Server build replacement -- better power effiency

Hardware Hub Build a PC
1

Hi all,

for context in my home I am running as my compute server a :

  • 2x E5-2680v4
  • 128G ecc mem
  • p2000
  • 10GE nic

this server is runing Proxmox with about 10 - 15 Vms
on those I am running dockers

  • arr full stack
  • home assistant
  • nextcloud
  • plex (media is a dedicated storage machine)
  • pi hole
  • wiki
  • grafana
  • portainer
  • paperless
  • etc …

nothing out of the ordinary.

Now, I’d like to get a more power efficient replacement maybe ryzen based. or intel (lost touch with the prod range though, but I hear that thei igpu solution could be a good alternative to the p2000.)

I am thinking to stay with ecc memory, and keep the 10G nic.

any recommandation / suggestion for such a build?

note: at the moment I am thinking the ryzen 9 5900xt might be a good solution - thoughts ?

many thanks for your help!

2

I’ve been eying this epyc server combo myself. Review with power usage here, about 50w at idle for the motherboard + cpu alone.

3

Right now you have 28 cores/48 threads, will you have enough performance for everything if you drop to a 12 core/24 thread like a 5900XT?

The Ryzen stuff is hard to find ECC compatibility with as it is disabled on most MB. You may want to look into an EPYC 4564P instead as motherboards that support it do have ECC support. You can always disable boost clock for even less power usage.

1 Like
4

There are several recent threads about this specific topic, try to gather information/compile from those as pretty much all of this is already discussed.

2 Likes
5

thanks, went browsing a bit and I found this:

Asrock B650D4U
Ryzen 9 7900
64 / 128G Ecc ram

what do you think?

any suggestion for a 2u cooler, idealy quiet?

6

The Asrock board have been mentioned a few times however it seems that few actually get it in the end for whatever reason from that I recall from previous discussions. It’s probably decent however I do find the very infrequent BIOS updates concerning and I’m personally not sold on ASRock as a AMD motherboard vendor (may be unfounded).

I’m one of the users who went for the Asus ProArt X670E-CREATOR Wifi board instead which may be an option unless you’re dead set on IPMI. There are several users here including myself that uses this with ECC memory and it’s been flawless at least for me running FreeBSD. There are also reports of ECC working on Asus’s cheaper boards too but it all depends on what kind of feature set you want/need.

A cheaper alternative with still a good feature set (beware of PCIe line sharing though) might also be Asus ROG Strix B650E-E Gaming WiFi which is ~25% cheaper.

The 7900 is a great CPU and what I’m using, you’ll be fine using the stock cooler however it’s 95mm incl fan according tohttps://www.digitec.ch/en/s1/product/amd-wraith-prism-95-mm-cpu-coolers-20767838 which might be too tall?

As for memory, 128Gb is the official max and running at 4X DIMMs the RAM speed will be 3600 or possibly 4000 if you’re lucky (all 4 DIMMs) so no need to spend money on any high speed sticks.

7

thanks for the feedback. never heard of the proart series, look super interesting !

8

Might aswell add that the Marvell 10G NICs seems to run hot and may require additional cooling to run reliably.

9

Remember Ryzen has unofficial ECC support, at the discretion of the motherboard manufacturer. The same Epyc 4004 has official support, but you probably pay extra for that.

Me, I’ve just built my dream home server, Epyc 8004 platform. I’ll post separately about my build.

1 Like
10

There’s no difference in that regard between the two