Previous  1  2  3  4  Next

Maybe grab some servers while I'm at it

   

Windows 10 can make a 64-bit server into one hell of a desktop PC!

   

the other thing on my home network road map is a big ass unraid server. If I could get a big enough one (drive bays the hardest to find) I'd build a smokin' one of those. The only thing I might need anytime soon for my desktop is a graphics cards, nothing else even comes close to being used.

   

Lots of old blade servers on the market these days now that so many on-prem networks are moving to hosted network services.

   

Ah I know! But then, because I am who I am, I consider building a brand new one with current amd epyc processors. 900 (canadian) and it outperforms a 1500 dollar current xeon. If I could get one stupid cheap, like less than 200 I would as a stop gap, but I feel like once I cross about 500 bucks, I'm better off sinking that into during a legit amd build with their server stuff. I've also found a lot of resellers of this stuff have recent jacked up the prices of these older servers because homelab stuff is becoming more popular. So if I don't get at a business that getting rid of them, I have to look at those inflated places.

   

The government around here auctions off used equipment all the time. I'm sure most provinces do it. But you can't buy one bit at a time, you have to buy by the palette full. That leads to a side business of people selling old hardware out of their garages for cheap.

Check Kajiji. I'll bet you find a decent HP Gen7 or Gen 8 server for a couple hundred bucks, and some Cisco equipment for cheap.

I'm rebuilding a friend's business back end using things he got off Kajiji and eBay. (he used to work at IBM too). Servers, cameras, RFID badge systems . . . you can literally get anything. And many sellers aren't as sketchy as you might think.

   

I can't do cisco equipment, they're too slow and underpowered, for their price. The cost of them is for their enterprise benefits which I won't take advantage of, there is little point in even considering them outside of a simple managed switch. Why spend several thousand dollars on a cisco asa when I can spend 400 on a mini computer and put pfsense/opnsense on it?

Most of the older servers that I find on kijiji can't do what I'm looking for (live 4k transcoding). They'd be good to mess around with, and maybe even run as the vpn box themselves, but not for the unraid server. But since my goal is a pass mark of about 30k, I'm really limited to recent stuff.

   

Build a Threadripper like i did.

I have yet to run that sustained at 100% for longer than a second. Benchmarks put it faster than 92% of systems tested, and I don't even have the best video in it.

   

Want more RAM

   

Also, not fast enough, threadripper tops out at about 25k passmark, whereas double epyc 7281 should hit 30

   

I'm running 96GB of RAM in my gaming machine. It's adequate.

   

256GB in my Threadripper cost $2500. If you want that kind of fast ram for Epyc, you might consider the cost. Threadripper and (I think) Epyc don't take regular DDR4 RAM, they take 'Quad Channel', like the Itanium processors do. Doesn't come in all frequencies, and you might have to sell a kidney.

   

Quad channel isn't special ram. You can buy two identical sets of dual channel and it will run in quad channel. It's more on the board/processor.

But yeah, Ram will suck. Especially if I decide to go with ECC.

   

If you try running dual channel RAM in an X399 chipset board, you will get astonishingly bad performance. Make sure it is RAM meant for X399! That means Quad Channel!

Quad Channel:

https://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.a ... 6820233968

Not Quad Channel:

https://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.a ... 6820236469

And ECC isn't worth it, unless you are going for a fault tolerant server. I regularly buy blades where 64GB of RAM is priced over $60k.

   

That's a problem with the AMD chipset then. This is an aida64 run against my system with two sets of ram bought about a year + apart. It runs in quad channel, and has no issue with performance.

   

Previous  1  2  3  4  Next