CPU for a home server/mining rig/second box for 24/7 uptime

Retsam

Retsam

2[H]4U
Joined
Sep 2, 2005
Messages
3,905
I could use a little help here.

I am interested in building a home file server/mining rig/second box for 24/7 uptime. So what I want is a box to mine with, but also be able to run as like a home file server with 24/7 uptime. So low power consumption and stability is important.

I want to be able to do normal stuff on it with some degree of power but also low power consumption possible. I also do not want to spend too much either, I am looking for the best bang 4 buck. I just dont know what route to go.

So far my cpu considerations:
i3-8100
i9-9900T
Ryzen 3400g
Ryzen 5 3600
Ryzen 1600AF

I also learned that you can lower the TDP in ryzen master with 3 and 5 series cpus, so effectively making a Ryzen 3600 a 35 TDP processor?

Anyways, I need some ideas of what others would pick for this usage. I also have no idea what direction to go for motherboards, memory for case.
 
Mining and low power consumption generally do not mix well. So you may want to re consider the purpose of this one box. Building two more purpose built machines would for the bill better for both things you’d like to be doing. Along a low power file server is easy and could very easily be done with just a raspberry pi and external drives.
 
jmilcher said:
Mining and low power consumption generally do not mix well. So you may want to re consider the purpose of this one box. Building two more purpose built machines would for the bill better for both things you’d like to be doing. Along a low power file server is easy and could very easily be done with just a raspberry pi and external drives.
Click to expand...

Well, what I meant by that is low power consumption parts, as I already know mining does not take much cpu/mobo/memory. So while it was not mining, it could be used for other things. I know I would have to have a good PSU and graphics card for that. Obviously while it was mining it is not going to be low power consumption. I just would want it for the lowest possible. I live in CA.
 
Last edited:
What I’m saying is, anything that has enough power to make any type of mining worth while, is not low power anything. Mining is a waste of electricity at any low power level. The difficulty is so high now, you’d be better off trading coins instead of making a single mining machine. The profits aren’t worth it at all for a single machine with no very fast dedicated GPU. Cpu mining especially on low power rigs has no benefit because of the difficulty.

If all I needed was a file server / light media server with no major transcoding, I’d use a pi 4 4gb or 8gb variant. And invest the extra money into crypto stock of your choice. You’d stand a better chance to make a profit.
 
For the purpose of mining/file server all of those CPU are still probably overkill compute wise.

That said for home server with high uptime-24/7-reliability use, I'd recommend a used ATX Supermicro board, Xeon CPU, and ECC ram (v2 or v3 depending on your budget)
It even gives you the option for IPMI as a convenience so you don't have to takeaway from your mining totals with a gpu output.
At the end of the day most of the CPUs idle at similar low voltages when not in use so it all depends on how much power you need when it ramps up and for what "other things" you have a use for.

Can you expand on your misc needs?
 
Spartacus09 said:
For the purpose of mining/file server all of those CPU are still probably overkill compute wise.

That said for home server with high uptime-24/7-reliability use, I'd recommend a used ATX Supermicro board, Xeon CPU, and ECC ram (v2 or v3 depending on your budget)
It even gives you the option for IPMI as a convenience so you don't have to takeaway from your mining totals with a gpu output.
At the end of the day most of the CPUs idle at similar low voltages when not in use so it all depends on how much power you need when it ramps up and for what "other things" you have a use for.

Can you expand on your misc needs?
Click to expand...

I dont have much knowledge on server components. Can you link me to anything? I was just wondering, ive seen others recommend server stuff with ECC ram. What does ECC ram help with?
 
Retsam said:
I dont have much knowledge on server components. Can you link me to anything? I was just wondering, ive seen others recommend server stuff with ECC ram. What does ECC ram help with?
Click to expand...
ECC helps with overall stability and reduced potential of crashes or data corruption.
Server components have the same building blocks as standard desktop hardware (ram, mobo, cpu, power, etc)

First questions are:
How many drives are you looking to have in your file server
How much compute power and ram do you want/need?
What VMs/purpose do you have for it other than file server/mining use case?
Do you have a case/psu/drives/other parts already you want to use or are you building from scratch?
 
Grab a x8dte and dual x5680s or some lga 2011 gear. Ddr3 ecc is cheap. I'm assuming you will be mining with gpus. Its not profitable to CPU mine anything.
 
What are you trying to mine? I don't see a video card mentioned, and I assume you'd be using the GPU for ETH mining or something profitable. In that case, you definitely want to reduce power consumption as much as possible, but it would be running at basically 100% GPU load all the time so overall power consumption is still going to be high. If you decide to get more into mining you could always expand the number of GPUs you're using.

I've never run a server on a mining rig but maybe it could work as just a file server though.
 
Spartacus09 said:
ECC helps with overall stability and reduced potential of crashes or data corruption.
Server components have the same building blocks as standard desktop hardware (ram, mobo, cpu, power, etc)

First questions are:
How many drives are you looking to have in your file server
How much compute power and ram do you want/need?
What VMs/purpose do you have for it other than file server/mining use case?
Do you have a case/psu/drives/other parts already you want to use or are you building from scratch?
Click to expand...

I am just starting off and havnt purchased anything yet. No case(havnt even looked yet), no PSU, though I did start poking around Platinum and Titanium PSUs for what I should get for mining.

