Need help with building a server

[Erothes]

Hello!
I want to build a server for general use, planning on using it for hosting, penetration testing and running different scripts over longer periods of times. I am so stuck on what to choose when it comes to being really efficient for a very good price!

I have my MUSTS, these include:
-CPU must be quad core
-PSU must be of high quality so I dont risk it failing on me and frying the whole thing

Some of my other needs, which would be ideal to have but are not required are:
-small case
-not too expensive
-rather quiet
-preferably having iGPU instead of a GPU, this applies to the system being smaller and possibly quieter too, and an iGPU is less clunkier.

I am gonna have a ssd for my system and a 1tb hdd for other storage. My biggest problem is which CPU to buy.

 

[failboat]

i5 8400 has good price/perf
pico psu are fanless and high quality.
getting newer stuff with ECC will cost a lot more.
The low power versions may be worth looking into.

If you run a gui you need decent single thread on the turbo.

 

[Erothes]

i5 8400 has good price/perf
pico psu are fanless and high quality.
getting newer stuff with ECC will cost a lot more.
The low power versions may be worth looking into.

If you run a gui you need decent single thread on the turbo.

I was thinking of either running windows 10 or linux (most likely kali)

 

[anoori9000]

i5 8400 has good price/perf
pico psu are fanless and high quality.
getting newer stuff with ECC will cost a lot more.
The low power versions may be worth looking into.

If you run a gui you need decent single thread on the turbo.

Are you referring to these picoPSUs or something else?

https://www.amazon.com/Mini-Box-picoPSU-160-XT-Power-Mini-ITX-Supply/dp/B005TWE6B8

 

[failboat]

i5 8400 has good price/perf
pico psu are fanless and high quality.
getting newer stuff with ECC will cost a lot more.
The low power versions may be worth looking into.

If you run a gui you need decent single thread on the turbo.

I was thinking of either running windows 10 or linux (most likely kali)

I'd suggest trying proxmox and installing the vms you want.
My box is using ebay stuff. xeon e3 v1 low power, supermicro mobo, 3x 4tb drives, 8g ECC, ssd, running @ 55W on an 80W picopsu. it's been solid. if you go the ebay route make sure the seller sells a lot and has return policies. not including drives i spent <$300

 

[failboat]

i5 8400 has good price/perf
pico psu are fanless and high quality.
getting newer stuff with ECC will cost a lot more.
The low power versions may be worth looking into.

If you run a gui you need decent single thread on the turbo.

Are you referring to these picoPSUs or something else?

https://www.amazon.com/Mini-Box-picoPSU-160-XT-Power-Mini-ITX-Supply/dp/B005TWE6B8

Yes, I'd buy it from mini-box so you can get the addin card bracket, which they dont sell anywhere else or you have to drill a hole in your own. If you get a low power cpu you can get the smaller ones which aren't nearly as pricey.

 

[Erothes]

i5 8400 has good price/perf
pico psu are fanless and high quality.
getting newer stuff with ECC will cost a lot more.
The low power versions may be worth looking into.

If you run a gui you need decent single thread on the turbo.

Are you referring to these picoPSUs or something else?

https://www.amazon.com/Mini-Box-picoPSU-160-XT-Power-Mini-ITX-Supply/dp/B005TWE6B8

Yes, I'd buy it from mini-box so you can get the addin card bracket, which they dont sell anywhere else or you have to drill a hole in your own. If you get a low power cpu you can get the smaller ones which aren't nearly as pricey.

are you sure though an i5 8400 would be decent? I've heard coffee lakes are a pain to keep cooled.

 

[failboat]

If you don't OC or max all the time it's probably not an issue.

I would go with latest gen intel if you aren't buying used stuff.
The 35W or 65W ones. i3 8100T may be worth looking at.
The benchmarks are better indicators of performance then cores/threads and frequency. single thread should be over 1350 or it may feel choppy with a gui.

What price range are you looking for? Do you want a fairly low power box to run 24/7?

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

 

[smorizio]

you want to use an itx mb and a itc case that uses standard power supplys. use one of the newer seasonic fanless power supplys. on the gpu look at the software packages see if the use a nvidia or amd gpu to help with the render speed. if they do there a lot of fanless nvidia gpu that are out there. you may want to use a m2 drive as a main drive and two hard drives one as a ram/scratch disk and one for backups.

 

[Erothes]

If you don't OC or max all the time it's probably not an issue.

I would go with latest gen intel if you aren't buying used stuff.
The 35W or 65W ones. i3 8100T may be worth looking at.
The benchmarks are better indicators of performance then cores/threads and frequency. single thread should be over 1350 or it may feel choppy with a gui.

What price range are you looking for? Do you want a fairly low power box to run 24/7?

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

I was not intending for it to run 24/7 but run most of the time, it would a little play ground for me if you will, I want it to perform well on CPU focused tasks such as scripts, dirbusters and so on. my price range is around 620 usd.

 

[failboat]

If you don't OC or max all the time it's probably not an issue.

I would go with latest gen intel if you aren't buying used stuff.
The 35W or 65W ones. i3 8100T may be worth looking at.
The benchmarks are better indicators of performance then cores/threads and frequency. single thread should be over 1350 or it may feel choppy with a gui.

What price range are you looking for? Do you want a fairly low power box to run 24/7?

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

I was not intending for it to run 24/7 but run most of the time, it would a little play ground for me if you will, I want it to perform well on CPU focused tasks such as scripts, dirbusters and so on. my price range is around 620 usd.

