Long Awaited Server Upgrade

An Upgrade Is In Order

My current server is running a Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-2100 CPU. Based on archeological evidence and carbon dating, experts estimate that it is around 10 years of age. It’s had minor upgrades over the years with a respectable 4 × 2TB drives setup in RAID5 for 6TB usable. However, it’s simply too long in the tooth. It’s been working flawlessly for so long, I seem to have taken it for granted.

I really only thought about it when I’d occasionally have to reboot it every couple months. Looking at it that way, I almost feel bad putting out such a long running workhorse to pasture.

End of the day, I should feel proud that I built a system that worked near flawlessly for a decade.

Mission accomplished. What’s the next mission?

Requirements

I’ve become a simple man when it comes to servers. All it takes me is half a dozen cores, heaps of memory, and terabytes of space to be happy. I’m wondering how much the hardware game has changed since I last went down this road. I’m hoping I’ll be left with the end result of a reliable workhorse for many years.

Off the top of head, here are requirements, typical workloads, and tasks the server will encounter:

• Building the personal cloud that spawned this thread
• Storing over 9,000 new photos and videos daily from my wife’s phone of our 8 month old cat.
• Video stabilization and other processing of grainy VHS home movies
• Secure storage of personal documents
• 3D scanner processing
• Minecraft server
• Git repo to avoid relying on Github too much

Here’s what I’m thinking will be sufficient:

• 8+ threads (with or without hyperthreading)
• 8TB+ of space in RAID5 (minimum 3 disks)
• 32GB+ of RAM
• NVIDIA for them CUDA cores, system stability be damned
• 500W+ power supply (Should need at minimum of around 400W according to newegg)
• 6 × SATA ports (preferably all 6Gb/s)

Parts List

• Hard Drives
  • Seagate – Barracuda 4TB Internal SATA $90 × 3 = $270
• CPU
  • AMD Ryzen 5 3600 6-Core 3.6 GHz $200
  • AMD – Ryzen 7 3700X 3rd Generation 8-Core – 16-Thread 3.6 GHz $330
• Motherboard
  • ASUS – ROG Strix B450-F Motherboard $130 (more info)
• Memory
  • CORSAIR – VENGEANCE LPX 32GB (2 x 16GB) $145
• Power Supply
  • CORSAIR – CX Series Modular CX750M 750W Power Supply $105
  • EVGA – W1 Series 600W ATX 12V/EPS $60
• Any NVIDIA video card that’s not been sold out due to cryptocurrency miners $200 (hopefully)
  • PNY – XLR8 Gaming Single Fan NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER $220
  • … and that’s about all that’s not sold out now.

Total: $1,000 estimated

Conclusion

If I can get 5 years out of this build, I’ll be happy. There’s a leap year in there. That’s a savings of $0.0003 per day. Cost of ownership should be around $0.55/day ($1,000 / (5 × 365 + 1)).