Hi, one of my friends is selling his old gaming PC, and as I am very new to the homelab/ PC world, I’m not sure how good value this is, and I’d like your thoughts on it!
He’s selling all of this for 800 Euros which is about $850 USD. My use case for this would probably be homelab server PC (my first one). I can use one of the GPUs for plex and the other GPU for cloud gaming server (we’ll see how that goes).
My first thought was that this was quite a good deal looking at the i7 6900k retail price and 64 GB of DDR4 ram, however thinking on it further I could probably spec a similar build in terms of horsepower which would be much more power and cost efficient.
None of that hardware is particularly attractive for a homelab, and the most valuable part of that configuration by far are the dual GTX 1070s which are overkill for your first server. You likely won’t need a GPU for the server at all.
You can definitely build a system on your own with a newer, more power efficient CPU that has more cores and more SSD/HDD space for that kind of money.
It’s not a bad deal per se but it’s not a particularly great server build either. Depending on the use-case(s), desirable features for homelab servers include CPU(s) that don’t suck down a ton of power at idle, headless operation, remote management (IPMI), ECC RAM, integrated SAS HBAs and/or 10G networking, NICs with SR-IOV support, etc. This build would fail most of those criteria, although it does have excellent expandability and quad-channel RAM.
If you’re interested in virtualization it could be a good starter VFIO workstation. I actually use an X99 system at my office (where I don’t pay the power bill) for this purpose since I need lots of cores, several expansion slots, high memory bandwidth, tons of storage (my board has 10 SATA and two U.2 ports), etc. The one caveat there is that VFIO workstations are typically easier to manage when you have two different GPU models—preferably from different vendors. And eight Broadwell-E cores is somewhat limiting… I’m finding 10 to be the bare minimum these days and I’m not doing anything particularly CPU intensive.
Since you’re planning to run a cloud gaming VM there is some potential there. But Plex, your other use-case, definitely doesn’t need a GTX 1070; if you’re planning to run Windows Server with monitor/keyboard attached you’re probably better off getting an Intel CPU with integrated graphics. And again the single-threaded performance of Broadwell-E leaves much to be desired, so you will probably feel some pain trying to run newer and more demanding titles in a VM on this hardware. I guess my point is that you could probably find more powerful, appropriate, and/or power-efficient hardware for a similar cost.
Sorry for sounding wishy-washy but I like to give perspective from both angles. HTH!
The CPU is getting somewhat long in the tooth, 500GB SSDs (even m.2) are on the smallish side.
The X99 platform was (is) great for the 40 PCIe slots it can support for expansion, which is what most people use to beef up their systems. I still operate my X99 mobo with a i7-5930k, but on a as-needed basis because of the power draw.
What I’m saying is: if I had it, I would use it for home labbing.
I think the platform can be interesting for getting into home labbing, but not at the cost. You’re spending money for a package that makes you pay for items that, at least at this point, you may not be interested in.
Consider alternatives.
I’d look for
reasonable modern (platform released within the last two years)
expandable (# available PCIe lanes, # available m.2 slots, other storage expansion options, e.g. U2, SAS, etc.)
To provide a tangible alternative consider the following for a first homelab server PC (always on):
AM4 based mATX mobo (e.g. ASUS TUF GAMING B550M-PLUS WIFI II, $160)
AMD Ryzen 5700G (8 cores/16thread, has limitations over the “X” version, but a builtin iGPU). The stock cooler will suffice. ($200)
DDR4-3200 RAM (as fast and large as you can afford; e.g. $220 for 2x32GB DDR4-3200 CL14)
This, with one m.2 SSD, will draw ~20W idle. Cost efficient for quiet 24/7 homelab operation. Less than $800.
There are two PCIe Gen4 slots and a second m.2 slot for expansion.
It’s pretty new and reasonably powerful to try all kinds of stuff.
From here you can expand it into a 64TB NAS with a SAS card and 8*8TB HDDs (~500-$600 with careful refurbished eBay selection).
