Multiple times per day, I will be browsing reddit, and see…. MANY posts from users trying to achieve the lowest possible energy consumption regardless of hardware cost.

While, I have made previous posts about this before, I have decided to put all of the math involved front and center to assist users with making their own choices.

Note- Affiliate advertising links are utilized on this article.

ROI Calculator

Examples

Example #1, My R720XD versus a newer server

Here is a simple calculator, to calculate the amount of energy it will cost you per year to run a given piece of hardware, provided its energy consumption, and then, compare those numbers with a more efficient piece of hardware.

The calculator is pre-filled with my data. On the left, represents my Dell R720XD Server, with its 300w average power consumption. On the right, estimates a rough cost for me to build a new server with the required features and performance of my workloads. (The actual number would likely be far higher, as I typically USE 70-100GB of RAM… and RAM is not cheap.)

Results? Used Enterprise Server Wins, By Far.

As you can see in the above example- I would not achieve a ROI for at least 10 years. Yes- my electric bill would be 100$ cheaper per year, however, I still wouldn’t break even for a full decade.

Given hardware usually has a finite lifecycle, I would say anything with a ROI > 7 years is certainly not worth the additional effort or cost.

Example #2 – My R720XD versus a newer server in Germany

This is exactly the same as the first example, with one exception. Instead of using MY local price per kWh, I am going to use the national average cost for germany, which at this time, appears to be roughly 32c / kWh.

Results? Much more expensive, but, efficient option wins by a large margin.

Despite being identical to the first example, except in terms of cost/kwh- The more efficient option wins by FAR here.

Example #3 – Used Corporate SFF vs Intel NUC

In this example, I will be comparing a used HP Z240 versus a brand-new intel NUC. I specifically use this example, because I see LOTS of people opting to get a NUC instead of a used piece of enterprise gear.

HP z240

Ebay: HP Z240 – 8GB DDR4 Ram – i5-6500

As of writing this article, the average cost of one of these shipped, is around 120-140$ USD.

Intel NUC

Amazon: NUC7PJYHN2 (Quad-Core Pentium Silver J5005, 8GB DDR4 RAM,

Cost as of the time of writing this, was 400$.

Hardware Comparison

CPU Benchmark

Off the bat, the older z240’s I5-6500 offers nearly double the performance as the “low power” celeron used in the NUC. Both machines offer 8G of DDR4 ram. Lets ignore the hard drive for now, both options can be had with NVMe storage for basically the same price.

Power Consumption

I DO have multiple HP Z240 desktops laying around my house. One is used for my opnsense firewall, another is used for a gaming PC in my livingroom.

I have personally measured my firewall’s power consumption under normal load, at 25w of consumption. This is a normal HP z240, with a i5-6500, 8G of ram, NVMe, and a 10G NIC. For worst-case scenario, lets assume it uses 40w on average which is WELL above what it actually uses.

I do NOT have a intel NUC laying around. However, its Documentation states < 15 watts under idle/sleep conditions. Lets assume best-case scenario, it uses 5 watts typical. This is likely to be well below its actual usage.

Results? SFF Wins.

Keep in mind, I nearly doubled my ACTUAL usage of my HP z240. I also gave the NUC a unrealistic average power consumption of 5 watts. As well, this was one of the cheapest NUCs you could spec out. Its CPU offers HALF of the performance as the older i5-6500 released in Q3 of 2015.

Effectively, this NUC machine will never reach ROI…. because you are going to throw it in the garbage can in a few months due to its underpowered processor!

Conclusion

Conclusion of this post- Do the math.

If you don’t like to do math? Fine. I provided a calculator above to do the math for you.

Just enter the values. If the ROI is >= 7 Years, I would say go with option 1. If the ROI is < 7 years, Go with option number two!

Obviously, I have relatively cheap electricity(Ignoring the solar panels going up soon as well). What works for me, will not work for someone living in a high-cost area such as germany where the average cost / kWh is 4 times greater then what I would spend.

So- in conclusion…. DO YOUR MATH!!!

So, I am planning a camping trip later this year… and I thought, it sure would be nice to have a fan blowing on me while I am sleeping….

After I did some research, I realized it’s a bit more complex then putting a few cheap lead acid batteries together. I also didn’t want to run a generator all night long.

Also, If I had to spend any serious money, I needed something which would be very useful to me in other ways as well.

So, I decided to build a portable inverter/power supply, which can also serve as a UPS system for my servers, and eventually, be storage for the solar panels I will eventually acquire.

Disclaimer- Amazon affiliate links are used in this article. For this site, I choose to not pesture my audience with annoying advertisements, and instead, only rely on affiliate links to support this hobby. By using the affiliate link, you will pay the same price on Amazon, as you would otherwise pay, however, a small percentage will be given to me.. To note- I DID buy all of the seen products with my own money, and did not receive any incentive to feature or utilize them.

Parts and Tools.

Parts

1. 12v 200Ah LiFePO4 Battery – Ampere Time – ~800$
   1. I went with this battery, because of its extremely good capacity/cost ratio. If I had extra money laying around, I would likely choose a battle born battery. I hear very good things regarding them.
2. AIMS 2000W RMS / 6000W Peak Pure Sine Wave Inverter AND Charger – PICOGLF20W24V120VR. – 800$
   1. I took this route, because it offers a PURE SINE wave inverter, and 100 amp charger.
   2. If you wanted to save money, you could instead, get a GIANDEL 2000w/4000w peak modified sine wave inverter for 150-175$… and then, add a seperate charger. (Victron Smart Charger – 25 Amp)
3. A cheap STEEL dolly. – 35$
   1. This isn’t required, but, I wanted to mount everything to a platform, to make this entire setup extremely easy to move around.
4. 4/0 Pure Copper Wire. – 80$
   1. This size wire is likely overkill for now. But, in the future, I want to add more batteries. So- large gauge wire is cheap insurance to ensure my cable is never the weak point. Also- less resistance losses at 12v.
5. 4/0 Cable Lugs – 12$
   1. Gotta be able to connect the cable to your batteries, right?
6. 3/4″ heat shrink wrapping – 10$
   1. Makes your cable look very nice and professional. Also, keeps water out.
7. Victron SmartShunt – 500 Amp – 130$
   1. This is your eyes into what your system is doing. It measures the amount of current being consumed, your voltages, and integrates with other victron products pretty easily. This is an optional component, but, I would recommend it, as it gives a lot of very good metrics.
8. Victron Battery Protect – 12v / 100 Amp. – 60$
   1. This is actually a integration point for a secondary, smaller inverter I have. This will ensure I do not overdraw the capacity of the battery. It can automatically shut off if the voltage is either too low, or too high. Do note- it only supports energy flowing in one way. So, it will not work with the AIMS charger/inverter I linked above.
9. 6 Foot, 12GA 3-Prong Cord. – 22$
   1. This is to plug the inverter into the wall / generator, so you can charge your batteries.
10. 300 Amp Fastronix Battery Disconnect Switch – 50$
    1. This is a solid, well made switch.

Tools

1. Hydraulic Wire Crimper. – 135$
   1. If you want to make a good, solid crimp on very large gauge wire… you are going to need a good crimper. This one was cheap, and did get the job done.
2. Klein CL900 Clamp Meter – 140$
   1. If you are going to mess with batteries, and high currents… you NEED to be able to measure the amount of current flowing through a cable. There are much cheaper options, However, I choose this tool, because it allows me to measure both AC current, as well as DC current, and AC frequency. It is actually a high quality tool.
3. Cut50D Plasma Cutter – 250$
   1. Its dirt cheap, and it has yet to fail me. For the price, I have expected it to catch on fire, or explode… but, it DOES work. It makes cutting the steel go a lot faster then using a die grinder.

The Build

The first step- was to plan on the best way of mounting everything. After looking at my options, I decided to put the battery on the bottom of the dolly, and mount the inverter about mid-way up.

With an idea formulated, I started measuring and cutting steel. I used 16ga steel plate, and some angle iron I salvaged from a bed frame.

At this point, I had a nice solid location to place the battery, which would keep it secure. There is a piece of angle iron on the front, to keep the battery from sliding forward.

