Epyc home server build help

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Hey all!

So with next gen Xeons and Epyc recently dropping I am hoping that his summer/fall we will see some last gen Epyc come onto the used market for reasonable prices. I should also be starting at a new job in the spring and am considering treating myself to a proper server rather than running my old desktop as my primary server.

What I am doing with my server rn:
Jellyfin
Docker services for small websites and apps for personal use
Nextcloud
Trunas Scale (3 mech HDD’s but wouldn’t mind 3 more so I can have some more redundancy)
pfSense

I would like to add:
CCTV/security system
Home Assistant

Serves 2-4 people at a time

So I don’t really need a ton of horsepower but I would like some more PCI-E lanes and ipmi/out of band management. Currently running into PCI-E limitations with my Ryzen 3600X system and obv no EEC memory or ipmi.

Ideal system would be 2 GPU’s. One passed to Jellyfin for transcoding and another for a windows VM. 10G NIC (I have a few Intel X520 dual SFP+ cards so I am not prioritizing 10G onboard NIC’s), 3 to 6 HDD’s, minimum of 64GB of memory and 8-16 cores. If those requirements seem outlandish or not enough please offer suggestions. Like I said I am currently running on a Ryzen 6 core system and I am not really wanting for power it is more a PCI-E and IPMI issue.

What do you think is a realistic budget for a system like this, would it be more cost effective to build it from scratch or buy a refurb server, and what are some suggestions for hardware?

Also would preferably like to keep noise down which makes me lean more towards building from scratch and using a 4u case. I have a 25U rack to play with and only 10U is in use by other things.

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keep in mind that Epyc are vendor locked sometimes so you need to verify that the CPU will work in a new or different motherboard before buying used.

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Depends on where you are, but expect north of USD1000. I’m currently building out an EPYC system, reusing an Antec 3U rack case which has only room for an ATX PSU, and my spending so far plus projected costs is about that amount (actually, more like 1000€ as I’m in Euro-land, both denominations are almost on parity nowadays)

  • Supermicro H11SSL-i (300€)
  • EPYC 7551P CPU (200€)
  • 2U cooler for SP3, with fan (41€)
  • 1U fanless SP3 cooler (30€)
  • NVMe system drive: 2TB Chinese brand (120€)

Obviously I’ll need to decide which cooler to use, but I still have the expense!

Still to come:

  • RAM: Kingston KSM32ED8/16MR, 16GB ECC (55€x4, Kingston is running a promo here, chance of doubling your purchase at my ‘local’ supplier)
  • HDD’s: various brands 16TB disks, total 4 for a RAID6 setup (approx 300€ each)

HTH!

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Thanks for detailing your build. I expect to be in about ~$1500. Out of curiosity have you gotten it up and running and if so how are the temps looking with those coolers?

Edit: sorry just saw that you are still waiting on RAM.

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