Hi all, I’ve joined the community to ask for some advice on a platform upgrade. I’m wanting to migrate to an ECC platform for my current setup. I’ve had a read through some of the previous threads and have picked up some good tips, but I’m wanting to canvas the opinion of the community. Sorry for the essay, but the more context, the better, and the more comments on things I’ve been stupid with the better!
Usecase:
- TrueNAS SCALE 24.04 (so over to Incus which I’ve found much more consistent than KVM)
- The standard docker apps (Calibre, Firefly, Heimdal, Immich, Paperless-NGX, Plex, Open WebUI, StirlingPDF, Tautulli) - Probably more to be added
- VMs - HomeAssistantOS, a linux VM or two for tinkering, ChimeraOS as a Sunshine/Moonlight client
- VMs to be added - A linux VM with Suricata running from logs from my Omada controller, I’d also like to play around with running an ELK stack
- NAS - Media, documents and photos. Until recently nothing particularly important, but using more for work documents and requirement for solid data integrity
Current system:
- Jonsbo N4
- 13500T
- MSI Mag Mortar B660M
- 64Gb DDR4 - 4x 16Gb
- nVidia a2000 12Gb
- NAS Storage: 2x 24Tb HDD, 2x 18Tb HDD, 2x 10Tb HDD, 2x 4Tb HDD (all drives mirrored)
- System drives: 1x 256Gb M.2 boot drive, 2x 1Tb M.2 (mirrored) as app pool, 1x 2Tb SSD as a VM pool
- Addins: Vantec USB 3.0 to Dual Gigabit ethernet adapter (for VM bridge connections), PCI-E X1 to SATA Controller, Valuegist Dual M.2 PCIE Adapter (so one of the app M.2s is operating as an SSD).
- Network: Omada network (ER707-M2 with 2x EAP772s for wireless), nothing above 2.5Gb. One slightly limiting factor is a Coax MoCA 2.5 for wired meshing of APs. Works great, but not duplex. Remote access via OpenVPN. Nothing (other than plex) is exposed outside the network. This will likely be moved to Wireguard or Tailscale for speed.
Reason for change:
- Upgrading to ECC. All of my hardware is second hand and I’m shifting my usecase to use this server more towards “important” storage and tasks. Whilst my storage has historically been format shifted media and device backups, I’m now shifting to storage of more important work-critical documents and a lot of photos.
- Moving from tinkering with LLMs to actually properly using them in a work context and providing uses to a small number of others. If moving to an ECC platform, I may as well go to DDR5, and I’m aware of the limitations of a 12Gb VRAM card for models, so DDR5 would be nice to use as overflow. Not necessary, but nice. Locally hosted models will be trained on a vector dataset I’ve generated from academic articles/textbooks for my particular (quite niche) field of work.
- Disposable income. This is a hobby, and I love it. I don’t want to spend money frivolously, but I’m very happy to drop money on a system that will serve me well and I’d rather go overkill on hardware. The more I’ve learned, the more I’ve enjoyed it, the more I want to do more with what I have, the better the return-on-investment. At every stage so far down this journey, I’ve regretted not “going bigger”, down the line.
Proposed change:
- Motherboard Asrock Rack W680D4U/2L2T/G5. I really like the N4 base, I’m not sure I’ll be moving to a rack any time soon, limiting me to m-ATX form factor and half height. Happy to review this.
- ECC ram accordingly. Start on 2x32Gb, as leaves room for more.
- Maybe processor upgrade? The 13500T has been great so far and I have not been getting close to maxing it, but as I add more VMs, I’m consious of tying more cores up to specific tasks. Probably not an issue and it’s lowest on the priority list. I guess this point it more to highlight that I don’t mind changing platforms/processors.
Questions:
- Am I being stupid and over-worrying? Is it probably fine to stay with what I have without spending not insignificant amounts on new hardware?
- Am I focussing on the right thing to upgrade? I have seen countless threads debating ECC vs not, and I suspect there isn’t a correct answer other than “it’s fine until it’s not”. I’d just rather it didn’t get to the “not” stage.
- Should I stay on this platform? If assessing platform, is LGA1700 the right way to go? I have seen this asked before (Rebuild a home server - LGA1700 still good? - #4 by MetalizeYourBrain), so apologies for re-iterating. My reasoning so far is the presence of iGPU for plex transcoding, freeing the a2000 for LLM + VM use. Plus “T” series for power consumption, or lack thereof. I don’t mind migrating to a new platform, but T series 13th/14th gen seems like a sensible compromise for all things, power consumption, heat generation, etc. I could upgrade, but the CPU utilisation in the system at present doesn’t imply a CPU change is needed. But are there better, more modern options out there? I have seen few compelling arguments for Core Ultra at this stage.
- I’ve seen a few comments arguing for the decoupling of virtualisation and NAS machines, I definitely hear that, but at present I’m probably going to keep it together, until I get to the inevitable “full rack”.
- Any other comments on the above in terms of stupidity or things I’m doing wrong? I’m not an IT professional, so all thoughts and comments welcome! It’s why I’ve tried to include as much details as possible.
If you’ve made it this far, thank you very much for your time and for listening to me ramble. And thanks all for being awesome and providing so much good reading for us lurkers!