Everything was tack-welded together using 6011 rod, with my AHP AlphaTig. It would have beautiful tig welds, but, somebody… left the argon tank open.

The next step, was to build a backing plate, to which I could mount all of the other components to. Luckily- I happen to have a small stash of 16ga steel sheet in my garage.

SINCE…. my breaker kept flipping from the plasma cutter, I fired up my generator to finish the cutting.

Remember, Measure twice, Measure again, Cut once. I have a piece of angle iron clamped to the sheet to guide the plasma cutter.

After cutting the sheet, I laid the components onto it, to double check everything would fit as expected.

After doing a rough draft, I welded the backing panel to the cheap dolly, and then used self-tapping, stainless-steel bolts to attach the inverter to the backing plate.

Since the base components were all mounted, I decided to start knocking out the cable leads.

I used the dies marked “95” which gave the best quality crimp… and leveraged the hydraulic crimper tool.

After verifying the crimps were nice and tight, I used heat shrink to cover up the connections.

At this point, the basic components are done, and the system is complete enough to be operational.

Do ensure you set the Inverter/Charge’s mode to LiFePO4, which was option “7” in my manual. It is also printed on the front of the unit.

Unexpected power outage

LITERALLY, the day after I put this unit together, we had a transformer fuse blow near my house, causing around 2 hours of total power outage while the crews had to clear a lot of trees and brush.

Well, guess what, this unit was able to power my server, AND my gaming PC and full network stack, without any issues, at all.

Round 2 in the garage.

So, after giving it a reasonable test, it was back to the garage for making it look a bit better, as well as adding more safety and monitoring features.

Step 1- I removed everything from the chassis, and added a coat of black primer rattle-can paint. The primary purpose here, was to cover the exposed metal, to keep it from rusting.

The next step, was to add some safety features.

First, I added a Victron SmartShunt – 500 Amp, which will provide me insights into the status of my system. This system provides crucial details, such as the overall state of my battery, remaining capacity, and current utilization.

The next step, was to add a manual shut off switch. In the event fire starts erupting from any of the components, you need a quick way to completely shutoff the battery. To achieve this goal, I leveraged a 300 Amp Fastronix Battery Disconnect Switch, which is a quite solid piece. The switch feels nice and firm, and has a good click action to it. As well, it does have provisions for powering one smaller circuit as well.

To mount the switch, I bent a strip of 1.5″ aluminum strip using a vise and a hammer. I did not take any pictures of the above two steps, however, you can see the cutoff switch mounted between the battery, and the inverter/charger below.

Final Notes

Overall, this unit is working well for its intended use-case as a portable power supply. It is easily portable, and offers a very good amount of capacity.

If- I were to start over from the beginning-

1. Get a 24v battery, or instead, two 12v batteries to make a 24v system. 24v system would mean the inverter would be smaller, and the wire would not need to be as thick to serve its intended purpose.
2. Get a seperate inverter, and charger. I think this would have saved quite a bit as well. As well, the inverter I went with, will either, 1. Drive your loads from the battery, or 2. Drive the loads from the grid, while it charges the battery. There is no option for using battery power while charging from the grid. (Useful if your grid…. is having a lot of issues and fluctuations….
3. The inverter I have, has a 10ms switch over time to failover from grid, to battery. For backup purposes, or portable power supply purposes, this is not an issue. But, When this isn’t being used for camping, or other areas where I need a portable 110v power supply- I plan on using this as a very large UPS system for powering my servers, and networking equipment. I calculate it can keep my server running for around 8 hours. (with a 300watt load…)

Overall, I am happy with how this product turned out. As a bonus, during normal UPS usage, this battery should last 10+ years…. which is fantastic, since most of the cyberpower/APC UPS devices I have… are lucky to last over a year before their battery gives up….

Other Notes and Future Goals.

I am well aware 4/0 gauge wire is complete overkill for this setup in its current state. However, I plan on adding more batteries in parallel, until I have enough batteries to chain in series to make a 48v system.

I also plan on adding solar panels, and a charge controller in the future, to allow my server to be completely powered by solar panels. I estimate the total cost of this project including the solar, will be around 2,000-2,500USD, and will actually be able to pay itself off in around 5 years.

The end goal, will be a completely self-powered system, which will run my servers, networking gear, my computers, television, lights, and other electronics. So… stay tuned for more updates on the end goal.

FAQs… Frequently Asked Questions

Why don’t you just buy a generator? It would be a lot cheaper.

I have one. But, to explain the reason- I have a bunch of frequent, but, short power outages, which usually ranges from 30 minutes, to two hours. By having this battery bank, I can easily run all of my networking, and computer equipment directly from this battery without having to drag out and fire up the generator.

Also, the future goal, is to start slowly converting the house over to solar. This is one of the first pieces I need… More to come.

Why didn’t you buy (insert cheaper battery option here)?

I had a lot of time constraints on this project… Many of the other options, such as assembling battery packs from prismatic cells, are indeed more cost effective. However, I didn’t have the time to order and have the parts arrive, before I needed to utilize this system.

Why didn’t you use lead acid batteries, they are much cheaper?

Two reasons.

First of which- lead acid batteries don’t have a long life span. With any regular use, you would be lucky for them to last 5 years. Lithium iron phosphate batteries can be fully discharged, and charged over 3,000 times, before losing 10% of their total rated capacity. Lead acid would be lucky to hold any charge after 5 years.

The next of which, is capacity. If you discharge lead acid batteries to less than 50% of their capacity, it greatly accelerates capacity loss. LiFEPO4 can be fully charged, and discharged without any measurable side-effects.

Why not just use a (insert APC/Cyberpower/other UPS here)?

I have a UPS on almost every computer in my household. They do work. However, they have a few issues.

The first- they use lead acid batteries, which will need replacing every couple years, since my power here is not quite as stable as I would hope.

Next- the total capacity is pretty small. My Cyberpower 1500AVR, which I use to connect my server, can only run the server for 15-20 minutes before its battery is dead.

Lastly- while I could technically replace the internal 12v/24v battery, with a much larger battery, the consumer units are not rated for continuous use, and will generally overheat and die without additional cooling provided. Also- this build is going to be much more than just a simple UPS…. just not yet.

Why didn’t you use a 24v or 48v system?

Good question.

Actually- in the future, I will be expanding this system up to 48v hopefully. But, due to cost constraints, I settled on a simple 12v system for the time being.

As well, in the future, when I upgrade the system to 48v, I can reuse the inverter for automotive purposes. Imagine having a few 110v outlets in the back of the suburban while you are out camping… with the option for adding grid power to recharge your batteries.

When we go camping in it, I can add a mini-fridge, and perhaps even toss a few solar panels onto the roof to keep the batteries charged up.

But- that is a future goal. However- stay tuned, and hopefully soon, the articles regarding the new 1,000hp square body suburban family car should start popping up.

Introduction

Originally, I was going to make a single post, for both upgrading my PC, and converting it to leverage unraid.

However, after doing a LOT of googling for issues, I realized I needed to make a seperate post regarding the steps I had to take.

Assumptions

This article, assumes you have a WORKING PC, for which you wish to convert to an unraid VM. In my case, this is a working PC, with two dedicated SSDs, as well as a dedicated RTX 2070.

This assumes, you want to pass through the physical devices directly to the VM, to completely hide the fact, your PC is running inside of a VM.

This means, you displays, work like normal. You can plug in a USB device, normally. You can connect to WIFI, normally. etc.

Step 1. Configure IOMMU groups

This allows us to flag the devices for direct-passthrough.

From your unraid panel, goto Tools -> System Devices.

Next, you are going to want to check anything which you want passed directly into the VM.

While you MAY be tempted to click the checkmark next to your NVMe controllers, DON’T!!!!! Trust me- I spent many hours having to power down my system, and manually edit the config files to get it back up and running.

Select your GPU.

I selected my SECOND NIC, which is NOT in use by unraid. Do not check anything in use by unraid. I also selected the wifi device.

I selected one of my USB 3.0 controllers. To note, I cannot / did not select the other controller, because my unraid thumb drive is connected to it, as well as my z-wave and rtl_sdr stick.

