CPU & Motherboard for new build

[morikaweb]

I am looking at building a new unRaid server to fold both my current vSphere and unRaid servers into.

 

The new server will be 50TB+ and running Plex, Minecraft, Misc Game servers, Mumble, and at least one Win7 instance used as a Download and Scrapping server.

Plex will be doing live tv recording via an HDHomeRun.

 

The server will also have 10Gig Lan since Plex is used for streaming 4k Tv shows and uncompressed UHD Blu-ray rips.

 

Basically, I cannot decide on wether to go with Xeon level or stick with consumer level, and if I go consumer level do I need to go with a i9 or Threadripper? I want some breathing room for the future however I do not want to go overboard. Can anyone suggest a build path for my requirements?

[ashman70]

I would go with Xeon for several reasons. It's a tried and test platform, you aren't going with bleeding edge tech where you could run into problems down the road. The cost per core should be cheaper depending on what you go with versus the i9 series. I am not sure if the i9 come in dual CPU configurations but Xeon's certainly do, so you could get a dual CPU motherboard, stat off with one CPU and add a second later on, so there is your breathing room.

[HellDiverUK]

I'd be looking at an E5 Xeon, or perhaps if you do want to go consumer/prosumer then perhaps X99 with an Extreme series i7.  X99 is very mature and very, very stable.

[tdallen]

It's a little hard to say without knowing whether the Plex instance will do any transcoding and how much load the game servers will put on the box, but I'd go with at least a 6 core CPU.   Therefore, random thoughts on the possibilities:

• The very new Coffee Lake Core i7-8700, very fast cores, runs hot, consumer level PCIex lanes .
• The well established Extreme Edition Core i7s, fast cores, not as many PCIex lanes as an E5.
• The newish Core i9, which is basically a rebranded Core i7 Edition with scaling PCIex lanes - the first generation motherboards had heat problems.
• E5 - rock solid, as many cores as you want (16xx have faster cores, 26xx have more/slower cores), lots of PCIex lanes, ECC RAM, typically want to buy used.
• Ryzen/Threadripper, personally I'd let others sort out the issues there first.

Since you aren't talking about multiple GPUs or several HBAs, you probably don't *need* an E5 for the PCIex lanes but I agree with @HellDiverUK that it's still probably the best choice, with X99/i7EE as runner up.   There's some good performance to be had with the Coffee Lake Core i7's and the Core i9's, but I'm scratching my head a bit trying to figure out what Intel is doing there (other than trying to compete with AMD on core counts).  One note, since you mentioned high quality video formats - Kaby Lake (and Coffee Lake) CPUs have updated media capabilities including full hardware acceleration for encode and decode of 4K HEVC Main10 profile videos.  Software support for this seems pretty sketchy thus far, but it's worth thinking through what you want to be able to do with those high quality video files and what hardware you might need.

[SSD]

We may be on the verge of greatness with the Ryzen / TR platform. Firmware updates are rolling out that show promise for resolving a lockup issue related to c-states. @johnnie.black recently posted a video of getting it setup with passthrough.

 

Certainly Intel is the low risk option, but a short wait before a major purchase might be in order. 

[JorgeB]

8 minutes ago, SSD said:

@johnnie.black recently posted a video of getting it setup with passthrough.

I believe you mean @gridrunner

[morikaweb]

Thanks for the advice, I am leaning towards the E5 as I like the feature set. The Ryzen road is something to keep an eye on, however  one feature I have decided I really would like is 

IPMI and it sounds like Ryzen wont get it for a bit.

 

As far as GPU's go, I will probably have a dedicated one for Plex Transcoding but nothing else I am doing would really benifite much from having multiple GPUs.

 

If I went with a E5 platform do you think it is worth it spending extra on a X11 LGA 3647  or stick with the old X10 LGA 2011?

[laserpaddy]

I am amassing hardware for a build and I really liked the E5 platform prices especially the V2 xeon prices- check around