option on Apple architecture.
- I've found the N54L to be very frustrating recently for file transfer and access. I've gone through a bit of troubleshooting to see if it's a network or configuration issue, but it seems the main stumbling block is the processor, which appears to hit 100% load with any sort of usage.