Best Hardware to run constant tasks?

[Eric]

Any way you go... a Xeon E3/E5 processor will be the most efficient thing you can find.

 

[wolfspinone]

Could I make a versatile gaming machine with an e3/e5?

 

[Eric]

Yes.

We built a gaming PC with a pair of older xeons that performed just fine.

A e3 would be a better choice (Higher clock speed)

 

[Rawlk]

I have a machine that I'm relatively proud of... 10 disks, hw raid card (in IT), 16G ddr3 ecc ram and the e3 1231-v3 and it maxes out at ~190W. . Idles much lower.. If I ever let my drives spin down I'm sure it'd drop a lot lower. its a bit of a beast and super reliable.

Only had one problem with it really and it was remedy'd with a pci intel nic

It runs my handbrake scripts, serves plex (REALLY well), media management tools, mysql replication vm's backup targets, clones ... some of everything. my vote for an e3!