Hello,
  I appreciate this topic.  I have been wondering for a while now if there is an affordable home server out there for EXSi and such.  Is there any way for someone to come up with a few choices for people like me?  Is there a low end, mid range, and high end home server for someone to list with parts or suggested parts?

thanks,
Greg

On Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 01:01:13 PM MST, Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss <plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:


Thanks!!

On 2023-07-20 11:36, Ryan Petris via PLUG-discuss wrote:
> I personally wouldn't even go for a used server. They're generally
> loud, and even when they aren't they use much more electricity than
> what you would get from a consumer platform. There's really no benefit
> unless you have room in your house to make a real server room with
> racks and the electrical capacity to go along with it.
>
> On Thu, Jul 20, 2023, at 10:59 AM, Stephen Partington wrote:
>
>> the downside for these processors is their mainboards are still very
>> pricy to buy. much more than the CPU itself. you are almost better
>> off looking for and buying a refurbished server which you can get
>> for almost ludicrously inexpensive prices.
>>
>> On Thu, Jul 20, 2023 at 1:56 PM Ryan Petris via PLUG-discuss
>> <plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:
>>
>> The CPU's cheap because it's old and no one wants them anymore --
>> it's of the same generation as 6000 series intel processors (i.e.
>> skylake). It also uses a server socket, so the only motherboards
>> you're going to be able to find are server motherboards. Those are
>> going to be expensive and/or have other quirks, such as requiring a
>> vendor specific heatsink, or a vendor-specific power supply, or take
>> 5 minutes to start up, etc.
>>
>> You'd be better off spending money on a last-gen cpu and
>> motherboard, for instance here's a combination that is relatively
>> cheap:
>>
>> $174 for an i5-12400, which according to cpubenchmark.net [1] is
>> nearly 30% faster than the Xeon you linked (score of 19501 vs 15146,
>> much faster single-core score as well):
>>
>>
> https://www.amazon.com/Intel-i5-12400-Desktop-Processor-Cache/dp/B09NMPD8V2/
>>
>> $139 for a compatible motherboard:
>>
>>
> https://www.amazon.com/GIGABYTE-B760M-DS3H-AX-Motherboard/dp/B0BSP61QZC/
>>
>> I also wouldn't pay so much attention to the number of "threads" you
>> think you'll need; you can run many VMs with a total number of
>> virtual processors that is much more than what you actually have,
>> and as long as you're not trying to go whole hog on every machine at
>> the same time you'll be fine, and even if you do, you'll still be
>> better off with a faster processor with a few fewer threads than an
>> older slower cpu with more.
>>
>> On Thu, Jul 20, 2023, at 10:26 AM, Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss
>> wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I was surfing the Inter Web when I happened upon a Xeon server CPU.
>> It
>>
>> is marked at $32.49 at Newegg.  It has 12 cores and 24 threads and
>> has a
>>
>> good benchmark score.
>>
>>
> https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Xeon+Silver+4116+%40+2.10GHz&id=3179
>>
>> https://www.newegg.com/p/274-000A-007K2?Description=Xeon
>>
>> In the future at some point I would like to build something with 20
>> plus
>>
>> or minus cores and 40 threads more or less for Proxmox.  This would
>> be
>>
>> over kills because I only need 1 or 2 VMs active at one time...
>> maybe 3
>>
>> in an extreme situation.
>>
>> This 12 core/24 thread CPU with 64Gb of Ram and a 1Tb SSD would
>> really
>>
>> be more resources than I would ever need.  Off the top of my head
>> this
>>
>> means I might be able to build a decent Proxmox server for $500 -
>> $600.
>>
>> I do not need fancy video except for one VM that might be running
>> Win 10
>>
>> or 11...  I assume a server grade CPU would handle Win 10 and 11?
>>
>> Am I on the right track?
>>
>> Thank You For Your Feedback!!
>>
>> Keith
>>
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>
> --
>
> A mouse trap, placed on top of your alarm clock, will prevent you from
> rolling over and going back to sleep after you hit the snooze button.
>
> Stephen
>
>
>
> Links:
> ------
> [1] http://cpubenchmark.net

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