# Ryzen for home server?



## stratacast1 (Jul 12, 2019)

I have a 10 year old Xeon home server I want to replace this year, and I'm contemplating (more or less) turning my current desktop (Ryzen 1600) into my server, but sticking in 32GB of ECC memory, putting in a cheapo GPU since Ryzen doesn't have an iGPU, and then upgrading my desktop to the new Ryzen chips. I've done FreeBSD 11.2 on my desktop before and had no stability issues as some have reported, but I'm wondering what you all think of Ryzen + ECC for a home server that just does a handful of jails, storage, video streaming and virtualization? I figure I wouldn't have too much of an issue dragging and dropping my drives to the new box, or at the very least do a fresh install and just zpool import my storage disks.


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## ralphbsz (Jul 12, 2019)

What is the workload on your home server? How much disk space will you have on it, and how many MByte/s do you want to serve?

The reason I'm asking is: I wonder whether a Ryzen might be complete overkill. For comparison, my home server is a 4-core 32-bit 1.8 GHz Intel Atom. It can completely saturate the 100baseT network I run at home, it can easily pull 50 MByte/s out of the file system (which gets pretty close to saturating gigabit Ethernet, should I ever waste the $50 that would be required to upgrade my Ethernet switch or the wireless AP), and it does a lot of other services too. I think that machine is about 10x or 100x slower than a Ryzen, and it does the job. Remember, a DVD quality movie is roughly 1MByte/s, and even BluRay movies fit into a handful Megabytes/s.

Now, I don't do virtualization or jails.


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## stratacast1 (Jul 12, 2019)

The Ryzen is relatively overkill, but repurposing is way cheaper than buying 2 new boxes then attempting to sell "old tech" to recoupe the costs. But to give you an idea:
- 2 4TB disks in a mirrored pool
- my family and I use it regularly for Nextcloud, backing up files, Plex
- I use will be moving all my virtualization to it including a couple OpenBSD vms, a Windows Server VM (which won't be on all the time), and constantly spinning up/down various Linux VMs for work..I also will be adding additional jails as I am learning web development again so I can have a couple projects I want to maintain for both practice and because I can use them

I'll probably revisit setting up a Minecraft server for my friends and I too as my current box is unable to handle all that and the chip is so old I can only virtualize OSes that are the same as the host with bhyve. I've maxed this boxes limits with Nextcloud sometimes...


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## vovan (Jul 12, 2019)

I also thought that ryzen is a good solution for home server, especially low-TDP models like Athlon GE (which also has ryzen architecture) with integrated videocard.
But there are some troubles with video driver installs: see this and this thread
That probably depends on hardware, especially motherboard manufacturer, so choose carefully.
Anyway, you might not even need a video driver on server and operate via SSH.


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## stratacast1 (Jul 13, 2019)

I won't be doing AMD graphics thankfully, I'll probably end up buying a GT1030 or a used GTX 750 online...just something to get some GUI when I need to be connected right to the box (such as locked myself out and switching boot environments). My hardware is already set in stone and it already works (when I tried FreeBSD desktop for a while). I just want to know if there are any issues of using "consumer" Ryzen for a server or if I should just keep on holding onto my crusty hardware until I can afford a better box. Probably gonna get this memory:









						Crucial 32GB Kit DDR4-2666 DIMM 288-Pin Memory Kit - Newegg.com
					

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Or the 2x8GB variant, haven't decided since I think with this extra power I'll be opening doors to new ideas, since I limit what I do on my box because it's so old and limited virtualization


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## malavon (Jul 13, 2019)

I've found out over the years, as someone who also repurposes older hardware into home server(s) that there is no such thing as overkill. The more time passes, the more power you'll probably need anyway.
On top of that, knowing that your server has headroom left makes it easier to test things without needing to setup yet another small system. You might even get creative ideas based on the spare resources you have.


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## stratacast1 (Jul 13, 2019)

malavon said:


> I've found out over the years, as someone who also repurposes older hardware into home server(s) that there is no such thing as overkill. The more time passes, the more power you'll probably need anyway.
> On top of that, knowing that your server has headroom left makes it easier to test things without needing to setup yet another small system. You might even get creative ideas based on the spare resources you have.



I like this sort of thinking  thanks!


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