Looking to build a toy home-server under 10k, any advice?

Hardware & Gaming PC Builds, Modding & Overclocking
1

I’ve been using a free-tier Azure VPS for two years through student credits, but my newer projects need more resources than it can offer. An 8 GB VPS would cost about ₹15k annually, so I decided it’s more practical to invest in a small home server since uptime isn’t a priority.

I’m currently torn between a mini PC and a custom build. Space and power efficiency aren’t a concern for me as this will be running on solar. I can build a DDR3 system with the intel i5-4590 and 8 gigs of ram for around 9k (of which 3k is a reliable PSU).

I’m not too knowledgeable on mini PC but is there a model that has similar power to a 4th gen i5 for the same price?

2

Get one of those mini PC from one of the retailers on the forum itself. Although getting RAM for a good price is a hassle these days.

Something like a Lenovo P330 Tiny with i5 8400 + 32GB RAM can be a great machine. A P340 Tiny might be another option assuming you can find the i9 10900 for a good price. Can also accept a SFF GPU in the future.

Wouldn’t recommend a DDR3 based system honestly unless you already have the parts lying around.

3

RAM is the main issue, a barebones P330 would set me back 8.5k, once I add the ram and CPU it’s going to swell to around 16k

I don’t really want to spend that much for this toy-server

4

Do you need more ram or processing power or do you just need an always on device?

Don’t forget to look at a raspberry pi if you are not doing cpu intensive work and only need upto 4G, anything above is not worth even for pi.

a minipc is more flexible but expensive these days.

5

If you already have the parts then it’s ok. Otherwise try to source some DDR4.

6

Im an talks with a buyer for a Xeon machine, here are the specs:

Note that RAM isn’t actually DDR4, it’s DDR3 it’s showing up as DDR4 due to some bug/quirk with the Mobo.

I’m getting the board, 32GB DDR3 RAM and the Xeon E5-2653v3 for around 11k. Is this a good deal?

I know it’s DDR3 but a 20 thread Xeon with ram at this price range feels like a steal

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7

Ah, it’s one of those Xeons with dual support (DDR4 and DDR3). Interesting chips for sure.

Confirm the actual motherboard and ideally share a pic here. If it’s a Chinese unit then avoid, those have buggy bios, sleep issues and occasionally do not use the correct server chipset.

8

OEM Specific Processor + Chinese Motherboard

Hmm…even though the price is tempting ,

I’d rather go with a mainstream desktop platform for which replacements / upgrades are available in terms of MoBo and Processor , better heatsink support etc.

9

Very little in the way of support for those Motherboards. I used to buy the 10K ChineseMobo+Xeon kits, including RAM, from Amazon. But there is almost zero support if you get into any trouble down the line.

Quite unlike the case of some used Lenovo/HP/Dell Office PC.

And for a 24/7 machine, reliability is important when it comes to VRM quality and Motherboard QC, especially for a 105W TDP CPU (Running power draw will be lower).

10

In this range you can get one of the banana pi or nano pi systems. They can run quite a few things these days.