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Hello all,

First time post, but have loved learning from everyone. Here’s the important info from the stickied post:
Budget: Within reason - While I don’t have one, I don’t see a reason for going HEDT.
Location: SE US, have access to Atlanta and Charlotte Microcenters. And probably Indianapolis, others depending on when I actually buy everything
Retailers: I have no loyalty. Give me best deal.
Other Info

I’m planning a home server build for my new home. I was anticipating using a single 4U chassis for a multi-purpose server, but don’t even know if that’s the proper route. Here’s a list of hard use cases I’d use it for:

  1. Game servers - FiveM, DayZ, 7 Days to Die, Minecraft, Project Zomboid, and more. They’d all be private/for known friends only, but they’d be connecting from around the country.
  2. NAS/Personal Cloud - I want to be able to start with a small pool of storage and expand over time. I’d like to rip all my movies to it and be able to access anywhere. Additionally, I want a large pool of storage that can be assigned individual users.
  3. NVR - Planning for POE Security cams, with motion tracking, automatic clipping, etc. It’d also be nice to implement vehicle recognition or license plate reading. (Vehicle with specific plate parks, create bookmark & clip that “Dad has arrived at 12 PM”
  4. Compute machine - When game servers aren’t in use, it’d be nice to turn them off and use it to do compute tasks, like CFD or other forms of modeling.

Current Plan
My current plan is to run TrueNAS with Own/Next Cloud, and a Windows VM for the game servers. Some form of media library (Plex, Jellyfin, etc.) will allow me to stream movies wherever I want. My understanding of TrueNAS is that you can expand storage at any time. Long term, I’d anticipate 3x drive banks with 5 drives each, in ZFS1, for one drive of redundancy per bank. The Windows VM would run off it’s own NVMe, and I’d have a cache NVMe.

None of the data being accessed for mass storage is going to be super speed critical. 99% of the time, it’s going to be limited by a 50Mbps upload connection (yay cable). Any data pertaining to my wife’s research group is going to be mirrored offsite. Everything else is likely expendable. Here’s my current parts list:

16 core AM5 CPU
Large (ish) tower air cooler
96GB DDR5 6000 C30 - I can clock down
AM5 motherboard with 10GBe - ProArt, Hero, etc.
NVMe for any OS hosted in a VM. (Windows or Linux, add as necessary)
x8 GPU for encoding, probably an A380 to be honest
Rosewill RSV-L4500U - something similar to this for the chassis. Anybody have a recommendation? Also considered the Sliger CX4712 as a 12 drive option.

What I need help with:
CPU: 7950X, 7950X3D, 9950X

  1. Do I opt for X3D for the game server portion of this?
  2. Is 8 cores enough for TrueNAS and all it’s tasks?
  3. Will the media server, Next/Own Cloud be adding too much to the other 8 cores?

Is doing this all on one machine even worth it? Or do I need to break it up somehow?
How best do I go about breaking out PCIe lanes to SATA drives?

Sorry for the long winded post. I’m sure most of you only need a little of the information I gave, but I assume it can’t hurt to give more.

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You are severely overspeccing here, which will lead to a very performant machine that will chow on power like nothing else.

I would recommend the 7900 non-X and ditch the 380 unless you really need it. That will save you around 30W-40W in power budget, or roughly 300 kWh per year. If you later find out you need the A380 add it.

4 cores is more than enough for TrueNAS. Another interesting contender for the above plans could be something like the QNAP TBS-h574tx, depending on if you can live with a 16TB storage limit for a few years while the e1.s standard proliferate.

3

The HL15 can be a good starting point for you.

4

That’s actually good to hear, and why I was open to the idea of splitting into multiple machines, like you’re suggesting with the QNAP. Unfortunately, the link is broken, but I can find it based on your info.

Am I? 8 cores for TrueNAS does seem overkill, I’ll give you that. However, TrueNAS wouldn’t be the only thing residing on those 8 cores. Cache CCD would be for the Windows VM/whatever for game servers, and the other CCD would be the “everything else I decide to throw on it” die. TrueNAS, NVR, Home Assistant, VPN, Cloud provider. For the game server side of things, I felt 8 cores would be adequate. Most of those servers I plan to run concurrently. I was more curious if anyone had experience running DayZ, Zomboid, etc. Minecraft likes single thread performance, and FiveM likes memory performance.

I remembered about the A310 after reading your post. Regardless, if I’m only doing 1-3 transcodes at a time, I probably wouldn’t need it. Max 2 video streams from Jellyfin, and maybe 1 from cameras.

7900 or 7900X3D actually seem like good options. It’s just figuring out what the majority of those game servers prefer, clock or memory.

Mmm, I knew someone would bring this up. I have slightly mixed feelings on it, but really wasn’t sure if $3-500 was worth it for a backplane over the other two options. Additionally, this is where the fact I’m an enterprise noob really comes in to play. I don’t know which cable set I would need.

Edit I have found the 45Drives forums, and found a post detailing the specs of the backplane. While it’s not perfect, it’s certainly better than a PCIe to SATA card + running 15 individual cables. The only downside is Molex.

side tangents, feel free to skip
Like, normally the cables are 1-4x breakout, so do I need the 4x of the same, end, and the backplane does the breakout? Or is the “direct wired” saying that each drive slot will need a cable and power connection?

I was honestly hoping to find some backplane that would use PCIe power and some connection that could be broken out on the PCB so it’d only be a couple cables. Now that would be sleek. (ie 1 data cable and 1-2 power cables)

Changes
So based on recommendations, I’m really just adding the 12 core CPUs as options. I need to do some personal investigation into the types of performance the game servers recommend.
If someone can help figure out which cables I’d need, I’d probably do the HL15, especially if it also reduces cable clutter.

Side note, my electricity is 12 cents/kwh, if I really try to round up. Based on that, 300 kWh is like $36 a year, so power wasn’t much of a concern. I’m also planning on adding solar or other renewables as fun projects.

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I oerdered the device fully built, however 45 Drives also will help you make those decisions, and get the cables and HBA card you would need. Heck, they’ll sell it to you as well. If you can run TrueNAS now, you can run TrueNAS on that, it’s just bigger and stronger and maybe even faster.

You don’t need to buy it fully built, you can buy the backplane/HBA/Cables/PSU from them and add your own motherboard and CPU, or select from their options from mild to wild. I strongly recommend the Noctua fan kit though, it makes a huge difference in sound levels if that’s important to you.

And as a bonus, you’ll have that case for the rest of your life. I can nearly guarantee it.