I currently use TrueNAS SCALE as my NAS and also to host some VMs/K8s apps.
I think I want to detach my NAS from my VM host, use TrueNAS only as the NAS/file server, and build a new box which will run Proxmox. I prefer Promox to TrueNas SCALE for hosting VMs/containers for a few different reasons.
My TrueNAS box currently has 2x Intel 2690 CPUs, which are a bit obsolete from a performance/power consumption standpoint, though they do seem to perform well enough for my use case.
Can anybody recommend a server-grade CPU/motherboard combo that has a good compromise of performance/power consumption and price (used is fine)?
Big decision between consumer hardware or server hardware. Ryzen/Core are way more price/performance competitive and use less power too. Server board has all the memory and lanes you ever need, so no compromises on expansion too.
I hope you don’t, otherwise you’re into swap and that’s bad
With 8TB M.2 drives, pretty much all non-ITX boards can do this. 4x M.2 is nothing special these days. With 4TB that’s 8 drives and not really possible with consumer boards. Around 6 is the maximum you can get without using the x16 slot (needed for GPU, NIC or HBA most of the time) and that’s with chipset lanes, so not full bandwidth.
AM5/Core can go up to 192GB now and soon 256GB. But with only two channels, you have to get the old 4 DIMMs out and buy new 4 DIMMs. So better get the memory right on purchase.
AsRock Rack has a line of server boards for AM5. And with the new EPYC 4004 series, validated ECC on those boards, etc. But there are others that just work fine and people here use it with working ECC. Asus ProArt Series comes in mind and also comes with that juicy x8/x8 split to get two good x8 slots for stuff. On-board 10G or 25G NIC can save a lot of money and a slot, certainly valuable from an expansion point of view.
With server board? TB of RAM and a PB of NVMe? Endless possibilities, but also very empty bank accounts. Although you can build modern server platform with low specs for <2k.