Drives: I dont know, not a lot. Maybe 2-3 4TB+ HDDS? This is just for some personal file sharing/video plex streaming maybe. And mining some.
Compute power: I dont know....I have no idea how much compute power I need.
VMs/purpose: I dont know. Minor stuff.
I have no components yet except for that I have ONE of TWO graphics card to use in it: GTX 1080 8gb(which is in this main computer) and a RTX 3060TI FE I just got a week ago still in box. Just one of those is going in the box. Or if I get lucky and get another RTX card....Then I will probably sell the GTX 1080 8gb and have RTX card in both boxes.

cdabc123 said:
Grab a x8dte and dual x5680s or some lga 2011 gear. Ddr3 ecc is cheap. I'm assuming you will be mining with gpus. Its not profitable to CPU mine anything.
Click to expand...

GTX 1080 8gb or RTX 3060ti. I havnt decided which to game with and which to mine with yet. I plan to pick up another RTX card though. I am aware mining with cpu isnt worth it.

A cheap stable server system that I could mine with would be great. It does seem like that mobo you mentioned is only pci-e 2.0, and not 3.0 though. Wouldnt that affect mining?

Andrew_Carr said:
What are you trying to mine? I don't see a video card mentioned, and I assume you'd be using the GPU for ETH mining or something profitable. In that case, you definitely want to reduce power consumption as much as possible, but it would be running at basically 100% GPU load all the time so overall power consumption is still going to be high. If you decide to get more into mining you could always expand the number of GPUs you're using.

I've never run a server on a mining rig but maybe it could work as just a file server though.
Click to expand...

ETH. Ya. Its hard to figure this out because I want to mine and have a usable box for file serving/plex streaming as well. I just want a stable box for 24/7 operation that I can do multiple things with including a little mining if I want to, and use the least amount of power(while not mining) but still have decent power for like a home file server/plex streaming maybe. Thats it.
 
Retsam said:
I am just starting off and havnt purchased anything yet. No case(havnt even looked yet), no PSU, though I did start poking around Platinum and Titanium PSUs for what I should get for mining.

Drives: I dont know, not a lot. Maybe 2-3 4TB+ HDDS? This is just for some personal file sharing/video plex streaming maybe. And mining some.
Compute power: I dont know....I have no idea how much compute power I need.
VMs/purpose: I dont know. Minor stuff.
I have no components yet except for that I have ONE of TWO graphics card to use in it: GTX 1080 8gb(which is in this main computer) and a RTX 3060TI FE I just got a week ago still in box. Just one of those is going in the box. Or if I get lucky and get another RTX card....Then I will probably sell the GTX 1080 8gb and have RTX card in both boxes.



GTX 1080 8gb or RTX 3060ti. I havnt decided which to game with and which to mine with yet. I plan to pick up another RTX card though. I am aware mining with cpu isnt worth it.

A cheap stable server system that I could mine with would be great. It does seem like that mobo you mentioned is only pci-e 2.0, and not 3.0 though. Wouldnt that affect mining?



ETH. Ya. Its hard to figure this out because I want to mine and have a usable box for file serving/plex streaming as well. I just want a stable box for 24/7 operation that I can do multiple things with including a little mining if I want to, and use the least amount of power(while not mining) but still have decent power for like a home file server/plex streaming maybe. Thats it.
Click to expand...

Pcie 2 vs 3 doesnt matter for mining. The old lga 1366 boards are probably the cheapest option. They will run a file server just fine and should me more then capable of 24/7 reliability.

Honestly when any hardware isnt under load it shouldn't you any substantial amount of power. What drives do you plan on using? Often that can be a good portion of your power use.

If you need more power dual lga 2011 rigs are pretty cheap but from your use case it sounds like you could get by with just about any hardware
 
Retsam said:
ETH. Ya. Its hard to figure this out because I want to mine and have a usable box for file serving/plex streaming as well. I just want a stable box for 24/7 operation that I can do multiple things with including a little mining if I want to, and use the least amount of power(while not mining) but still have decent power for like a home file server/plex streaming maybe. Thats it.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I tried to do some research on this and it seems like a simple file server should be ok, since mining will be taxing your GPU(s) and not your CPU. I'm not sure about plex, but that should be using the CPU as well so maybe it'll work. I would try it and see how it goes. Worst case, you can build a second computer out of regular desktop parts and moving the mining GPU(s) to that. Your mining GPU should be earning you money so you'll want it on 24/7 at optimal efficiency. (here's a rough tool you can use to get an idea about profitability: https://www.nicehash.com/profitability-calculator It's not great but it should give you some idea).
 
If I was to do this myself, I'd get a combo like this (offering like $280): https://ebay.us/QPApDj
Install unraid on a flash drive
setup the disks I wanted for the array, (maybe add a SSD for the VMs)
pass through the GPU to a VM for the mining
then lastly run plex as a docker container
 
Spartacus09 said:
If I was to do this myself, I'd get a combo like this (offering like $280): https://ebay.us/QPApDj
Install unraid on a flash drive
setup the disks I wanted for the array, (maybe add a SSD for the VMs)
pass through the GPU to a VM for the mining
then lastly run plex as a docker container
Click to expand...
Gpu passthrough for mining is kinda a pita.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top