Each device you are checking, puts a flag, which prevents it from being loaded into unraid. Don’t get too crazy here.

IF you mess up, and cannot get unraid to boot properly

1. Power down the machine.
2. Plug the thumb drive into another machine.
3. Delete or Rename /boot/config/vfio-pci.cfg
4. Remove thumb stick, reinstall, reboot.

Step 2. CPU Isolation

This will allow us to isolate certain CPU cores from unraid, and prevent them from being used by docker, etc. This means- the CPU cores you select, will be unavailable for use!

This setting dramatically improved performance of my gaming VM.

Navigate to Settings -> CPU Pinning. Scroll down to CPU Isolation.

Select the PAIRs you would like to dedicate to your VM. Emphasis on pairs. If your CPU does hyper-threading, ensure you select the proper pairs. The “HT CPUs” aren’t exactly real CPU cores, so, do keep this in mind.

Step 3. Reboot

Warning- This DOES assume you were not using the unraid UI via the machine you are working on…. Remember- we DID exclude the GPU, so, you may not have a UI when you reboot. Keep this in mind!

Step 4. Create the VM.

For Logical CPUs, Select the pairs you isolated in step 2.

For Initial / Maximum memory, ensure you set both fields to the same value, to disable memory ballooning which will impact performance.

Ensure BIOS is set to OVMF.

For the VirtIO Drivers ISO, you will need to click to select the preloaded ISO. This will be required to get the VM up and working properly.

For Primary/Other disks- assuming you want to do entire-disk passthrough-

1. Select Manual
2. Find the device’s path. ls /dev/disk/by-id
3. Put the full device path here.
4. For bus, select SATA. Don’t click virtio. I did this, and spent 30 minutes undoing it.

Next- Select your graphics card

Optional- Specify your sound card.

For your network bridge, set the proper bridge/vlan.

Lastly, you will need to select the devices to pass into the VM.

As noted in step 1, I am passing two entire USB hubs into the VM. This will ensure I can just plug in a device to the specified hub, and it will work with no issues.

I am also passing in my 2nd NIC, as well as my intel ax200 wifi chip.

After you hit this point, SAVE, but, don’t launch it yet. There are a few additional manual steps I found extremely helpful.

Step 5 – Other Misc Tweaks

The steps in this post assisted quite a bit with the performance of my NVMe SSDs.

https://forums.unraid.net/topic/94321-performance-issues-when-passing-through-entire-nvme-controller/?do=findComment&comment=871877

This post, was helpful in resolving an issue, which causes the CPU to hang at 100% when shutting down the VM.

Without disabling WSD, the CPUs allocated to the VM would hang at 100% usage until manually clicking force stop. After disabling WSD, the VM will shutdown normally.

https://forums.unraid.net/topic/91319-solved-vm-start-upshutdown-crashes-unraid/?do=findComment&comment=847826

Step 6 – Cross your fingers, and turn it on!

Hopefully after following the steps I documented above, you won’t have to spend the 8+ hours I did trying to track down and troubleshoot random issues.

The results of my “Gaming VM” are documented in a seperate post HERE.

Issues I have not yet resolved

1. How to either run Corsair iCue software, or just disable the damn LEDs all over my RAM.
   1. Resolved- boot bare metal with a windows install, run the iCue software, and set a “hardware profile”. The hardware profile is saved in the ram somehow, and does not need the software running. I set my profile to just “Black” which disables the LEDs. You can also set a hardware profile to change the color based on temp. F
2. How to disable the red LEDs on my hyper-212
   1. Resolved- Use wire cutters to snip the wires.
3. Basically- disabling all of the blinky lights all over my PC.
   1. Resolved. Unplugged power LED & HDD LED.

Back in 2019, I built my current gaming PC. Since then, the only modification I have performed, was to double the amount of ram to 32GB. I did that to facilitate hosting a few services on this PC, before I built my server.

Well- In summer of 2020, I finally broke down, and built a 500$ budget server, and later, upgraded it to unraid.

Both of these PCs have performed fantastically. However- After installing plex on my server, and attempting to transcode a movie in 4k, I quickly realized…. the quad core 80$ APU was not going to cut it.

Now- don’t get me wrong- this CPU has served its purpose perfectly. It currently runs over 40 containers, ranging from home automation, network administration, git, game servers, backups, etc…. and also- hosts my blue iris NVR recording from multiple 5mp cameras constantly. It does all of this, while only averaging 30% cpu utilization.

However, I think its time has come…

If you don’t like to read, and just want to see the benchmarks, and final results… CLICK HERE

Disclaimer- Amazon affiliate links are used in this article. For this site, I choose to not pesture my audience with annoying advertisements, and instead, only rely on affiliate links to support this hobby. By using the affiliate link, you will pay the same price on Amazon, as you would otherwise pay, however, a small percentage will be given to me.. To note- I DID buy all of the seen products with my own money, and did not receive any incentive to feature or utilize them.

To note on the above disclaimer- absolutely none of the content you are seeing was sponsored. 100% of everything shown below, was purchased out of my own back pocket. There is no outside influence involved for this build. As a matter of fact- as of the time of writing this introduction, I have no idea if this build will even pan out correctly.

Navigation

The plan

Now- normally, you would toss in a better CPU, and call it a day, right?

I want to do something different. I want to consolidate my server, with my gaming PC. To do this, I plan on leveraging unraid to expose my gaming PC, as a VM hosted on unraid, with the physical SSDs passed directly into the gaming PC.

That way- if issues ever do crop up, I can remove the unraid thumb drive, and boot into my pc normally, without any issues at all.

My only concerns on this approach- is…

1. How much will it affect my gaming performance.
2. How reliable will this solution be?

In this article, I hope to answer both of those questions for you.

The old server build will have all of the extra hard disks, and expansion cards removed, will be upgraded with the Ryzen 5 3600, and will be a birthday gift for somebody near the end of this month. With a 6c/12t processor, 32gb of ram, and a brand new SSD, this should excel at the tasks expected from the user(Photoshop/Checking email/etc…).. Well- it’s a bit overkill.

Hardware Specs

Note- pieces in bold, are new additions. The rest are carried over from my server build, and my gaming pc.

1. Motherboard: Gigabyte X570 AORUS MASTER
2. CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5800x – 8c / 16t
3. CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 LED Corsair H150i (Replaced after publishing this article)
4. RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 X 8GB) DDR4 3600  (Only two of the sticks will be kept.)
5. RAM: Corsair VENGEANCE RGB PRO 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 3600 ( I couldn’t find the above sticks for a reasonable price in 16GB dimms)
6. GPU: GeForce RTX 2070
7. SSD1 (Gaming VM OS): Samsung 970 EVO NVME M.2 500GB (Passed through to VM)
8. SSD2 (Gaming VM Steam): Samsung 970 EVO NVME M.2 500GB (Passed through to VM)
9. SSD3 (Via USB) (Staging): Samsung 970 EVO NVME M.2 500GB
   1. Connected via SSK Aluminum M.2 To USB Type-C (I ran out of PCI-e lanes…) Still performs at 600MB/s.
10. SSD4,5: (Server Cache): Samsung 970 EVO 1TB NVMe (BTRFS Mirrored Cache Pool)
11. HDD1-8 = 8x 8TB Seagate 7200 RPM ST8000NM0105 (Added after publishing this article)
12. HDD9 – Random 3TB (Used for NVR)
13. NVMs PCIe: ASUS Hyper M.2 X16 PCIe 3.0 X4 Expansion Card V2 (After the fact note- only enough PCIe lanes for a single NVMe here….)
14. SATA HBA: LSI 9207-8i (Added after this article)
15. Case: Fractal Design Define R6
16. PSU: EVGA SuperNova 80+ GOLD 750w
17. Keyboard: IKBC CD108 (This keyboard is a pleasure to use)
18. Mouse: Logitech M150 Mouse (Don’t replace what isn’t broken!)

I would have loved a new Ryzen 9 5900x, but, those are a bit hard to come by currently. So, I will make do with a 5800x.

Memory Comparison

Overall- My unraid server uses 16gb of ram for applications, and uses the remaining 16gb of ram for cache. My gaming PC uses around 9-12gb on average while playing games. With that said- 48GB of total ram, should allow everything to maintain the existing amount of ram.

