My i7-4770S based home server is experiencing some mysterious problems, so it’s time for a replacement. I mostly know what I want to build, just wanted someone to review.
Scope
General purpose home server. My current setup is a Fedora VM host with OpenZFS running one “production” VM for containers and a handful smaller VMs for playing around. More resource-hungry containers include Nextcloud, Jellyfin, Audiobookshelf, I2P and a few qBittorrent instances. I’m the only user, but I eventually plan to give some access for my family. I intend to continue with similar setup, maybe even go for root on ZFS.
Planed build
I aimed a bit more on the budget side and for some room for upgrades, mostly more RAM or a faster CPU in the future.
All of the storage listed above, except for M.2 drive, will be transferred from my old server. As for graphics card, I have the 1060 listed in the parts gathering dust, I may or may not include it in the final build, it’s there mostly for PSU estimation.
Concerns
I’m not sure how to estimate if I have enough clearance between the CPU cooler and RAM. I want to upgrade to full capacity eventually. Any hints?
Z790 seems good enough forme. Any compatibility problems to look out for? Would you go for DDR4 or DDR5 version?
I absolutely hate right-angle SATA connectors, but it seems to be a norm with this chipset. Are there any motherboards with 8 SATA ports and straight connectors?
Noise is not a deal breaker, but I aim to keep it at moderate level at least on idle. I slightly oversized the PSU and picked the same cooler as in my gaming box. I appreciate any suggestions of different PSUs, wattage or cooler.
Final notes
While I appreciate all suggestions for different parts I will use what’s avaialble and well priced locally in Poland (EU).
As for your setup, if you are spending this much money for a mere 12TB of usable storage, can I instead interest you in the 6 port Asustor Flashstor Gen 2, which will have dual 5GbE ports, ECC memory, 6 slots for NVMe memory, a power draw between 20W-40W and all that to an estimated cost of €600 + drives? There will also be a €900 version with 2x10 GbE and 12 slots of storage. The original flashstor was barely cutting it, this one seems to be solving most problems:
Only problem is that 4TB NVMe storage is €300 right now.
All of the storage except M.2 for boot drive will come from my old box. It’s on the list just for power calculations. My total amount of data at this point is below 5 TB.
I saw your list including multiple ssd and hdd. Usually, you don’t really need redandent. Instead, you need a backup procedure. ZFS make backup and restore so easy that I don’t even bother raid my disks. If anything goes wrong, I just pull it from backup. Buy the largest disk that you can affort instead of multiple smaller ones. The less you own, the less they go wrong.
12400 should come with a boxed cooler. You don’t need a tower cooler.
The motherboard should be no more expensive than the cpu. It is not cost effective. Z790 supports overclock, and it is useless with 12400.
I have ZFS pools with redundant vdevs, scrubbed monthly and synced to my own remote backup box over Tailscale and a cloud backup for critical files. All automated and encrypted. Restoring from remotes is a pain in the back end, so I still do RAID and mirrors.
I can’t hear my thoughts over boxed Intel coolers.
This build is designed for some upgradability in the future. I’m replacing my outdated an possibly failing box before it fails for good. I don’t want to spend too much upfront.