$300 Upgrade Budget

When I first Built my Machine I built it based off a Budget Build and its been working great for years. Other than a hiccup or two I've zero to complain about.

The misses gave me a Upgrade Budget and said I could do pretty much whatever I want as long as I don't go over $300. I have a decent Case, Sata Expansion Card, Power Supply and many Sata cables.

Does anybody have any recommendations on what they would do with that bit of money recycling what I currently already have? I'd like to consider Dual Parity some day or play with some Dockers. Otherwise I typically just let it idle as a NAS and Swap out a Drive now and then.

I was thinking to looking at a Processor, Ram and Mobo, but I've been out of the Building Scene forever and Just wanted some ideas if people had the time/energy to throw them at me.

the advice you got here would still apply

https://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=53776.0

Max out the CPU & RAM supported by your mobo. Whatever is left over put toward the largest/fastest SSD you can get for a Cache drive. That's what I did and frankly I haven't needed to look any further up the food chain (well almost jumped at the dual Xeon deal recently lol).

Yeah I ordered that Athlon and the RAM. Just have to pickup a Fan eventually.

I might have to save up a bit more simply because I'd really like to update my Mother Board and get with a "More" Current GEN processor. Don't get me wrong what I'm using works well, but it is several years old and frankly you can't even get my motherboard anymore if/when it fails again. I say again because I had an issue with my USB bus last year and luckly I had a clone and slid it in and ran with it.

I do have a Cache disk too. Lol I just use it for odds and end's at the current moment. All my copies to my server are typically early in the AM and I don't really even see the transfer speeds.

If you decide to do a complete update, instead of just the CPU in the other thread, here's what I'd do with $300.  Both Dual Parity and Dockers are going to require more horsepower than you have now.  I don't think you can get into a server grade setup with ECC RAM for $300, so I'm thinking standard components.

Memory - 8GB (2x4GB) - Around $60

Motherboard - MicroATX with 4-8 SATA ports - $80 - $100

CPU - Core i3 - $125 - $150.

I'd go with an ASRock, Asus, or Gigabyte motherboard (Supermicro is probably too much).  You can choose between Haswell (Socket 1150) or the newer Skylake (Socket 1151).  I'd probably go Skylake because it has been out long enough you're getting better selection and prices.  Try to get an Intel LAN chip.  A Pentium G4400 would also work well but I think the $300 will let you go up to the Core i3.  I assumed since your current mothboard is mATX that you'd want to go that way again, but if your case supports ATX that broadens the possibilities.

This really peaks my intrest.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=N82E16813157419

Found it on this Thread

https://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=54414.0

Needs a bit more Horse Power, but I really like the idea of all the SATA support.

That Avoton board is REALLY nice -- HOWEVER => If you're going to go for that, spring for an extra $80 and get the octo-core version  [ http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=N82E16813157475 ].

It's got significantly more "horsepower" [PassMark 3800 vs 2329 for the quad-core 2550].  There's also a Xeon D1520 version that gives you a PassMark of 6396, but it only has 6 SATA ports.

That Avoton board is REALLY nice -- HOWEVER => If you're going to go for that, spring for an extra $80 and get the octo-core version  [ http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=N82E16813157475 ].

 

It's got significantly more "horsepower" [PassMark 3800 vs 2329 for the quad-core 2550].  There's also a Xeon D1520 version that gives you a PassMark of 6396, but it only has 6 SATA ports.

 

Yeah I saw that next one you posted. I'll keep an eye out for it since NewEgg seems to be out of them. Lol Looks like Amazon carries them... Decisions, Decisions.

FWIW if I was building another mini-ITX system for basically just NAS use, the C2750 board is exactly what I'd use.

It's got PLENTY of "horsepower" for a dual parity NAS with a couple Dockers, and even a single VM would be fine.

And it's got all that power while having a VERY low power footprint.

If you can afford to go above your $300 budget that Avoton board is probably the most cost effective way to get into a server grade motherboard with ECC RAM and IPMI, not to mention all the SATA ports.  You'd get a lot more CPU horsepower from an i3, though.  Did you have an specific Dockers in mind?