Compute Comparison

For compute usage- If you compare core-by-core, My server had 4c/4t, while my gaming PC has 6c/12t. The new CPU, will have 8c/16t, leaving for the same amount of threads.

Looking at CpuBenchmark’s Comparison, The 5800x is more powerful than BOTH of the old processors combined, in nearly every area. So- there should be plenty of compute to go around.

With those comparisons out of the way, it should be safe to assume this new build, will have PLENTY of compute and memory to go around.

Storage Plan

For storage, here is the plan:

1. SSD1: 500gb Gaming PC OS – Will be passed directly to the VM.
2. SSD2: 500gb Gaming PC Steam – Will also be passed directly to my gaming VM.
3. SSD3: 500gb Staging – Connected via USB. Used for “Staging” from Sabnzbd, BlueIris, etc. I expect this one to wear out first.
4. SSD4: 1TB: Mirrored Cache Pool.
5. SSD5: 1TB: Mirrored Cache Pool.
6. HDD1: 3TB: NVR storage. Redundancy is not required for this. Mounted directly in Blue Iris VM
7. HDD2: 8TB: FreeNAS
8. HDD3: 8TB: FreeNAS
9. HDD4: 8TB: FreeNAS
10. HDD5: 8TB: FreeNAS
11. HDD6: 8TB: FreeNAS
12. HDD7: 8TB: FreeNAS
13. HDD8: 8TB: FreeNAS
14. HDD9: 8TB: FreeNAS

SSD1, SSD4, and SSD5 will be placed directly into the motherboards NVMe slots.

SSD2 is connected via USB. I ran out of PCIe lanes.

SSD3 is on the PCIe/NVMe expansion card.

The 8x 8TB HDDs are hosted off of my LSI 9207-8i, which is passed directly into FreeNAS. The zfs array is configured as striped mirrors. (Raid 10)

The 3TB NVR drive is connected to my motherboard’s sata ports.

Network Planning

My existing server has a total of 4 active gigabit ethernet ports, thanks to my quad port HP/Intel Gigabit NIC... It is also connected directly to the “closet” switch, in the center of my house. This keeps my NVR footage from having to hop through the entire network. Essentially- the POE cameras plug into this switch, and there is a dedicated ethernet port on the server for NVR traffic, keeping this traffic away from the rest of my network.

Since, my gaming PC will remain in the bedroom, this limits me to a maximum of two ethernet ports total. Luckily, the motherboard DOES have two ethernet ports.

Doing some napkin math- on potential bandwidth usage..

1. NVR Cameras – 20Mbit/s each. 5 Total = 100Mbit/s.
2. Internet – 100Mbit/s max d/l.
3. Streaming Media – Let’s assume 50Mbit/s.
4. IOT/Server Traffic – Let’s assume an unrealistic number of 50Mbit/s. The actual number is < 1Mbit/s.

This totals up to 33% of a single gigabit connection. So- assuming the server is busy syncing at full speed from the internet, consuming 100mbit/s, while my living room TV is streaming a 4k movie, at a SUPER high bitrate, and while all of my IOT clients are downloading complete firmware from my server, we are likely going to be using less then a single gigabit connection. The only potential exception, is all of the cellular devices in my home decides to do a full next-cloud sync of the previous 10 years of photos- well- 802.11ac could potentially saturate the link. However, the weak leak will be from the access point, to the switch, and will not matter where the server connects to the network.

With that said, A single gigabit ethernet port should fulfill my needs. However, I plan on dedicating the realtek 2.5GBe to my gaming PC, and dedicating the intel NIC to unraid. I have had MUCH better luck with intel NICs on server applications.

The Build

I am not going to post a full step by step guide on how to build a PC. But- I will post a few select pictures.

As well, you can view THIS article for a few of the tweaks I had to perform inside of Unraid to get everything working properly.

Benchmarks

How benchmarks will be performed

Remember- the VM is ONLY allocated 4 physical cores, and 4 hyper threads, for a total of HALF of the physical CPU. The bare metal results WILL BE MUCH HIGHER as a result!!!!! As well- the VM is only allocated 16GB of RAM, instead of the 48GB for bare metal.

As well, the benchmarks will be executed WHILE my server is running its full workload. This includes processing NVR traffic, AI detection, Home automation, and even streaming video. This is NOT a clean-room test. This is a down and dirty REAL WORLD test to see what actual results will look like.

CPU

Tested with CPU-Z, Version 1.95.0 x64, with benchmark version 17.01.64

Link to bare metal test: https://valid.x86.fr/zaptm4

To note- There is a separate test for bare metal, using only 8 threads, to match the resources allocated inside of the VM.

Note- #VM 1 is as a VM, before installing the h150i cooler. #VM 2 is AFTER installing it.

Comments

Summary- there is a expected amount of impact. The VM multi-thread performance, is slightly less then half of the bare metal performance, which is expected, because only half of the CPU is allocated to the VM. My guess, is the 8 thread bare metal test, ran against physical cores, instead of hyperthreading. The single threaded performance, does seem to suffer more then I would like, however, 10 percent is expected.

Overall- this was a very successful test in my opinion.

Disk

Link to benchmarks performed when this PC was built. Using the same drive.

OS Drive Only – Bare Metal

Oddly enough, Its actually quite a bit faster then when I originally benchmarked it. I guess Samsung SSDs age like fine wine.

OS Drive Only – As a VM (Updated 3/23)

I ended up manually editing the XML file, to pass through the NVMe controllers, using hostdev tags. I will have a write up in the next few days on THIS ARTICLE.

After performing these corrections, here is the updated benchmark. The random speeds are suffering a tad, however, the sequential speeds are as good as bare metal. I noticed the one of the metrics was a bit weird- So, I ran the benchmark again.

Comments

The performance penalty here is pretty large… 64% slower access for large sequential reads, 60% for large sequential writes. Keep in mind- this is a bare metal drive, passed into a VM. This is not using a .VMDK, or QCOW virtual disk, this is a physical disk.

I will be trying to work with unraid to discover how this can be resolved.

At the current time, I would mark this test as a failure, as these results are not very good.

Gaming

Far Cry New Dawn – Ultra Preset

Overall- extremely playable at 1440p. Playable at 4k. I am not quite sure why the average FPS inside of the VM, is higher then on bare metal.

Summary

Basically zero difference from bare metal performance. Very successful test.

Rise of the Tomb Raider

To note- running these benchmarks multiple times gave somewhat inconsistent results.

I also don’t understand how it would outperform the bare metal install, inside of a VM. These benchmarks do not appear to be very consistent. Take these with a grain of salt.

Also- I don’t understand how the Mountain peak on 1440p, actually did worse then the same benchmark at 4k.

1440p – Very High Preset

4k – Very High Preset

Summary

My benchmark results were too inconsistent to call a result. Even running back to back benchmarks with no changes, would lead to varying results on either bare metal, or VM.

User Benchmark

For the record- do NOT use user benchmark to determine what processor is better. Ever since the AMD fiasco, where they messed up their ranking so badly, an i3 was ranked above an i9 or AMD threadripper, I do not trust them one bit, whatsoever.

However, I do leverage the tool, to determine how well my hardware compares, to others, with the same hardware.

Bare Metal Run ID: 41087369

As a VM Run ID: 41161578

Note, There are purposely no links to the results. I refused to support them by driving traffic in their direction, after the obvious nerfs to AMD benchmarks, which caused them to report a quad core i3, as faster then a Ryzen or intel i7/i9.

You can read about that story here.. if you are unfamiliar with it.

Summary

~4% impact to single-threaded CPU performance.

~10% impact to multi-threaded CPU performance for their 4/8 core thread.

~50% impact to the 64 core test, which is expected, since VM is only allocated half of the cores.

The GPU benchmark actually did quite a bit better when virtualized.

HDD results are in line with the above HDD benchmarks.

Their RAM benchmark also performed better while virtualized.

Final Remarks

Overall, I would say this is a very successful project. I now have a consolidated VM and server. While physically using the computer, You cannot tell in anyway it is virtualized.

The two 32″ 4k & 1440p displays, work exactly the same.

