Have a look through the forums at serverbuilds.net Honestly, there is no point in getting into the server game and buying new unless you are using it for a business or have a great deal of cash to burn. Plus, sticking with used tech is way better for the environment.
this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2023
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Thanks, I'll keep that in mind.
I'd avoid buying new. For the same price as new, you could get a server or 5 from liquidation auctions and old stock. Companies basically give away 5 year old hardware when the warranty expires (the reason they buy new is the warranty, so they can blame it on Dell if they lose a lot of money and Dell doesn't try to help).
Without knowing your system utilization numbers it’s impossible to give good recommendations.
I recently upgraded my system from a 4th gen i5 with 8 GB ram (Main board maxed) to a 6th gen i5 with 64 GB of ram (Again max out the main board).
Before the upgrade I was sitting at 95% ram usage + 3 GB swap usage with the proc averaging 0.56 load, io wait was averaging 30%. In other words, I was clearly RAM bound.
After the full body transplant, I was using 23 GB ram with a 1.52 load average and 0 swap. Io wait at 3%.Not enough time for averages yet, but there was night and day difference in application performance.
Let your system stats dictate what you need to upgrade.
CPU and RAM are consistently >90%. It's mostly qbittorrent doing that by caching files I'm seeding.
Game servers are mostly stable but Plex struggles if it's transcoding (necessary due to video file types and who I'm streaming to).
It depends on what you mean by struggling but you can get pretty far with an 8th or 9th gen i5 and 16gb of RAM, would be a pretty cheap upgrade these days. The huge jump in quality for QuisckSync was between the 7th and 8th gen from what I remember so it doesn’t have to be new. If you are worried about power I think that it’s 65 or 70w for the 8th gen ones.
For what it’s worth, my current Plex machine is an 8500k with 32 gb of memory and a 250w power supply since it doesn’t have local storage and it has been running 24x7 for about 4 or so years now. I once load tested it for fun and I was able to do 7 or 8 4k transcodes and it wasn’t really its limit, I have no complaints haha.
It depends on what you mean by struggling but you can get pretty far with an 8th or 9th gen i5 and 16gb of RAM, would be a pretty cheap upgrade these days. The huge jump in quality for QuisckSync was between the 7th and 8th gen from what I remember so it doesn’t have to be new. If you are worried about power I think that it’s 65 or 70w for the 8th gen ones.
For what it’s worth, my current Plex machine is an 8500k with 32 gb of memory and a 250w power supply since it doesn’t have local storage and it has been running 24x7 for about 4 or so years now. I once load tested it for fun and I was able to do 7 or 8 4k transcodes and it wasn’t really its limit, I have no complaints haha.