Honestly No. I've always limited my server to basic NAS duties because well thats all I've ever looked at it for. I'd like to run Handbrake, possibly store Security Camera footage on it, possibly run a Trancoder to stream to an iphone or ipad and a web server.

Of course as of last night I think the misses might be changing her mind seeing that I'm getting serious about spending some money. I am going save this thread because I'd really like to get a little more out of what unRAID is opposed to what it has always been.

Security Camera streaming puts a low, constant load on the server.  Handbrake would spike whatever CPU you give it to 100% for the duration of the encode.  Since Handbrake encoding is usually done in batch you probably don't care how long it takes so you can give it a moderate CPU or a big one.

Transcoding is different.  It's done in real time and places a heavy load on the CPU.  My rule of thumb (and I'm more conservative than most) is to give unRAID 1,000 - 2,000 Passmarks and then give 2,000 Passmarks per 1080p stream.  The 3,300 Passmark Avoton is in theory enough for basic NAS duties plus a single transcode but it could get overwhelmed, too.  All transcoding isn't equal - it depends on the quality and bit rate of the source material and capabilities of the player.  I can spike all 4 cores on my 4,000 Passmark C2Q to 100% transcoding a full BD rip to a Roku.  It can also loaf along doing very little on an H.264 encoded file that just needs audio transcoding, or if DirectPlay works out.

So, you might be happy with the Avoton for all three Dockers but transcoding is the one that would make me look at an i3 or higher.

I'm confident the octo-core Avoton (PassMark is 3800)  would be fine for a single transcoding stream.

If you DO want to jump up in performance, I'd get the same board in the Xeon D1520 version -- as I noted earlier it only has 6 SATA ports; but it jumps your PassMark up to 6396.  You could always pop in an add-on card for more SATA ports if needed      [ http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=N82E16813599016 ]

... All of these blow a bit past your $300 budget -- but not by a lot  :)

Well that's odd, there are two different entries for the C2750 on the Passmark site, with different sockets and slightly different clock rates - and different Passmark scores, 3,344 and 3,800.  The other Atoms of this generation are mostly consistent with the 500+ per core that corresponds to the 3,800 chip, though, so that seems like the correct number... I agree, a modern 3,800 Passmark CPU should be able to transcode a single stream nicely.

Kizer, I realize you've already probably selected your parts - but what did you end up going with?

I am looking at a similar issue. I want to wait for an AMD Ryzen solution, but I realize that I may have a 6-8 month wait for that. The other day I spotted a refurb local motherboard from Microcenter (A Gigabyte GA-F2A88XM-D3H -$38) and a A8-7x00 CPU from Fleabay ($20-$50) and 8 Gigs of ram ($49). I will spend less than $150) and then I could repurpose the old components as a smaller server for my kid when he leaves the nest - all I will need is my castoff drives and a donor case. I could also build the server as a pure backup server or a music server...just a Basic Unraid build - my old Zotac motherboard is good for 4 drives, so you get 3 data drives and a parity. I was rocking a Sempron as well, but I picked up a Dual Core processor from ebay for $10 and it is a little bit better for running low power transcodes -  you have 1 core to dedicate for transcoding and it can steal a bit of horsepower from the other core without screwing up Unraid.

The motherboard above I chose for the 8 native SATA ports onboard (and it is sooo cheap at $38). I have been trying to remember something from long ago about Gigabyte motherboards and a hard drive issue...there was something in the BIOS you had to disable. Anybody else remember that?  It was a Gigabyte peculiarity, but perhaps it no longer applies to the current Unraid? I think it was a problem Unraid 4 or 5.

Anyway, if you've rebuilt your server, what did you do?

Happy New Year to all!

Decided to keep it super simple and super cheap.

I bought:

$30 Used Athlon x4 630

$25 Used 8GB Ram

$34 Cooler

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=9906.msg527175#msg527175

Some day I'll get a bit fancier, but for now I think I'll just keep it where I am now.