Hello!
I have been digging into building my first server for a little bit now and I keep hitting road blocks with the PCIe lanes of desktop CPUs. I have a Ryzen 7 2700 available from when I first built my PC along with the motherboard and some RAM for it. Whenever I try to conceptualize a build to use it in though, I run short on PCIe lanes. I would like to make an AIO server for starters - Maybe Proxmox to run VMs with TrueNAS, Plex, Immich, Pihole(?), and room to mess around with other stuff as I learn more. Sounds simple enough. Nothing wild going on.
I have a video/photography business that I would be using the NAS for. I would really like to be able to store my projects on the NAS to be able to swap back and forth from my Desktop to my Laptop for editing depending on the needs of the day - or my wife could be editing some stuff while I am editing other stuff on the two machines. So I want 10g Ethernet in it. Right now, I am limited to the 10g card, a GPU (for hardware acceleration in Plex), and the four available SATA ports (six, but two get disabled when the PCIe slot is used) on my MOBO for this. I plan to run RAID 10 (or ZFS Striped vdevs - if that is what its called) to maximize random read/write which affects video editing. When I want to expand my storage without having to just replace all the drives, I will need an LSI HBA card I think (correct me if I am thinking wrong - I have never built a server or messed with any of this type of stuff before). I have no slots left in my motherboard, and no other motherboards that give me any more slots to work with.
So now I have gone down the rabbit hole of chasing PCIe lanes. I have not messed with server equipment, but a few quick looks around eBay and other markets showed me the price is astronomical if I am getting stuff with lots of lanes. The alternative I see is a Threadripper 3960X. I see them all over eBay for $400 or so and a motherboard to go with it for another $200-300. I get plenty of PCIe Gen 4 lanes with it, so could theoretically add a couple LSI HBA cards and add as much storage as I would want.
My concern is primarily the power of a Threadripper CPU for this application. Since it is not a server CPU, I think it is simply overkill on a power level for what I am doing and will idle way higher than I would like it to. I don’t need the machine just chugging all the time. Is undervolting/underclocking or whatever a thing that would be useful in this situation? Can you starve the CPU a bit to keep it from drawing so much power? Is this whole thing just a dumb idea?
I appreciate any input you are willing to give! I am excited to dig into this new realm for me - networking and servers and all kinds of things. Seems really cool!
Warm regards,
Creatorbros3
You’re not crazy at all — Threadripper is actually one of the best “prosumer server” platforms for exactly what you’re trying to do (lots of PCIe lanes without paying full EPYC tax).
Here’s the practical answer:
Is a 3960X overkill for a NAS/Proxmox box?
Yes on CPU power… but no on platform value.
You’re not buying it because you need 24 cores.
You’re buying it because it gives you the PCIe lanes + slots to run:
- 10Gb NIC
- GPU for Plex/VM passthrough
- HBA (and maybe even a second HBA later)
- NVMe cache / extra SSDs
…without everything fighting for bandwidth.
That’s exactly what Threadripper is good at.
Will it idle high and waste power?
It can idle higher than a typical Ryzen box, but it’s not automatically a power hog 24/7.
Easy ways to tame it:
- Turn on Global C-States in BIOS
- Set Windows/Linux power profile to Balanced / Power Saver
- Disable PBO / set Eco-ish limits (if your board supports it)
- Undervolting on Threadripper is hit-or-miss, but power limiting works
For your workload (NAS + a few services + occasional Plex + VMs), the CPU will sit mostly idle anyway.
“Can I starve it so it draws less?”
Yep. The best “set it and forget it” move is simply:
- balanced governor + C-states
- limit boost / power caps if available
That’s usually enough to bring idle down without breaking stability.
Your current Ryzen 2700 issue
You’re hitting the classic problem: not enough lanes / too few usable slots, and some boards disable SATA ports when you populate certain PCIe slots. That’s normal consumer-platform pain.
My honest recommendation
If you want “one box that does everything” (Proxmox + TrueNAS + Plex + room to grow), Threadripper 3960X is a solid move.
If you want lowest idle power and don’t care about big storage expansion: stick with mainstream Ryzen + fewer add-in cards.
Quick clarification (to make sure you buy the right thing)
How many drives are you aiming for in the next 12 months?
- 6–8 drives total?
- 10–16 drives total?
If you’re heading past 8 drives + want GPU + 10Gb, Threadripper makes even more sense.
Thank you for the reply!
That sounds like a ChatGPT response though. ChatGPT likes to tell me I am not crazy. Lol I have messaged with it for a while about a lot of my ideas for a server, but decided to test my conclusions against actual users now as I have minimal faith in AI without credible real-world experience backing it up.
Is this based on your real-world experience or is it AI making an educated guess?
Hah! That does indeed sound like a Chat GPT response. I don’t necessarily disagree with it though.
As an actual 3960x owner and daily driver, I will say that it’s a uniquely good buy because you get the PCI lanes without requiring RDIMMS or ECC memory, as a server board may, and as a newer threadripper absolutely will. Given how expensive memory is today, having 8 regular DDR4 DIMMS on a TRX40 board gives you a lot of options.
These chips do run hot, but under-volting and setting power states is a good strategy. I’m five and a half years into my build, and I say I have another good four years to go before it gets to be worth upgrading.
3 Likes
Same here - have a 3960x as a daily driver for photography (ZereneStacker loves threads and bandwidth, so does DarkTable) for the last 5 years. If you want PCIe and future upgrade opportunities, you might want to also look at the WRX80 platforms. Use the same UDIMMs and plonk a cheap-ish CPU (3945wx)for now. When the bubble bursts, collect a TB of RAM and shove it in the 8-channel board. If you are lucky, you could snipe a 5995WX on-route. I’ll prolly run out of ideas before PCIe lanes 
I am back digging around on this topic. Now on the thread of power consumption. How is the idle power draw for you? If I am planning to put this in a server that will be idle a large portion of the time, what can I expect for power with that? I don’t want something that is constantly chugging the power.