The USB ports, work exactly the same. You plug it in, and it pops up like normal.

Even wifi and bluetooth, work exactly the same. There is also a dedicated NIC I passed in.

The ONLY noticeable difference- you don’t want to click the power button…. In the current state, it will turn off the Server…

When the server does reboot- You will see the bios normally, followed by unraid booting, then a blank screen followed by the gaming VM a few seconds later.

I will note- during all of this testing, my CPU temps were hitting 90c, which IMO, is quite hot. This is within AMDs rated temp range. The current cooler is a Cooler Master Hyper 212. However- I already have a new Corsair H150i on the way as of writing this…. especially, since with Precision boost override, more cooling, usually translates to more performance. I expect, this will actually help some of the benchmarks as well.

As an update- the H150i hardly ever goes above 40 or 50c. Under full load, with all cores at 100%, the highest temp I have seen is 70c. This is a drastic improvement from the 90c temps I was receiving with the Hyper 212.

In the future, I will design and document an IOT project to make the computer’s power button “Smart”.. in the sense, clicking it will power up/power down the VM, instead of the entire server. As well- I will connect the power LED to the VM’s power state.

What I Would Change

Use Threadripper instead of Ryzen

While, I still technically can return everything and do so- If I were to repeat this build, I would use a thread ripper instead of a Ryzen. I estimate it would cost around 400-500$ more to do so, HOWEVER, I would gain a few KEY features for this build.

1. Quad channel DDR-4. This helps performance.
2. PCI-E Lanes.

Seriously- 20 PCIe lanes is not enough. Ideally- your GPU gets dedicated 16 lanes. But- 8 lanes still is not likely to affect performance.

Each PCIe NVMe uses 4 lanes. Remember the ASUS Hyper M.2 used in this build? Well- due to PCIe restrictions, I can only put a single SSD in it. I had to order another adaptor to squeeze my last NVMe into the bottom slot, which gets lanes from the chipset, instead of the CPU.

Want to add another GPU, for a second player to also use? Good luck, lanes are very limited on Ryzen.

However, if say, you spent the same amount on a Threadripper 1920x, you get a CPU with 12 cores, and 24 threads (up from 8/16), which gives you 64 pci-e lanes, instead of 20. Granted- this processor will perform overall- quite a bit worse, and it only supports PCI 3.0, instead of 4.0. But- the additional PCIe lanes will offer much greater room for expansion. I do expect this is why linus chose to use a server CPU/motherboard for this video.

The downside to using a thread ripper- it would cost quite a bit more. The motherboard is quite a bit more expensive, as is the CPU. In this case, it would have likely been a better decision due to my expansion constraints I have reached.

Better Cooling

Technically, I have already ordered a Corsair H150i. However, it is not mentioned until the end of this article. But- better cooling usually means more performance… and a good cooler, also means less noise.

Note- The H150i is installed. It successfully brought temps down to 130F from 195F. It also improved the CPU benchmarks as well.

Install a mini-split into my office

This server/PC has been doing a very good job of heating my office. However- when summer time comes, this is going to be an issue…….

Q&A / FAQs

1. What if the server stops working, and you need to access your PC?
   1. I remove the thumb drive and boot directly into windows, and everything works normally.
2. Why didn’t you use a Ryzen 5950x?
   1. Because I am not made of money, and I cannot get my hands on one currently.

Disclaimer- Amazon affiliate links are used in this article. For this site, I choose to not pesture my audience with annoying advertisements, and instead, only rely on affiliate links to support this hobby. By using the affiliate link, you will pay the same price on Amazon, as you would otherwise pay, however, a small percentage will be given to me.. To note- I DID buy all of the seen products with my own money, and did not receive any incentive to feature or utilize them.

So, after fighting to get multiple ps4 controllers to work with my modified wii-u, when playing gamecube games…. I determined I wanted a much simpler solution, as simple as picking up the controller, and hitting play on a game.

Currently, in my livingroom, I have three devices.

1. Raspberry Pi 4
   1. This is used for retro-emulation. NES, SNES, Sega, PS1, GBC/GBA. It currently runs Lakka, which works great. The only downside- performance is not acceptable when playing N64. PS1 works most of the time.
2. Roku
   1. Used for all TV / Media. Works great. No Compliants.
3. Nintendo Wii-U
   1. I have soft-modded with haxchi. Allows me to play N64, GameCube, Wii, and Wii-U nearly perfectly. CAN play NES/SNES/Sega as well.
   2. Complaints- Controller support. A bit slow to get a game fired up.

What I hope to accomplish

I want a single, unified solution which allows me to play the following systems:

1. NES
2. SNES
3. Sega Genesis
4. Sega Dreamcast
5. N64
6. Gamecube
7. Wii
8. PS1
9. PS2
10. STEAM

Most of the above systems, can already be emulated without issues on my Pi with Lakka. However- For gamecube/wii/ps1/ps2, a bit more power is required.

For Steam- (playing modern games), even more power is required.

Ideally, I want to be able to turn on a controller, which will activate the system, and allow me to fully navigate the interface with a dual shock 4.

Wireless Bluetooth access is a must.

Compact size, is a MUST, since this device will reside in my livingroom, likely on the window-sill behind my TV.

Lastly, I don’t want to spend a small fortune, but, I do want some level of future-proofing.

Choosing hardware

Since, steam is on my list of requirements, I ruled out SOC hardware, such as raspberry pi. While an intel NUC could likely meet the requirement, I wanted a more expandable solution.

After much research, I decided on a HP z240.

While, the cost was a bit more then I initially planned- I determined the 4c/8t i7-6700 would provide a good level of performance for most use cases outside of AAA gaming. As well- it comes with a 512GB m.2 ssd out of the box, with 8gb of DDR4.

If you are intending on creating a retro/HTPC for yourself, and you don’t plan on playing games on steam, or anything newer then a PS1- you can get a suitable piece of hardware for slightly over 100$. If you are willing to wait and watch bids, I see options for as little as 20$.

Any of the below pieces of hardware would be more then adequate for retro emulation.

If you do not know how to use the search feature, here is a LINK for you.

Next- since I want to be able to play most of my steam library, a GPU is almost a must.

Due to the power-supply limitations on the chosen hardware, a GPU without the requirement for external power was required.

Meet the GTX 1050ti, Low Profile. You can technically order one new from Amazon for only a couple bucks more then my eBay version. But, after a bit of research, this GPU was reasonably priced, and should provide a good boost to most games.

Lastly- since the chosen hardware did not support Bluetooth OR wifi out of the box, I needed a good wireless adapter, with GOOD linux compatibility. (Bad compatibility means a lot of time and effort would be spent trying to force the adaptor to work properly).

After researching a bit on reddit, I determined Intel ax200 based chipsets have amazing combability, and will grant me the capability for both 802.11ac Wi-Fi, as well as Bluetooth.

For 29$ shipped, I picked up this no-name adaptor, which uses a intel ax200 chip. It does include the required low-profile bracket, and antennas.

Lastly, you will need a good method on how to control your HTPC system. I decided on using official Sony DualShock 4 Controllers. <- Affiliate Link.

I went with the dual shock 4, because it is usable for multiple systems, and multiple purposes. You can use it wirelessly via Bluetooth. You can using it hard-wired. I can use it with my Wii-U using Nintendont. It will connect to my normal gaming PC. It is fully supported on a Raspberry PI.

In short- it is wireless, very flexible, and highly supported.

Oh- and it has a built in trackpad and functions as a mouse. Huge win.

I picked up two. (Coop with the wife!)

Choosing an operating system

This was the challenging part.

While, I could easily go with Lakka, Recalbox, or Batocera… which are all purpose-built retro-gaming OS distributions…

I was afraid of trying to hack in support for steam, or other software. IF, my only requirement was for retro emulation, I would have likely stuck with Batocera, due to a pretty interface, on top of retroarch. BUT…. support for any piece of software, game, or even server software was desired…

Based on that, I narrowed my choices down to…

1. Ubuntu – Based on debian
2. Manjaro – Based on arch
3. SteamOS – Based on debian

Ubuntu / SteamOS

Both of these have an outstanding upstream package repository, and extremely good support for most hardware.

