Getting most out of my Ryzen 5 1600X for a Server Build

Greetings,

my current private server runs on an old AMD Phenom II X4 and I thought, it is finally time to upgrade a little bit and do it better than it is currently.

The plan:
Use my available old hardware for a simple server build and install Proxmox on it. My current server just runs Windows. So pretty meh.

Available hardware:
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 1600X
MoBo: MSI X370 Gaming Pro
RAM: don’t have any fitting, but would get used 4x8GB Corsair DDR4 3000MHZ CL15 sticks
PS: 600W from my current server
Case: from my current server (doesn’t really matter)

The Proxmox server will then have my pihole, octopi & linux server instances, so I can learn more how to handly Proxmox etc.

So my main questions are currently:
Is that ok for some old hardware to use it for a server?
And are there any tricks how to get most out of my old CPU with the given hardware?

I appreciate any feedback <3

Yes that’s fine. Proxmox or TrueNAS Core are fine.
You may want to add network cards and don’t have a graphics output.
You can fit a little £15 AMD R7 into a 1x slot if you saw a notch in the PCB. It’s useful to have a permanent monitor output on your server.

Don’t try and use an SSD cache, it does not help. Do fit an SSD for your VMs. Do get an HBA and cheap SAS HDD drives and make that a ZFS.

Do get a decent pair of USB 3 sticks for your OS so you can dedicate your SATA ports to storage drives. USB sticks for your OS works fine, just get good ones like Kingston or Sandisk.

1 Like

My :coin: :coin:

Install a 1TB NVMe drive, partition it to have 256GB for the OS (that’s waaayyy overkill, 128GB would suffice just as well), 512GB for your VM’s and leave the remainder untouched. This will increase the lifespan of said drive as the controller has more cells available for wearlevelling. You can get these for under 100 bucks (USD). Even cheap Chinese PCIe gen 3 drives (Aliexpress!) are notably faster then a SATA SSD, never mind a USB drive!

With 6 SATA ports for your HDD’s you won’t need an HBA just yet, so spreading your costs until you need to expand your storage.

Do NOT use USB flash drives for the OS, especially when using a journaling filesystem, like is standard on Proxmox and TrueNAS. No need for said sticks, the NVMe drive takes care of that particular issue.

You do need a GPU, as stated before, but a dirt-cheap GT710 or even a GT210 will do just fine. Other options available, as long as the GPU works it’ll do for server use.

Extra network ports are useful for your various VM’s, keeping traffic separate from the main onboard NIC.

HTH!

1 Like

What are your plans for storage? For a start I’d suggest one drive for your proxmox root, and a second for your VMs. This means you can move your VMs to a new system without worrying about your root drive.

If you’re buying RAM I’d go for 2 x 16GB sticks depending on prices. Then you can add two more sticks to increase capacity in the future. Most virtual machine workloads aren’t too RAM heavy, so you don’t need the fastest stuff.

More than good enough for “old” hardware. I recently upgraded my NAS from a 3rd gen to a 6th gen intel system, and that was only because I was shuffling hardware. Now a friend is running that 3rd gen system as a NAS.

Figure out your plan for backups.

1 Like

I’d set a dynamic negative core offset for reduced power consumption and heat, can generally get away with -0.100v
Are you absolutely sure that cou can handle 4x sticks running 3000? Might be wiser and cheaper to aim for 2666 or 2800

1 Like

That’s a good point. I do have the option to switch out my RAM from my desktop PC (2x 8GB at 2133MHz). So my main machine would actually get an upgrade and the server would have less RAM available. But I guess, that should be ok for now.

Thank you for feedback regarding storage. I don’t have a NVMe but do have an SSD M.2 on my hand. I think I will use it for the Proxmox and some HDDs for storage and one SSD for some spezific stuff, that I need to load faster.

Backup is a good point as well, I did not thínk enough about.

1 Like

It isn’t a bad build at all, however I would recommend a Ryzen 5500 upgrade for $115. Twice the performance in half the power envelope on the same platform.

This topic was automatically closed 273 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.