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Suggestions for mobo/cpu for home server

jimbob200521

jimbob200521

Diamond Member
I am to the point where I'd like to look into putting together a new home server. I currently have an i7 920 that is liquid cooled with 12gb of RAM which is waayy more power hungry than I'd like it to be for what it does. I have two 500gb HD's in RAID 1 for important files augmented by a 1.5tb and 2tb HD for media storage as well as an SSD for OS duties (excluding external USB drives).

I would love to put together something that sips power compared to what I have now. My server requirements currently aren't very horsepower hungry. It serves my Plex library to my Shield as well as a couple Roku's along with hosting files to various PC's around the house.

So can you guys suggest something, preferably Intel, that would fit my needs that allows up to (or more than) 5 HD's to be installed at once? I'd like to reuse the DDR3 I have now but that's not a requirement. I was thinking i3, maybe i5, but I'm not sure what mobo to use. Thanks guys!
 
Truth be told unless you're doing transcoding a Pentium will work fine for your needs. I'd probably recommend something like the ASRock H97M Anniversary Edition for the motherboard and a Pentium G3258 for a total cost of about $120. The Pentium could probably even handle transcoding as long as it wasn't doing it to too many clients at once.
 
I built a file server with Pentium G4400 and MSI B150M Mortar. Celeron would've been fine too, but at the time Skylake Celerons weren't out yet. The B150 chipset I needed in order to potentially support more than four SATA devices. In addition to the chipset, the Mortar has a full width PCB which I like, and good audio and video outputs (no displayport though).

It's running ubuntu. Worked about 6 months now without a hitch, both as SMB file server and Kodi media PC connected to TV 🙂

Other components: 4GB DDR4 stick, a 120GB SSD I had lying around, 2 x 3TB WD Red hard disks, 350W BeQuiet PSU.
 
nsafreak said:
Truth be told unless you're doing transcoding a Pentium will work fine for your needs. I'd probably recommend something like the ASRock H97M Anniversary Edition for the motherboard and a Pentium G3258 for a total cost of about $120. The Pentium could probably even handle transcoding as long as it wasn't doing it to too many clients at once.
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I like the board but I would like a CPU with a little more oomph so I don't have to look at upgrading in a year or two if I upgrade my OS or add anything to the mix.
 
XavierMace said:
What's the budget? Xeon-D's are hard to beat for the price if they are in your budget.
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I'd like to keep it as cheap as I can, I've been keeping an eye on the For Sale section here hoping I can catch it when a good deal comes up. But all that's led me to want to do is buy an EE 965 because it's cheap and I've always wanted an EE CPU. I am a bad influence on me.
 
XavierMace said:
If your board supports it, it wouldn't hurt to swap out the 920 for a L5630. That's got 1/3rd the TDP.
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My board doesn't "officially" support it but at $15-20 used on eBay, it just might be worth the risk to order one and try it. The megahertz speed loss wouldn't be a big deal but going from a from a CPU with 130 watt TDP to 40 watt TDP would be a great thing for my usage scenario. Thank you for the suggestion!
 
XavierMace said:
If your board supports it, it wouldn't hurt to swap out the 920 for a L5630. That's got 1/3rd the TDP.
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Just to throw this out there, I just spent $11.49 to order one from a well rated seller on eBay. Hope it works, if it does then I'll be happy happy happy.
 
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