However- Ubuntu can be quite a bloated installation.

SteamOS would have been a great option as well, however, its latest release was in July of 2019. Based on the lack of recent releases, I crossed this item off of the list.

Manjaro

Manjaro is based on arch. Its advantages over ubuntu, included less bloat installed by default…. and- a unique updates model.

Its update model is based on frequently rolling updates, with the option of being able to choose bleeding edge updates, days or weeks after they are released. Its kernel also stays extremely recent.

I did not know this before- but, apparently it has a very good package repository. As another plus- there are no PPAs!

There is also the “Arch User Repository” which would give the ability to install damn near anything I can think of.

In the end, I decided on Manjaro for the above reasons.

Choosing a desktop environment

For this particular use-case, my goal is for everything to be 100% controllable via a bluetooth dualshock 4 controller. I picked up a few of these, despite not having a PS4, because they are extremely compatible with just about everything.

They work flawlessly on my Lakka-based pi4. They work for gamecube mode on my Wii-u, using nintendont (not flawlessly, and corded mode only). They work on my regular PC…

And- they even have a built-in touchpad. The controller is very ergonomic to hold and use…. and overall- is extremely well designed. I am happy with the choice.

So- for the default desktop environment, I went with XFCE, to get a lightweight environment. However- my goal is to launch directly into Steam big-screen picture.

Part 2 – The Build

After all of the parts had arrived, it was time to put everything together.

Thankfully- both Dell and HP have ensured their SFF cases are easy to work with. Everything folds out for easy access.

Here is another view of the NVMe ssd.

Case “closed up” You can also see the additional SSD I added for storing roms and other software… as well as the DVD+RW drive.

The ONLY major concern…

The only major concern I have had with this entire build… is the 200w power supply.

Now,

Many people would automatically think a 200w PSU would not work at all….

(65w tdp processor… 75w tdp GPU, 1x NVMe/m.2 SSD, 1x sata SSD, Intel ax200 wifi/bluetooth card…. and a DVD-RW)

Surprisingly, it actually works just fine.

To test the PSU as a limitation, I ran a 8 core CPU burn test and held the processor at 100% across all cores, for around 15 minutes, while running a 4k game in the background.

This test, while not scientific, was able to keep the CPU at 100%, while keeping the GPU loaded > 80%.

I can report- no issues at all were caused by insufficient power… However- I can also report, the stock cooling solution for the processor is barely adequate. The i7-6700 hovered around 94c… while within “spec”, this is extremely hot.

But- since this machine will hardly ever be utilizing anywhere near 100% of the 4c/8t processor, I left the stock cooling solution in place.

Part 3 – A bit of configuration

The quest to find a good desktop environment.

This was the hardest choice.. trying to determine how to best boot the system into a controller-only interface.

Retroarch

I started off using a custom xsession to have the system automatically log in to a retroarch-only session. This has the advantage of not loading a full desktop environment.

Overall- it worked great, without issues.

If you wanted to know the steps to accomplish this- open the spoiler below.

[Desktop Entry]
Name=RetroArch
Comment=
Exec=/usr/bin/retroarch-session.sh
Type=Application

#!/bin/sh

/usr/bin/xset s off         # don't activate screensaver
/usr/bin/xset -dpms         # disable DPMS (Energy Star) features.
/usr/bin/xset s noblank     # don't blank the video device

LOG="/var/log/retroarch/retroarch.log"

touch "$LOG"
mv "$LOG" "$LOG.old"

/usr/bin/retroarch &> "$LOG"

# Will shutdown the system when you exit retroarch.
shutdown now

[Seat:*]
autologin-user=myuser # <-- put your specified user here.
autologin-session=retroarch # <-- will automatically log in using the retroarch session we created.

That should be all of the required steps to launch retroarch as a session skipping a normal "desktop"

Kodi

The downside of using retroarch, is the ability to launch external software… such as steam, or pcsx2 (for ps2 emulation that actually works….)

Since Kodi is very popular in the HTPC place, I wanted to try it.

I leveraged Advanced Emulator Launcher to take care of organizing and launching the different game systems.

Overall- it was a pretty nice piece of software…

But- I was not very happy with the interface of Kodi. While it is extremely customizable to however you want it to appear, I was having a few issues getting my dualshock 4 controller to properly control it. I gave up on this approach and removed it.

Steam

While I have had steam installed since setting up this PC, and originally had planned on using steam as the main launcher.. I held off on this until last.

Steam has a few advantages over Retroarch, in the sense it can launch external programs with ease.

For native-steam games, nothing at all is required for it to work. Steam automatically detects the dual shock 4 controllers, and works without issues in big picture mode.

For my emulated games, a solution is required to display them in steam.

Enter Steam ROM Manager.

This gem, allowed me to setup scrapers for all of my systems, download art work, and enter everything into my steam library with the proper launch arguments. It allows me to launch most of my systems via retroarch, using my normal configuration file and works perfectly.

For PS2, I was able to set it to automatically load/launch the games via PCSX2, which worked flawlessly.

Overall- this has been my favorite method.

The only issue I have been having, is getting steam to launch in its own “session”, without loading the full desktop environment. However, I have not noticed any performance penalties from having it auto-start in XFCE.

Anyways, I hope this article has been handy for somebody. Please leave your comments below if you have any.

Final verdict / Conclusion

I rate my current progress of this built a 8.5/10.

PROs:

• Easily emulates NES/SNES/GBC/GBA/N64/PS1
  • My Pi-4 could do this as well! with the exception of N64.
• Easily emulates PS2 / GameCube / Wii
  • My Pi couldn’t handle these. Nearly flawless emulation for most of the games using dolphin / pcsx2.
  • Can even use wii motes without issues.
• Can also play most of my steam library.
  • Even GTA:V works just fine on this setup!
• Since it is a PC, running Linux, it is extremely flexible to future needs as well.
• The hardware is pretty much silent. You cannot hear it. Also- relatively low powered.
• After setting up everything, its effortless for the wife to control this system using only a PS4 controller.

CONs:

• It took a bit of knowledge to get everything setup the way I wanted. You could technically do this same build using windows without much impact if you wanted to make setup easier.
• I had to use a USB bluetooth adaptor, due to a shortage of usb headers on the motherboard. HP’s bios wouldn’t let me repurpose the existing header to the front usb 2.0 ports… without halting the OS at boot.

Since I have been adding POE Security cameras, and more home automation… I felt it necessary to build a small server for handling these workloads, instead of utilizing my gaming-pc with Hyper-V.

The reason behind this build- Originally- was looking at a Synology NAS..

For reference, a DS920+ which is a quad-core CPU, 4 Drives, and 4GB Ram (up to 8).. Would run you around 559$ on Amazon.

A huge downside- if any piece of hardware on the unit fails, you are at the mercy of the vendor to replace it. Since it does not use standardized raid, you cannot simply plug your drives into another PC.

I felt, I could build a competing piece of hardware for a close, or lower price while allowing MUCH more flexibility and expansion room.

Granted, for user’s who just want to plug something in, and it work, a synology/drobo/qnap is just fine. But, for my uses, I find it is more effective to build a new one.

Specifications / Parts / Prices

Prices were captured as of when this article was published, and may have changed over the course of time.

Excluding the UPS, This brings the grand total to $507.92, which is still less then the aforementioned Synology Units while being significantly more powerful, and expandable. As a bonus- this server already has 500GB of NVMe storage, while the base-price on the synology includes NO storage.

Disclaimer- Amazon affiliate links are used in this article. For this site, I choose to not pesture my audience with annoying advertisements, and instead, only rely on affiliate links to support this hobby. By using the affiliate link, you will pay the same price on Amazon, as you would otherwise pay, however, a small percentage will be given to me.. To note- I DID buy all of the seen products with my own money, and did not receive any incentive to feature or utilize them.

Other Parts

I also had these parts laying around:

• 4x 2TB mixed-vendor SATA HDDs
• LSI 9240-8i.

To note- the LSI HBA is completely unrequired in this build, as the motherboard has 4x onboard SATA ports. If more ports are required, you can buy a cheap SATA JBOD HBA for around 35$ which will do the job just as well.

