Debating building a new system

[eric.frederich]

So my trial was almost over and I decided to buy a license.

I currently have a pretty old system with a 6 core AMD CPU, 16G RAM, GTX 650Ti, a 128G ssd.

I just put 3x 8TB hard drives in it.

 

I got a Docker up and running that runs an Ubuntu desktop where I can run MakeMKV and Handbrake (I pass-through my BluRay drive to the Docker) to rip BluRays.

In transcoding the BluRay rips with Handbrake I found myself thinking I'd enjoy a modern system, perhaps an 8 core 16 thread Ryzen system.

I also have been using it as my desktop machine using GPU passthrough to a Linux Mint Desktop where I do web/browsing, programming, photo editing, etc.

 

Now I'm wondering if I were to build a new system can I just transfer the cache ssd and 3x 8TB drives to the new system and it'll work?

 

I think Ryzen would be a good fit for me on my unRAID but want some of your thoughts too.  I'm thinking Ryzen would be good if I plan on doing trancoding, and running a Linux VM as my desktop where I may be doing some CPU intensive things.  At the same time, I might as well buy a decent graphics card and get a Win10 VM to do some gaming.

I'm thinking I would just have a single GPU and only run either my Mint VM or Win10 gaming VM at a time.  The cool thing about unRAID is that while I'd switch from Mint to Win10 the server stays up the entire time

[Sphinkx]

Should be possible..

 

 

[ufopinball]

16 hours ago, eric.frederich said:

Now I'm wondering if I were to build a new system can I just transfer the cache ssd and 3x 8TB drives to the new system and it'll work?

 

That's pretty much what I did.  I had an existing unRAID build based on the AMD Phenom II 1100T (6-core CPU) and upgraded to the AMD Ryzen 1800X (8-core/16-thread CPU).  I dropped in my new motherboard as the upgrade and had minimal issues.  Somewhere I read to just configure your VMs and Dockers so that Autostart=OFF, that way you can start just unRAID and then check settings, CPU pinnings, etc. prior to starting anything else up.  My LAMP VM (CentOS 7) had no issues whatsoever.  I don't remember running into issues with the existing Windows 10 VM, but I ended up starting a fresh install with a larger vDisk size.

 

When I had upgraded my cache drive, I recall having issues with Plex, so I may have nuked that and started over ... I don't remember now, it was a few weeks ago.  Not really a big deal anyway, since most of it runs in the background.

 

What are the specs of the new (Ryzen) rig?

 

- Bill

 

[eric.frederich]

20 hours ago, ufopinball said:

 

What are the specs of the new (Ryzen) rig?

 

- Bill

 

 

Not sure... I think the sweet spot for me would be the 1700 or 1700x, I would benefit from 16 threads while transcoding blurays.  Not sure I need to pay the premium for the top of the line 1800x.  I would have a hard time spending $200 on a mobo if a $100 one would due fine.  At this age, I don't really care to tweak every tiny setting.  Just want to put it together and have it be stable and work.

 

If I make this my main gaming rig I'd get a 1070 or so.

Right now I have an Alienware 13 with a 1060 but I'm not sure if I'm going to exchange it (touchscreen broken) or get a refund.

 

Are you doing a VM with GPU passthrough?  What card do you have?  Are you doing the trick where you don't need a secondary card?

[ufopinball]

3 hours ago, eric.frederich said:

 

Not sure... I think the sweet spot for me would be the 1700 or 1700x, I would benefit from 16 threads while transcoding blurays.  Not sure I need to pay the premium for the top of the line 1800x.  I would have a hard time spending $200 on a mobo if a $100 one would due fine.  At this age, I don't really care to tweak every tiny setting.  Just want to put it together and have it be stable and work.

 

If I make this my main gaming rig I'd get a 1070 or so.

Right now I have an Alienware 13 with a 1060 but I'm not sure if I'm going to exchange it (touchscreen broken) or get a refund.

 

Are you doing a VM with GPU passthrough?  What card do you have?  Are you doing the trick where you don't need a secondary card?

 

If I knew then what I know now, I might have just stuck with the 1700 or 1700X.  I'm not an overclocker, but I have dealt with somewhat unstable systems.  I guess I wanted a CPU that was binned as one of the best, just to be sure and hopefully save myself some headaches down the road.  I did vet it pretty severely with things like Memtest and Prime95.  Everything passed, so I'm pretty happy.

 

My motherboard is the ASUS Prime X370-PRO (full system specs for 'Cortex' are in my signature).  This arguably wasn't the top-of-the-line since it's not the gaming version of the X370 board.  This one came with 8 SATA ports, plus an M.2 slot.  Since I can only fit 15 HDDs in my system, I was able to drop a SATA controller.  Now I have 8 ports on the MB, and 8 ports on the H310 controller.  I don't know if/when I will buy an M.2 drive.  I bought dual 1TB Samsung SSDs to use as a cache pool, so I should probably stick with that for now.  Seems to perform quickly enough.  This motherboard also comes with 3 PCIe x16 slots (I think one at x16 and two at x8), which I would need for a GPU and/or SATA controller(s).  So I picked this one since there was a fair amount of support for things that were important to me.

 

My GPU is pretty run-of-the-mill, a Radeon 6450 that's mainly used for desktop graphics.  Again, I'm not really a gamer ... should that change someday, it should be no big deal to upgrade the GPU as needed.  At any rate, the Radeon 6450 passes through just fine to my Windows 10 VM.  I have also tested with a couple of older cards, the Radeon 3450 and the Radeon 4350.  I upgraded in order to test GPU pass through with things like Linux (CentOS7), but apparently the driver support just isn't there yet.  In theory the newer Radeon 6450 card will run cooler and use less power, so I'm hoping it wasn't a completely pointless purchase.

 

- Bill

 

PS:  I don't know what 'trick' is involved with not using a secondary card.  I've only ever had one GPU in this system.