I’m new here. Found out about the forums because I follow the youtube channel. I knew levelonetech was the right place to come with these questions.
Long story short. I want to build a home server. I want this server to be able to host at least one game server instance (Will most likely be RUST from facepunch studios). At the same time, I want to also be able to serve media to a handful of people. As well as other general projects and shenanigans, while still keeping the game server and media streaming going at the same time.
I have access to a 1gb/1gb symmetrical internet connection with a static IP. So internet connection shouldn’t be a problem.
I have built a few home PC’s for myself in the past, so I know a small amount about hardware. However, I don’t really know much about server hardware, and the information seems a bit harder to find.
The main question I have is, can I get away with using consumer grade desktop parts, or do I specifically need server grade parts in order to avoid bottlenecks? I am looking to use AMD parts. I’ve been an AMD fanboy well before they actually passed Intel in terms of performance. AMD also plays better with linux and I might want to install linux on it later. So with that being said. Can I use a Ryzen, or do I need to move to an entry level EPYC cpu in order to avoid a hardware bottlenecking?
Overall, how should the components of the server differ from a home desktop in order to make sure it can serve all the functions I need?
I already know I’m going with some type of ECC ram. As well as NAS hard drives for the storage. I have an older GTX760 and I was wondering if that would be sufficient enough to deal with the media encoding? How much ram will I end up needing to run all of this?
Be careful and check your ISP terms of service, as some do not allow hosting public servers on your home connection. If this is the case, you could always get a cheap VPS with fast network and connect that to your home network via VPN, then connect to the VPS for your servers.
In terms of raw speed, consumer CPUs are just as fast as server chips, at least on the AMD side. Same with graphics, although with a few caveats for certain number crunching.
The benefits of using server parts are more things like that they have an IPMI for remote management, they support ECC ram(some desktop boards do as well), they often are a bit better for PCIe passthrough(better IOMMU, support SR-IOV, support PCIe burification).
For any NAS that is not very very budget, I would suggest 10gbps or faster networking.
You also will probably want to go with a PCIe drive controller rather then the motherboard ports.
The most striking difference between desktop and server use is the use case. I’ve used desktop workstations with ecc ram and without, with Xeon CPUs and with Celerons, its all just machines that run software, as long as you’re not a business or end up somehow having to deploy hardware you can’t reach physically easily anymore, don’t bother. As long as you have physical access to fix stuff, get desktop parts.
TBH, the most useful thing for a server is IPMI, because it allows you to out the machine far away from any kind of monitor and keyboard, and then lets your recover without using the monitor or keyboard. (Which limits you to ASRock Rack motherboards with ryzen).
Everything else, regular desktop parts sound fine to me for your use case, I wouldn’t even bother with ecc. NAS hard drives are a good idea even for desktop use cases (if you actually have a need for an HDD in your desktop and 2T QLC drives are too small or just don’t cut it for you for some reason, and you don’t feel like buying those 8T or 30T expensive SSDs)
Regarding transcoding, I try not do it, and I mostly manage to get away without having to do it.
The usual first question is “what is your budget” and usually the rest of your specs become just subsets of what is affordable. Epyc for home server is overkill. If you can’t get the performance you need from a low end Xeon or threadripper (or Ryzen) then you aren’t describing a home use case and it is unlikely you would want the kit at home.
Others have mentioned above but bottleneck is an often misused term. Provided the system meets the use case then there is no “bottleneck”. The most likely limit you will have is storage speed as you will probably be using a consumer grade case and data, rather than an enterprise chassis with NVMe. The ram, CPU and GPU will be more than enough for any home needs provided they are current or last 2 generations.
Things to spend more money on are fans and PSU. Don’t get cheap ones. Also get enough storage to build redundancy. Budget for 30% overprovisioning so you can use parity drives.
Not sure I agree with this. There are benefits to using Linux on Zen cores for multithreading but there are some things that Xeon does better still and Ryzen works fine with windows server if you don’t exceed 32 cores. And again, at home why would you.
My strong advice to you would be to build a prototype home server from used parts and get it functioning as you would like. You seem experienced to do this and test various os and storage solutions. Then look at what needs scaling up, decide on your preferred form factor (rackmount or tower or just a cardboard box).
Budget also for a UPS, decent switch, and some backup disks as well in your overall design.
You’re not looking to run this for $$$, but mainly for fun and home use. Provided you’re using a clean environment, you’re good using regular equipment.
Enterprise Level Equipment
Meant for 100% usage, 24/7 (MTBF is generally much higher)
Designed with fail safes in mind, and redundancy
Vastly more PCIe lanes
Prosumer Equipment
Feature rich motherboards
Overclockable
Not limited to ECC memory
That being said, for your use, provided you have a fairly well temperature regulated room, and in a non carpeted room, you should be good with either setup.
My $0.02 on what you should do for a setup;
CPU - Intel or AMD
ATX MoBo - that has 3 PCIe x16 slots (pinned x16, x8, x4 from top > bottom)
GPU - GT 710 or similar (uses power over PCIe slot, is only x8 PCIe lanes)
Storage - LSI SAS6260-4i (8i version supports 8 drives, vs 4i supports 4 drives | uses SAS and SATA) (uses x8 PCIe lanes)
The motherboard for the above example (from AMD’s side) would need to be like a X370, X470 or X570. As the bottom pinned x4 full length x16 slot uses the PCIe lanes over the chipset. I have a similar setup to this with my old 1800X using what is now my old Fusion ioScale 3.2tb drive for my VM’s in the bottom slot, and a LSI Mega RAID adapter (4i as above) just below the GPU in the 2nd x8 full length x16 slot, and the GT 710 in the top slot. All my VM’s are on the Fusion ioScale drive, and the LSI Mega RAID is my file storage with 3x 4TB SAS drives. I only have 32GB of RAM in the setup now, but need to add another 32GB down the road as my VM farm grows.