The Build

Here are all of the parts, ready to be put togather.

How does it run?

This post is being completed many months after I had put the server into place…

So far, running 7 containers, it is working flawlessly. Under load, the power draw is pretty minimal, and it makes no noticeable noise. If you didn’t know where to find it, you would never know it was there.

While some may have questioned my choice of a 3200G for 90$, under its current load running ZoneMinder for 4 5MP cameras, running all of my home automation, it is only at around 20% load, and has much more room to grow.

As far as the 16GB of ram, 80% of it is only used for ZFS caching. In the below image- you will notice only around half of a single GB of the memory is used for my Home Automation group.

For my other group of servers, you will still notice slightly over 1GB combined ram between all of the containers.

This goes back to my earlier claim, 80% of the RAM is used for ZFS and/or File caching.

Even for hard disk usage, you will notice…. most of my containers are very small…. My MQTT server, only uses 67MB on disk.

If you would like to learn how to make incredibly small LXC containers, which next to no overhead, I would recommend checking out Alpine Linux. My Alpine containers have been absolutely amazing to manage, and deploy, while using next to no resources at all.

The ONLY issue I have had with this build so far- My LSI 9240-8i died a few weeks ago. Granted- the unit was old when I purchased it off of eBay many years ago (And then used it in my old FreeNAS/Plex server for years).

I replaced it with a LSI 9207-8i off of Amazon for 60$. After replacing it- my ZPools came back online with no issues at all, requiring no configuration whatsoever.

Notes

If you plan on doing a lot of ZFS, I would recommend 32GB of total RAM.

If you are doing compute-heavy workloads, spend 100$ more and get a Ryzen 5 3600. With 6c/12t, and a 65w tdp, it is efficient, yet, powerful.

Finally- the secret to my abnormally low RAM/Disk usage for my containers….. Create LXC containers using the alpine linux template. It is really small, and has been working extremely well.

Future Plans

Currently? None. The server does everything I need it to do, with plenty of additional capacity.

When the CPU is upgraded in my Gaming Rig / Workstation, I will be dropping the Ryzen 5 3600 6c/12t into the server.

6 Months Later

So, I came back to update the current status and progress after 6 months.

For one, I have switched everything over to Unraid. For my needs, it has been far quicker to deploy, and easier to manage. I cannot say enough good things about it.

Other then that, the hardware is still exactly the same, and trucking along….

With all of my containers and blue iris running, I am only utilizing around 30-40% average utilization of the processor, leaving plenty of free capacity.

Power draw at the UPS, is 80 watts. This includes my Unifi POE-8 switch, as well as two POE cameras.

Memory utilization is only around half, leaving plenty of free capacity.

The moral of this story- not everybody needs a server with a 2,000$ xeon, i9, or something ridiculous.

I am running a pretty decent chunk of services, from a 80$ quad core processor, without any issues at all. It makes no noise whatsoever, and draws very little overall power.

Specs

• Processor: Intel i5-4690k
• Processor Fan: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo
• Memory: G.Skill RipjawsX 8GB (4 x 4GB) DDR3 1866MHz (16GB total)
• Motherboard: ASUS z97-e
• GPU: XFX Radeon RX 570 RS 
• SSD1 (OS): Seagate 600 240GB SATA ST240HM000
• SSD2 (Games): Crucial BX200 480GB SATA CT480BX200SSD1
• DVD: None. Case does not have room for one.
• Case: Thermaltake V200 Tempered Glass RGB Edition
• PSU: ROSEWILL 80+ GOLD 500w
• Keyboard: Redragon S101
• Mouse: Redragon S101

Build

Monday – Parts arrive

2 days after the order had been placed, the parts showed up on my door.

However- Before I can acquire the CPU/MOBO/RAM from my old PC, I need to wait for the case to arrive for my High-End Gaming PC Build. We will continue Friday.

Friday – Build Day

Time to get started with the build! I didn’t document this build as well. But- here are a few images during the build.

After building the PC, I stole the old SATA SSDs from my main PC. It has 970 M.2 evos now.

Here are a few shots showing the current lighting. Ignore the plastic on the side- this is intended as a Christmas gift for my 10 year old step-son. The protective plastic wrapping will be removed later. Without the protective plastic, it will not appear cloudy.

Lastly- here is a hyper-lapse of the case lighting, taken over a minute or two.

But wait, there is more!

Next week, I will be installing RGB strips inside of the case which will be synced with the case lighting. I will take another video then.

RGB Lighting Install

As promised, it is time to install some more RGB Lighting! I ordered some RGB LED Strips off of amazon.

But, I ran into an issue, where I did not have a proper place to plug in the RGB Strips. The motherboard did not have support for RGB, so, all of the lightning was controlled by a small chip included with the case.

The case DID have an extra RGB out plug, however, it was the wrong socket type.

To remediate the issue, I pulled out my soldering iron, and soldered a plug onto the pins.

Final Build Results

Here is the finished result.

Benchmark / Results

Far Cry New Dawn – Ultra @ 1080p

60 fps average, 81 maximum, and a brief spike down to 38. Overall- the game would be perfectly playable. Pretty respectable numbers from a budget build.

Crystal Benchmark

Since this PC will be using the same hard drives from my old PC, I am reusing the Crystal benchmarks from that build.

OS Drive

Gaming Drive

User Benchmark

Round 1.

https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/20884252

Notes:

1. Ram is not clocked properly. 1,600mhz instead of 1,866mhz.
2. CPU Clock is wrong. It will run 4.2ghz all day long with no issues. Currently running 3.5-3.7ghz.
3. Needs fresh install of windows….
4. Will perform more benchmarks later on…

Final Verdict

This will be a more then adequate gaming PC for my step-son. It is capable of playing Far Cry New Dawn at Ultra settings with no issues. I assume it should have no issues play any AAA game out currently.

Before I box it up for x-mas, I will do a fresh install of windows, with proper drivers, and the proper RAM/CPU clocks in place, which should boost the benchmark scores further.

As well, as noted above, next week, I will be installing RGB strips inside of the case which will be synced the the color of the case lighting. It should look pretty decent for him.

Lastly- I do believe it should benchmark around 10-15% higher after I do a fresh install, install the proper up to date drivers, set the proper CPU/RAM clock speeds, and give the GPU a little OC.

Overall, for a 300$ investment, not bad at all. If you were wanting to produce a similar build, without reusing parts as I did, you could build something on-par for around 500$

1. Budget NVMe 500GB SSD: 50-60$.
2. CPU – Ryzen 3 1200 – 60$
3. Budget AM4 Motherboard – 50$
4. 16 GB DDR-4 2,666mhz – 65$

Chances are- the above components would likely be faster then my ancient i5-4690k.

Specs

• Processor: Ryzen 5 3600
• Processor Fan: Cooler Master Hyper 212 LED
• Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 X 8GB) DDR4 3600 
• Motherboard: MSI MPG X570 Gaming Plus
• GPU: GeForce RTX 2070
• SSD1 (OS): Samsung 970 EVO NVME M.2 500GB
• SSD2 (Games): Samsung 970 EVO NVME M.2 500GB
• DVD: It reads and writes DVDs. Can read bluray as well.
• Case: Fractal Design Define R6
• PSU: EVGA SuperNova 80+ GOLD 750w
• Keyboard: Geezer Mechanical Keyboard
• Mouse: Logitech M150 Mouse

The Build

Money – The first round of parts arrive.

After 2 days, for prime shipping, the first batch of parts had arrived on Monday.

At this point- I have all of the required parts to build the Budget Gaming PC. However- I need to wait on my new case to arrive before I start building PCs…. Because, My old MOBO/CPU/RAM will be transitioned to the budget PC, while the new CPU/MOBO/RAM will be placed into the new case. I will need to wait until Friday, so that I am not handling the parts more then I need to.

Friday – Build Day

So, due to a train derailment, the full build won’t be completed today… however, I did get the combination put together. Let’s get started..

First I pulled the old dusty combo out of the corner. Since I will be reusing most of its components in the budget build, I used a bit of duster to remove dust.

First step, was to start removing the old components.

