Have a small dilemma. I have an old i7 6700K that I decided to test Proxmox on… This has now become permanent. Been running fine for almost a year now.
I just upgraded my old desktop, and now have some spare parts that I thinking of using to upgrade my Proxmox. But I have multiple options, and I’m struggling to decide.
Old equipment is a Gigabyte B550 Aorus Pro V2, 5800X and 64GB 3600Mhz RAM.
My options atm:
1: Use everything above and buy a used GPU as I will need it for the initial setup. If I find a good deal on a used GPU, I can maybe do GPU passthrough and try to set up a VM for some light gaming further down the road if I decide to try that.
2: Same as above, but buy a 5700G instead of a GPU. 65W TDP is a plus. Still more powerful than my curent 6700K and double the core count. I haven not really missed a dedicated GPU in any of the stuff I have used my proxmox for so far.
3: Wait, and build a more powerful system around my current 7900X in my main computer, that I might change when the 9800X3D comes out ( If it performes). But this can take months, and alot more expensive…
Stuff I’m running on the Proxmox right now:
n8n
Docker
Homepage
Stirling PDF
Trilium
Win10 VM
Win11 VM
Linux Mint VM
My backup needs are covered by a dedicated TrueNas server.
When I said fine, I meant fine as in not crashed or anything.
But I’m close to maxing out my RAM if I spin up both my Windows VM’s.
Linux VM is running on “fumes”, and it would be nice with more resources to play with
Well, you seem to have a generous definition of “some light gaming”. That iGPU doesn’t have tons of horsepower.
Also, this CPU doesn’t support PCIe Gen4 and offers less lanes to the mobo. Look up the specifics in your mobo manual.
+1
The three upgrade options you line out all lead to very different outcomes. I’d wait a little until your use cases clarify at which point the answer to your question becomes obvious. Until then you have not wasted any money.
If I did the 5700G route I would not plan for any GPU passthrough or gaming down the road.
With that choice it would be the same use as now, but with more containers and some more resources for my VM’s.
5800X and a GPU was more of an option if the CPU in itself was powerful enough to be used as a gaming VM, while still beeing able to handle all other demands.
If the 5800X would be to “weak” as not enough cores for a gaming VM at the same time as running containers and other VM, that would automatically exclude it as an option.
I have never set up a VM that is possible to game on, so I don’t know how much resources I would have to allocate to it to make it a good experience.
I have tested Parsec on my Win11 VM, but graphics are software rendered, so not optimal. But the latency is ok.
you could just temporarily use whatever GPU you have to get through the proxmox install and then take it back out. most boards will boot fine with no GPU and the 5800x is a very good ProxMox CPU that should last you a long time.
if you have a desktop PC and space for any sort of server as a separate unit, do NOT build a gaming VM unless you just want to learn about how it works.
If you want a performant VM machine, I would recommend a 7900 build. No need to get a GPU since the 7900 have a GPU in it already - and yeah, it is little more than a glorified VGA adapter.
Here is an example for a core build that draws < 100W:
As always, this is to help you reach a decision on what to do; feel free to edit, add or remove anything of the above. AM5 is more expensive but also more energy efficient than AM4. Is it worth it, that is up to you to decide.
And yes, this is not a pure server build, per se - but for what you want to do it should be great.
It sounds like prices are a concern, on the gpu front the new consumer NVIDIA chips were finalized about 2 weeks ago and sent to manufacturing. They should be shipping by February. When that happens people will be selling their current 4xxx GPUs.
(the orig machine is fine but if you want to upgrade) The old equipment is perfectly fine. Set up the proxmox machine on the 5800x and it will serve you well. You can upgrade in place to 5900 or 5950x if you need more cores, and doubling the ram is fairly cheap compared to ddr5. If I were you I would just hold off on the gaming gpu or get a really cheap one so that you can buy it if you are actually going to go through with the project rather than buying it for a project you never set up. It’ll save you your mind and your money. If you want to just have a gpu for it, you can get quadro p200, p400, and p600 for pretty damn cheap right now. For encoding for stuff like jellyfin or plex with gpu, it should be perfectly fine for just one user unless you are doing something pretty crazy. At that point just go with an arc a310 or something similar, they have absurd value for encoding. Your setup here sounds just fine, feel free to ignore the others saying to buy a whole new build just for this. If anything, the ram might be overkill depending on what storage setup you have (hdds, ssds). If you build it and find that it isn’t enough you can always just move over the vms to newer hardware, giving things a trial run.
Failing that, just swap your disk into the new one. That way you don’t actually need a GPU and can ssh your way through without ever having to hook up a monitor.
I haven’t used proxmox, but I have ssh forwarded virtualbox from a headless server and was able to use my win10 vm just fine.
I`m leaning very much towards running with the AM4 solution, mainly due to the cheaper RAM, and I already have 64 GB of it.
My next question then would be around powerusage.
How would the 5800X or maybe a 5900X behave with ECO-mode or some tweaking with PBO? Would it really mather running ECO-mode?
I know the 7000-series had very good results using the PBO or running ECO in server settings, since you lost very little at the top, compared to the reduced temperatures and powerdraw.
it actually is a pretty noticeable difference. at a minimum you can turn a 5800x into a 5800 for a 10% performance loss and 30% power decrease. but with more tuning there have been some pretty crazy reports of like 2% performance loss at 40% power decrease. just depends on the chip.
I started buying the tesla series Nvidia cards. I have a K40, which is older has lots of VRAM for LLM playing. They are also perfect for the emulation VM’s that I plan on setting up for myself and my kids. The P4 runs about $200 and you get 1070-80 performance with no external power hookups. AAANNND they work with Nvida Grid, so you can split them up just like a CPU in a hypervisor. HomeLabs are a ton of fun keep playing brother!