Or you can expand it into a viciously fast VM host with a 4x bifurcation card and 4-5 m.2 SSDs ($30 card + SSDs); add a graphics card (in the second 4x PCIe slot) to create a gaming or AI/ML VM.
Don’t take this option verbatim as something to go by, but rather as food for thought. What is it that you want your home server for? Maybe an existing raspberry pi (cannot buy one new right now - ha!) is a good start?
Reading threads around here can easily give the impression that the latest Threadripper platform is required, but I don’t subscribe to this point of view.
Thanks! Yeah this it what I thought! Yeah and thanks for the alternative, I was considering AMD because of ECC support, just need to find a good MB that supports ECC.
Edit: I guess that MB does support ECC just not the CPU!
my small system draws 15w@wall without spinning drives. but had to use a debian backports kernel for proper c-states when idle. when u want to a run a gameserver, depending on the game, u need to compile your own kernel when u want the best perfomance for it (e.g. csgo).
for the start, if it would be “free”, its not that bad. but i think x99 boards draw alot of power compared to the smaller desktop stuff.
i think 10gbit for beginning and getting the desired hardware for all technerds dreams is expensive.
and for plex, he can use one gpu or more, but power draw at idle will be bad. i fiddled arround myself with plex/jellyfin and depending on your existing video files, u need to transcode it. when doing stuff on your own, u can use vlc to stream of (s)ftp(s) for simple usage, or use smb for your local network.
edit//
does power effiency is a goal by this community? what ive read so far on the enterprise level it is not consired at all, unless electricity is really expensive.
when doing such stuff, alot of ppl saying that u need a pico-psu do archive really good idle consumption.
The proposed alternative is what I currently use a home server.
I didn’t do my homework on the CPU and learned the hard way about the lack of ECC support in the CPU. Also, the 5700G doesn’t support PCIe Gen4.
If these things are important you can switch to any 5xx0X CPU from AMD and you will get ECC and PCIe Gen 4 support, but lose the iGPU.
In a separate build around 5900X on an ASUS WS X570 ASE board I am using an old NVidia GPU that fits into a single lane PCIe slot so that the 16x slots are not blocked by a GPU that I don’t really use. Also, they need active and performant cooling. But the price is power consumption: this system idles at 70-95W depending on what’s in the PCIe slots (typically m.2 or Optane drives). That’s why I only power them on when used.
Jellyfin will transcode almost everything when viewed in Firefox. Use the desktop client and it will simply stream.
Also, Jellyfin can use the iGPU of the AMD 5700G for transcoding, which is a plus.
The pico-PSUs are a little bit more efficient, but it only matters on a system that is already very efficient. E.g. shaving 1-2W off by switching the power supply matters in a world where the total system consumption is 10-15W idle, but is not worth the effort on a system that’s running 100W idle.
It depends on where you live or where your datacenter is located and how thrifty your CFO is. It sounds like OP lives in Europe so I would hazard a guess that power efficiency is a chief concern in this particular situation.
€800 for that? Only way to know if this is a good deal, is to see what you can get for €800 today. Let’s see what I can build that would be more or less equivalent, minus the GPUs:
Now, the question is, how badly do you need those GPUs? You can get an RX 6600 XT for ~€350, which gives around 115 FPS on 1080p Ultra, while the 1070 gives around 55 FPS on 1080p Ultra (on modern games, that is). The 6600 XT can handle 1440p comfortably for the next two years, while the 1070 cannot reach that far even today. On the Nvidia side a 1660 Ti costs around $250 and is on par with the 1070.
So, my conclusion is, not really worth it - for the same money you can get a home server platform for €150 less sans the GPUs, that sips power (~30W idle, 100W at full load + whatever GPU you put in there). For an always-on home server that is good enough unless you are going heavy into virtualization and/or machine learning, and at that point we are talking a vastly different set of hardware.
Dual 1070 in SLI could still be a good machine a couple of years more… But I would pay €400 for just the GPUs and put them in two low-end gaming rigs for the kids or something like that.
The cpu isn’t special these days and the rest of the platform is all obsolete with no modern upgrade path.
