Home Server Build

[hmmblah]

My home server is in dire need of an upgrade. It's still an old AMD Athlon 5050e dual core with 4GB of ram that was purchased in February of 2009! It's fine for file storage, but anything else is frustratingly slow.

I'm going to re-use the case, power supply, RAID controller (Adaptec 6405), and hard drives (2x 1TB mirror, 4x 3TB RAID 6). All I need is a motherboard, RAM, and CPU.

I'm kind of leaning toward a Ryzen 3 (1200 or 1300x) setup with a B350 board and 8 to 16GB of RAM. For the price that seems about the best bet and leaves me room to upgrade down the road too. This would be kept for quite awhile again, 5+ years.

Anything else I should look at instead? If this is the route to go, what B350 board would be a solid choice?

 

[Wraith]

Go for it! I love Ryzen, such great CPUs and should see you solid for the next 6 - 7 years. I'd say go for the Asus Prime-Plus.

 

[Daiyus]

For a home server would an A320 board be just as good for cheaper? Or are you planning on overclocking the Ryzen 3?

 

[hmmblah]

For a home server would an A320 board be just as good for cheaper? Or are you planning on overclocking the Ryzen 3?

No, not planning to overclock. An A320 board would probably suffice. Any suggestions for one?

 

[Daiyus]

No, not planning to overclock. An A320 board would probably suffice. Any suggestions for one?

Can't say I've really looked into them. A quick browse through PCPartPicker shows the only ATX option is this: https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-A320M-HD2-rev-10#kf.

I've always had good experiences with Gigabyte so there is that.

 

[hmmblah]

Ordered the following:

-Ryzen 3 1300x, I think the extra clockspeed vs the 1200 for $20 is worth it.
-GIGABYTE GA-A320MA-M.2, this was $10 more than the board you suggested and has 4x RAM slots. M.2 slot might be useful later as well
-8GB (2x4) Corsair Vengeance LPX 2400
-Corsair CX450 power supply, I can use the old parts to slap a cheap computer together for someone.

Thanks for the suggestions!

 

[AlienALX]

Sounds good. Yes, the 1300x is worth it if you are not overclocking yourself. Definitely a faster CPU out of the box and certainly not worth the aggro over $20.

 

[sheroo]

If you where to use an m.2 drive as a boot drive for this setup. which one would you go for?

 

[hmmblah]

If you where to use an m.2 drive as a boot drive for this setup. which one would you go for?

I guess it depends what I was looking for. For space it'd probably be the Intel 600p. I actually have a 1TB version now to put into my wife's laptop. ASUS are being real idiots though and only support booting off the stock SM951. Their support said they do not support any modifications to their computers so they won't help. I may have found a work-around though that I'll try this weekend.

If I was just after speed of the OS I'd probably get a smaller Samsung M.2 960 evo or step up to the pro.

 

[hmmblah]

Bah, I'm an idiot. Installed everything last night, went to install RAID controller....no slot for it. The x16 is for the graphics card then there are 2 x1 slots. My RAID controller needs a physical x8 (or x16) slot so it looks like I'm back to B350 boards.

The ASRock AB350 Pro4 is only $69 after rebate. Reviews seem pretty solid. I had a very bad experience with ASRock boards over 10 years ago so haven't touched them since. This one actually seems to review better than any other B350 board on newegg. Any thoughts? The ASUS Prime Plus is quite a bit more money and the user reviews make me a little hesitant.

There's also this for $64.99:
http://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/A320M Pro4/index.asp#Overview

 

[AlienALX]

Board looks fine to me. I'v had loads of Asrocks and no issues, so maybe it was just bad luck

 

[sheroo]

It's late, I feel a little obtuse asking this question - but if you don't ask - you don't learn. Why can't the PCIe x16 slot on the Gigabyte board be used for your raid card?

 

[g0ggles1994]

It's late, I feel a little obtuse asking this question - but if you don't ask - you don't learn. Why can't the PCIe x16 slot on the Gigabyte board be used for your raid card?

Got a GPU installed in it mate, only problem with doing a Ryzen server is lack of an iGPU, Unless you use a pre installed OS and SSH in from another machine

Also I'd say the AsRock board is worth a look. I've had bad luck with them years ago but they've seemed to have got their stuff together lately

 

[hmmblah]

It's late, I feel a little obtuse asking this question - but if you don't ask - you don't learn. Why can't the PCIe x16 slot on the Gigabyte board be used for your raid card?

Got a GPU installed in it mate, only problem with doing a Ryzen server is lack of an iGPU, Unless you use a pre installed OS and SSH in from another machine

Yep, exactly. I don't think Ryzen with an iGPU is due out until early next year. I did think about trying to go without a video card, my server isn't even hooked up to a monitor, but if I have to troubleshoot something later it could prove to be a PITA. I'm going to give that mATX ASRock board a shot.

 

[sheroo]

I didn't realise that the Ryzen CPU's don't have iGPU. Doh!!!

 

[hmmblah]

New board came in on Thursday, but didn't get a chance to do the build until Monday night. Everything is up and running. Some pics to follow, but I still need to do a proper cable cleanup.

 

[WYP]

New board came in on Thursday, but didn't get a chance to do the build until Monday night. Everything is up and running. Some pics to follow, but I still need to do a proper cable cleanup.

I am looking forward to seeing more.

 

[hmmblah]

Haven't had the time to clean up the build yet and take final pics, but here's a few with the Gigabyte board before I had to send it back.

 

[hmmblah]

Finally got around to a little tidying. Specs as well...

Ryzen 3 1300x
8GB Corsair Vengeance LPX 2400
Corsair CX450 power supply
ASRock AB350 Pro4
4x WD Red 3TB Drives (Storage RAID 6)
2x 1TB drives (OS RAID 1)
EVGA GeForce GTX960 SC (F@H)
Adaptec 6405 RAID Controller
Icydock 4 bay cage with backplane
CM HAF case


Before:

After:

Pretty basic, in a bland HAF case. Does the job though. Also added an 8TB USB3 drive for backups using the free edition of Veeam.

 

[Kei]

Looks great. I'm not so fortunate to be able to run disks larger than 2TB due to the age of my LSI HBA. I can't moan too much though, as it was free. In a lot of respects, mine could really do with an overhaul similar to this as it's 2009 hardware. (phenom II x4 with 4GB DDR3) The icydock backplanes are great.

Bah, I'm an idiot. Installed everything last night, went to install RAID controller....no slot for it. The x16 is for the graphics card then there are 2 x1 slots. My RAID controller needs a physical x8 (or x16) slot so it looks like I'm back to B350 boards.

I nearly ran into this problem on mine as my SAS expander card uses a 4x slot and my board only has 2x x16 slots and x1. Both the gpu and raid HBA used the x16 slots leaving none for the expander. Thankfully, the expander I chose doesn't need to be run from a pcie slot and can be powered directly with a molex.