You may notice I have a lot of large hard disks mounted, with 4 more in a front mount hot swap dock. I will not be using them for the new build. They were apart of my old legacy NAS. Nowadays, you can pretty much buy a single disk with more capacity then my entire 8x 2TB NAS had (8×2 = 12 TB usable after raid ZFS Z-2, ie, 2 parity drives)

Now that the components have been added to their temporary home… let’s get it turned on.

Uh oh….

So, I went through a quick bios setup, and started to boot into windows.

After 4 or 5 reboots, it was finally time to get logged in!

Just kidding. Blue screen of death.

… A few hours later, after getting all of the drivers installed and updated, and cloning my old SATA SSDs over to my new M.2 970 evos, its time to run some benchmarks!

New Case

At long last- the box containing the new case did successfully arrive. Despite the appearance of the box, there was no damage done to the case.

Completed Product

Here is a small gallery of the completed product. The RGB lighting is controlled by the motherboard. MSI Mystic Light

Lastly, here is a short video of the case and lighting.

Lastly- A completed image, while playing a bit of Far Cry. The lighting color is determined by current CPU temp. Green = cold. Blue = good. Red = Getting toasty.

Benchmarks

As promised, here are a few simple benchmarks from my PC upgrade. I will be doing mostly real-world benchmarks, including Fry cry, Crystal Benchmark, Avg power consumption at the wall, and time to boot.

I believe these simple real-world benchmarks should show the difference in user experience that I will see, personally.

Disclaimer- None of these benchmarks were performed in a “clean room” environment. They were performed in the exact same context as if I were performing the tasks. No background processes were disabled. Chrome tabs were open. Real world benchmark!

** note- time to boot, and power consumption were removed, due to inconclusive or inaccurate results. To note- time to boot and power consumption appear to be roughly the same, from the inaccurate tests performed.

A last minute note- during the CPU / Memory stress tests, with the Hyper 212, temperatures never rose above 64c, even after 30 minutes of continuous 100% utilization. As well, with the entire rig sitting one foot away from my chair- It is very quiet, even under full load. Fractal Design did a great job on the case.

Farcry New Dawn – Max Settings 1080

This test is pretty self explanatory. Ultra settings @ 1920×1080

Results- Pretty decent improvements across the board, far more then I expected to achieve.

To note- I did notice my 3600mhz RAM was not running at 3,600mhz. I updated the settings in the BIOS and returned to run another benchmark. The difference was nearly as big as the difference between the old cpu and the new.

Crystal Benchmark

Here are the benchmarks for my old SSD. The Seagate hosts my OS, and the Crucial hosts my steam library. Nothing impressive to see….. Not for 2019 at least.

Old OS Drive

New OS Drive

Old Gaming Drive

New Gaming Drive

Overall- HUGE gains for sequential performance. On average, huge gains across the board. This should speed up quite a few programs and games.

User Benchmark

Take the results of these benchmarks as you want. I did include them as a generic benchmark run.

Old Build Results: https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/20730464

Initial Test – https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/20855176

After properly setting RAM speed: https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/20855404

Lastly- Benchmarks after Correcting an issue with user benchmark:

https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/20874159

Summary- I do give user benchmark credit for telling me that my RAM was running at half of its recommended clock speed- and for reminding me to disable compression for my SSD.

Edit-

The final benchmark after a mild OC.

https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/20983039

I have been rocking my current combo for a while since roughly 2015. I upgraded my GPU this year however, after my 290x was unable to keep up in VR. But- for this project, I will be upgrading my current rig, as well as building a new mid-tier PC. I will completed both of these builds for < 1,000$.

Goals:

This started out as a project to build my step-son a new gaming PC. Since my PC is due for an upgrade, I took the opportunity to both upgrade my PC as well as building a fairly high-end build for him. My current processor is able to power through every workload I have thrown at it, so, it will be a perfect fit for his PC.

1. Upgrade my current gaming / development PC back to high-end specs.
2. Build a new PC for the step-son capable of playing any current game with max settings at 1920×1080.

Current specs / Original PC:

• Processor: Intel i5-4690k
• Processor Fan: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo
• Memory: G.Skill RipjawsX 8GB (4 x 4GB) DDR3 1866MHz (16GB total)
• Motherboard: ASUS z97-e
• GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070
• SSD1 (OS): Seagate 600 240GB SATA ST240HM000
• SSD2 (Games): Crucial BX200 480GB SATA CT480BX200SSD1
• DVD: Who cares. It reads, and it writes.
• Case: Rosewell Thor V2
• PSU: EVGA SuperNova 80+ GOLD 750w
• Keyboard: Geezer Mechanical Keyboard.
• Mouse: Logitech M150 Mouse

Build 1: My high-end gaming / development PC.

• Processor: Ryzen 5 3600
• Processor Fan: Cooler Master Hyper 212 LED
• Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 X 8GB) DDR4 3600 
• Motherboard: MSI MPG X570 Gaming Plus
• GPU: (No change) GeForce RTX 2070
• SSD1 (OS): Samsung 970 EVO NVME M.2 500GB
• SSD2 (Games): Samsung 970 EVO NVME M.2 500GB
• DVD: (No Change) The same one I had before. Not replacing.
• Case: Fractal Design Define R6
• PSU: EVGA SuperNova 80+ GOLD 750w
• Keyboard: Geezer Mechanical Keyboard
• Mouse: Logitech M150 Mouse

Total Price: 822$

Existing parts were not factored into the pricing.

Build 2: A capable mid-tier gaming PC.

• Processor: Intel i5-4690k
• Processor Fan: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo
• Memory: G.Skill RipjawsX 8GB (4 x 4GB) DDR3 1866MHz (16GB total)
• Motherboard: ASUS z97-e
• GPU: XFX Radeon RX 570 RS 
• SSD1 (OS): Seagate 600 240GB SATA ST240HM000
• SSD2 (Games): Crucial BX200 480GB SATA CT480BX200SSD1
• DVD: Undetermined.
• Case: Thermaltake V200 Tempered Glass RGB Edition
• PSU: ROSEWILL 80+ GOLD 500w
• Keyboard: Redragon S101
• Mouse: Redragon S101

Total Prices: 312$

Existing parts salvaged from the original PC were not factored in.

The only new parts required: Keyboard, Mouse, PSU, Case, GPU.

Q&A around production decisions

Q: Why not choose the R5 3600x or the R7?
A: Overlocked performance of the R5 3600 is equal to the 3600X. Not enough performance improvement to offset the additional cost of the R7.

Q: Why not Intel?
A: Because AMD is ahead of the game right now. Intel can’t compete on the price / performance mark currently.

Q: Why the case (For the gaming PC)?
A: Because it is simple, and sleek. I don’t need flashy lights everywhere. I prefer smaller, and simpler. I nearly got the variant without a window.

Q: Why the case (For the budget gaming pc)?
A: Because it is flashy. I can almost guarentee that a 10 year old is going to love flashy lights, and LEDs everywhere.

Q: Why do you use such a shitty keyboard? (Chinese geezer mechanical)
A: I have actually preferred this 20$ amazon keyboard over my Logitech G10 keyboard sitting behind my screen. For 20$, I have been using this keyboard for a while now. Just… don’t expect support. I don’t even think you can buy it still.

Q: Why the RX 570 for the budget gaming PC? Why not a GTX 1050 or RX 560 or RX 580?
A: It costed 10$ more then the RX 560, and offers very good gains. In the price range, the 2060 was not even close to the price / performance. Since his current gaming PC contains a HD6870, this will be a MASSIVE improvement, and will be able to play any non-VR game at close to maximum settings for a very reasonable price.

My Expectations

I expect to over double in processor / compute performance. As well, the new Samsung M.2 NVMe SSDs will out perform my current existing SSDs by a very large margin. I expect my boot times to go from 6 seconds, down to around 3 seconds. Game load times may increase as well. I don’t expect game performance to improve much for most games, since my limitation is 1080p @ 60FPS. However- CPU intensive games such as Oxygen Not Included will likely benefit alot.

Stay tuned for a post detailing the build. Each PC will have a separate build post. This content should be available by this weekend.

Results

Gaming workstation – Build / Results

Budget gaming PC build / results