If you want something that performs like that buy a cheap ryzen 5 box and an rx6600. You’ll get something likely higher performance and a warranty for similar outlay.
Edit: for home lab skip the 6600 and put the funds into ram and ssd.
I’m going to buck the trend a little here and suggest that for entry home lab stuff you can get by with 4-6 cores so long as you have plenty of ram and SSD. pcie lanes if it isn’t a dual purpose VFIO or gaming rig are enough for entry lab on consumer platform. You can even go to usb connected SSD storage in caddies and it works faster than a lot of servers you’ll support because there’s no user load at home. On consumer platform you’re actually likely to run out of ram first, then probably CPU.
Even usb connected sata ssd is WAY faster than a lot of servers I still have in the field running real workloads for 10-30 users. It’s faster storage than I ran a 300 user vm cluster on 10 years ago (one decent sata ssd is already higher throughput than a couple of RU of spinning disk) and shit hasn’t changed THAT much outside of AI/ML.
It’s easy to get carried away massively over speccing home lab stuff but it depends what you’re running in your lab.
i think he wants to use the system for homelabbing and fiddling around with it. i dont think he is gaming. didnt compared the prices and looked for stuff. and i dont think that the hedt plattform of intel is that lower power in idle. e.g. ive created a thread for my desktop server and found out something is buggy with debian/kabylake/ for powersaving. dunno if ryzen and linux got proper idle powersaving stuff. the dual gpu setup would be ok for transcoding with plex/jellyfin if it would work.
and he can save some money on the psu, getting 500w or lower for just the cpu/igp is enough, unless he wants to put alot of storage into it. and he doenst need that expensive ddr4,
is more then enough, he doenst need “low” timing for better throughput, higher ramspeed is better as low timings. buildzoid has a video about how to calculate whats the better offer, lower timings or speed. in general his opinion was that lower timings arent that much worth the bigger price.
i was thinking about replacing my “zombie” now. after some testing and alot of struggling i think my kaby lake wanne die, or the mainboard.
does hardware accelration work on these apu’s? ive read depending on the os it may work for plex/jellyfin. and is powermanagement working? my zombie needs to jump throw alot of hoops for proper c states on package level.
The APUs have some HW acceleration, yes. It is slightly stronger than an RX 550 (yes, the Polaris edition), but about 30% worse than a 560.
It works quite well for single player games and can do e-sports in a pinch with medium settings, but I do not recommend it as a main gaming rig or a Blender / CAD rig. For non-gaming tasks it is awesome.
On Linux, acceleration should Just Work™ on both AMD and Nvidia. If in doubt, an RX 6400 ($149) should give you sufficient power for Linux, and the 5700G combined with the 6400 should give most HW decoders. At the same time, downgrading to a 5500 to afford a regular $250 6600 is also an option. Unfortunately cheapest Nvidia GPU with codecs acceleration is the $280 3050, which is about a tier weaker than the 6600.
im not going to game on this rig, just simple transcoding if it is necessary. ive read that intel igp’s can hundle up to 4 4k to 1080p transcode in hevc, but never tested it. when looking for stuff, u only find nvidia stuff whats up to date for this. when i remember correctly vega e.g. just was able to do 2 transcode at the same time. maybe kind of the same bottleneck like geforce gaming cards vs. their quadro counterparts?
hm did a search myself, i think some intel celeron/pentium gold/i3 12100 should be a better value for my usecase, linux and jellyfin. looks like sw is lacking for this kind of stuff on the amd side
Unfortunately this is a bad time to buy new right now as 12th gen prices have gone up as production ends and 13th gen prices are still above launch MSRP as it’s only been two weeks for the non-K’s. It makes no sense to buy a G7400 at nearly $100 when the 12100 is +30% cost for about 70% more performance. The new 13100 is +15% cost for only 2-3% more performance as it is just a slightly higher clocked alderlake refresh. 12100 supply is becoming increasingly inconsistent though, so keep that in mind.
13100 tray like ~150€ and boxed ~154€. but dunno if the low end boards allow cpu-less bios flash, i doubt it. i want to recycle the old ddr4-2400 rams of my old zombie.
