Advice on setting up a home server?

SirMatterNot

SirMatterNot

Contributor
I've been tinkering with self hosting a few services on a basic VPS for the last year. Now want to try out more storage sensitive stuff like Immich and Paperless and (maybe) run a media server. Figured I'd do this on my own hardware.

I have a decade old machine with a 2nd gen i5 and Corsair TX650M that I am hesitating on repurposing as a server because I'd like a power efficient setup. Currently in two minds between swapping out the cpu+mobo+ram for a 7th or 8th gen setup vs getting a mini pc and calling it a day. If I take the first approach, would my PSU be an efficiency bottleneck even if I upgrade to more recent hardware?

Still very much a noob at this so all suggestions are welcome.
 
Would suggest to first setup on the machine you have, and then move to newer hardware.

The CPU is ancient and will not be efficient basis on a per watt basis.

For newer hardware, unless this is for heavy usage, I would suggest to pickup a mini PC from the likes of aasim or zeno or others. The PSU adaptor included is quite power efficient usually.

Coming to the PSU efficiency - generally, the max efficiency is around the 50% mark of the rated PSU. Unless this has changed in the years.
 
demon_slayer said:
for media server go with atleast gen 7 and above as they have hardware decoders if you decide to use the device to stream media
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Don't know if I'll need a media server per se. The only reason to set one up would be to share content with folks, but they're not too keen on anything besides the news so could be a lot of effort down the drain. For personal use I find Stremio with Real Debrid a simpler solution.

That said, if I upgrade hardware will definitely get a processor with QuickSync just to keep the option open as you suggested.
 
just build a home server with what you have, one my first "home servers" was a hcl M.E 2nd gen i5 halftop used to run plex on it. IIRC 2nd gen i5s had h264 quicksync encoding support which was fine at that time. Pretty sure jellyfin now will support it just fine. The only concern is since it is a desktop it will suck a lot of power hence might be unviable for you in the long term for 24/7 operation.
 
f0r3he4d said:
just build a home server with what you have, one my first "home servers" was a hcl M.E 2nd gen i5 halftop used to run plex on it. IIRC 2nd gen i5s had h264 quicksync encoding support which was fine at that time. Pretty sure jellyfin now will support it just fine. The only concern is since it is a desktop it will suck a lot of power hence might be unviable for you in the long term for 24/7 operation.
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Besides the power consumption, it is also housed in a bulky mid tower cabinet, so doesn't feel like a good use of space either. Which is why the mini pc feels like the better contender for the moment.
 
Best is to figure out what you actually want and plan accordingly. You can go with ryzen am4 setup some consumer motherboard supports ECC ram, if it is your thing. You can buy OEM ryzen cpu which supports ECC ram.

Otherwise build something with a picopsu and intel 8th gen and above if power efficiency is your thing.

I managed to achieve 23-24watt idle, 28watt avg load and 35-40 watt max load on ryzen apu system with dual channel ram and nvme gen3 ssd and a bronze rated atx psu. But some reddit users managed to do 6 watt idle with ryzen desktop apu..
 
Power efficiency also depends on what your expected usage level of the system is. If you expect it to be idle as a typical home server is most of the time, you'll have to look at idle power usage rather than efficiency.

Idle power usage is somewhat rarely tested. And it hasn't changed as drastically since second generation than the full utilisation efficiency. Look into it, and you might be able to avoid the possibly needless spend on a modern system.
 
CasualGamer91 said:
Otherwise build something with a picopsu and intel 8th gen and above if power efficiency is your thing.
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I've heard of picopsu, but it seemed like an overcomplication for me right now. Will look into your hardware recommendations. Haven't had many Ryzen based suggestions yet!

kiran6680 said:
Idle power usage is somewhat rarely tested. And it hasn't changed as drastically since second generation than the full utilisation efficiency.
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The desktop originally had a GTX560 and some additional case fans attached. Out of curiosity, I hooked it up to a smart plug and tested with the full config and then without the GPU and extra fans. The lowest it went at idle was 45 watts. It's still running my old Windows install at this point, haven't removed it and put Ubuntu yet.
 
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