Power efficient home server

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sudo

391 posts

Ultimate Geek

#247881 28-Feb-2019 13:59

So wondering if anyone has recently got a power-efficient server for the home.

I have a couple legacy servers (ML380/X3550) that chew a lot of power and can sound like a Dash-8 taking off.

I'd like to replace it with something that can basically run the house (router/NAS/automation) and I can have a bunch of VMs to play with. So multiple cores/at least 4 RAM slots and half dozen SATA ports. Not a budget system, but not paying a huge premium for the sake of getting a grunty system that you could chuck in a shoebox (ideally it would fit in a bootbox, allowing half a dozen disks/SSDs)

I was following small form-factor Intels Denverton chipset (C3xxx) and Xeon D when they were released and assumed there would be a bunch of options down the track. But apart from some really high priced boards, there doesn't seem to be a go-to system out there.

It almost looks like the better option is to spend the same money on a lower-end Xeon E. Or rather than a singing and dancing solution, split it off to 2 systems.

Thoughts?

Yoban

447 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2188867 28-Feb-2019 14:18

I too have been sniffing around in this space...been following https://blog.briancmoses.com/2016/07/building-a-homelab-server.html as a starter. he also does NAS https://blog.briancmoses.com/2017/03/diy-nas-2017-edition.html which talks about cheaper options....

I guess budget may be one of your key drivers

SirHumphreyAppleby

2844 posts

Uber Geek

#2188876 28-Feb-2019 14:26

I'd go cheap. Buy two if I needed redundancy.

My house is run from a single Skylake i7 in a 3U case (large enough to use standard hardware), running VMWare ESXi. I replaced the relatively quiet stock fan with a near-silent one. A newer i5 is likely more power efficient again, and offers more cores than the old i7, albeit at a reduced clock speed.

For relatively light loads like automation and routing, there is more than than enough capacity. In my case it also runs a mail server, manages off-site backups, and handles all the television in the house (although storage for the latter is on an external iSCSI NAS). It's mostly just shifting data, which is a trivial task for any CPU.

sudo

391 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2188890 28-Feb-2019 14:45

Brian Moses had a really good run with building a NAS each year, but its now a couple years out of date, and it was hard to find the same hardware locally at that time.

sudo

391 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2188894 28-Feb-2019 14:53

BTW I'm just reading this review of a AMD/EPYC board

https://www.servethehome.com/supermicro-m11sdv-8c-ln4f-review-amd-epyc-3251-mitx-platform/

I'm glad they are finally giving some competition to Intel in this embedded/server area. Hopefully the prices are attractive enough.