Don't know what hardware to use for unRAID

After a year trying to work with FreeNAS. I decided to come back to unRAID since they added dual parity. I actually built a FreeNAS specific NAS that I now feel was a little bit of a waste. Here are the specs:

unRAID Version: 6.2 Plus

Chassis: Fractal Design Node 804

Motherboard: SUPERMICRO MBD-X10SLL-F-O (IPMI for the win!)

Processor: Intel Pentium G3258

Memory: Crucial 32GB(4x8GB) ECC Unbuffered

Power Supply: Corsair CX550M

HBA Controller: Dell PERC H200 (IT mode)

Storage: 8 x WD Red 3TB

Cache: 2 x Sandisk Ultra II SSD 240GB

I also have a VMware ESXi box as well with the specs below:

Chassis: Fractal Design Define R5 

Motherboard: ASRock Extreme 4

Processor: Intel Core i7-5820k

Memory: CORSAIR Vengeance LPX 64GB(8x8GB) DDR4 2133

Power Supply: EVGA 650 BQ(110-BQ-0650-V1)

Datastore: Intel 750 Series AIC 400GB NVMe SSD

Network Card: Intel I350-T4 Quad Server Adapter

I am not sure what is the best path to take. I could just take my unRAID server and get a Xeon E3 1231v3 for around $250 then I could go back to an all in one server, or just turn that ESXi box into an unRAID server. If I went that round I would definitely miss having IPMI.

Any suggestions?

In addition to basic NAS capabilities, what do you want to do with the potential all-in-one server?  I.e., Dockers, VMs, etc.

Yeah, I love using docker for plex, and the VM Manager is really nice in unRAID. I guess the sysadmin in me always wants to keep things like storage and VM hosts separate like I have at work. That is why I went the FreeNAS route. I originally had FreeNAS as an NFS and iSCSI target to my ESXi host. From there I had a VPN server, plex, download VM, etc...

I noticed all that can be done on docker, and if I really need a VM I can just spin it up.

The Core-i7 5820k is a very nice chip (aside from the lack of ECC support) and would be the better platform if you wanted to spin up several VMs - more cores, more memory bandwidth, more PCIe lanes, etc.

But an E3 Xeon can easily handle a bunch of Dockers and a VM or two, is a great Plex transcoder, supports your ECC RAM, and is a simple upgrade from the G3258 (just watch out for the higher TDP when you review the cooler).  Really, what's not to like about this option?

Those of us who run VMWare in our data centers obviously aren't about to start pulling it out and putting in unRAID (or KVM for that matter).  But unRAID is sure a nice all-in-one home media server option.

I might go the Xeon route. I am not going to run anything heavy on it like a gaming VM. Most of my VM's would be Linux based. Since it has an OpenVPN AS docker I may move to that instead of running a dedicated VM at home. Then I guess just make the X99 system a gaming rig, and for my test VM's I don't run all the time. I think I went full retard with the 64GB of memory, but it was on sale at MicroCenter and my tech itch kicked in.

Ever since I got a SuperMicro board with IPMI I don't want to go away from it