The 6 core i5 8400 is pretty solid. With your budget you might be able to do an i7 with a single drive.
Are you wanting a NAS or any of services to run on this? HDs can eat the budget fast.
With VMs you can really make it multi-use. You control it from your normal desktop. No need to plug in to it outside of installation. It needs the igpu for novnc or spice(very fast, near VDI).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MufL_3DCgWQ

 

[Erothes]

If you don't OC or max all the time it's probably not an issue.

I would go with latest gen intel if you aren't buying used stuff.
The 35W or 65W ones. i3 8100T may be worth looking at.
The benchmarks are better indicators of performance then cores/threads and frequency. single thread should be over 1350 or it may feel choppy with a gui.

What price range are you looking for? Do you want a fairly low power box to run 24/7?

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

I was not intending for it to run 24/7 but run most of the time, it would a little play ground for me if you will, I want it to perform well on CPU focused tasks such as scripts, dirbusters and so on. my price range is around 620 usd.

The 6 core i5 8400 is pretty solid. With your budget you might be able to do an i7 with a single drive.
Are you wanting a NAS or any of services to run on this? HDs can eat the budget fast.
With VMs you can really make it multi-use. You control it from your normal desktop. No need to plug in to it outside of installation. It needs the igpu for novnc or spice(very fast, near VDI).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MufL_3DCgWQ

I was thinking of running VM's on it too, was thinking of it being multi-purpose playground server + task server.

So you telling me, I can control the server from my computer, and use the virtual machines through it too? I would want to have the server being its own "computer" aka. having a GUI/OS and me performing tasks on it aswell as storing info on it but still being able to run a VM on the server in case I wanna check something but dont wanna risk it fucking up the whole computer.

 

[failboat]

If you don't OC or max all the time it's probably not an issue.

I would go with latest gen intel if you aren't buying used stuff.
The 35W or 65W ones. i3 8100T may be worth looking at.
The benchmarks are better indicators of performance then cores/threads and frequency. single thread should be over 1350 or it may feel choppy with a gui.

What price range are you looking for? Do you want a fairly low power box to run 24/7?

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

I was not intending for it to run 24/7 but run most of the time, it would a little play ground for me if you will, I want it to perform well on CPU focused tasks such as scripts, dirbusters and so on. my price range is around 620 usd.

The 6 core i5 8400 is pretty solid. With your budget you might be able to do an i7 with a single drive.
Are you wanting a NAS or any of services to run on this? HDs can eat the budget fast.
With VMs you can really make it multi-use. You control it from your normal desktop. No need to plug in to it outside of installation. It needs the igpu for novnc or spice(very fast, near VDI).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MufL_3DCgWQ

I was thinking of running VM's on it too, was thinking of it being multi-purpose playground server + task server.

So you telling me, I can control the server from my computer, and use the virtual machines through it too? I would want to have the server being its own "computer" aka. having a GUI/OS and me performing tasks on it aswell as storing info on it but still being able to run a VM on the server in case I wanna check something but dont wanna risk it fucking up the whole computer.

Yes, something like proxmox will be perfect for that. the novnc or spice lets you view the gui and control it remotely. You will want your pc to be wired and the box wired. The box can be anywhere. It would work over wifi if the signal is strong.
I have my ipfire or pfsense on mine for routing/firewall. You need two NICs for this. Dual 1Gb intel Nics are very cheap.

I test QoS frequently and it's very easy to do on proxmox. My first router/modem provides my WAN bridge multiple IPs to play with. I nest my testing routers and my final router for LAN behind that and use different QoS settings before trying them on my normal LAN.

Proxmox has live snapshots, which lets you save a vm break it and go back.

 

[Erothes]

If you don't OC or max all the time it's probably not an issue.

I would go with latest gen intel if you aren't buying used stuff.
The 35W or 65W ones. i3 8100T may be worth looking at.
The benchmarks are better indicators of performance then cores/threads and frequency. single thread should be over 1350 or it may feel choppy with a gui.

What price range are you looking for? Do you want a fairly low power box to run 24/7?

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

I was not intending for it to run 24/7 but run most of the time, it would a little play ground for me if you will, I want it to perform well on CPU focused tasks such as scripts, dirbusters and so on. my price range is around 620 usd.

The 6 core i5 8400 is pretty solid. With your budget you might be able to do an i7 with a single drive.
Are you wanting a NAS or any of services to run on this? HDs can eat the budget fast.
With VMs you can really make it multi-use. You control it from your normal desktop. No need to plug in to it outside of installation. It needs the igpu for novnc or spice(very fast, near VDI).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MufL_3DCgWQ

I was thinking of running VM's on it too, was thinking of it being multi-purpose playground server + task server.

So you telling me, I can control the server from my computer, and use the virtual machines through it too? I would want to have the server being its own "computer" aka. having a GUI/OS and me performing tasks on it aswell as storing info on it but still being able to run a VM on the server in case I wanna check something but dont wanna risk it fucking up the whole computer.

Yes, something like proxmox will be perfect for that. the novnc or spice lets you view the gui and control it remotely. You will want your pc to be wired and the box wired. The box can be anywhere. It would work over wifi if the signal is strong.
I have my ipfire or pfsense on mine for routing/firewall. You need two NICs for this. Dual 1Gb intel Nics are very cheap.

I test QoS frequently and it's very easy to do on proxmox. My first router/modem provides my WAN bridge multiple IPs to play with. I nest my testing routers and my final router for LAN behind that and use different QoS settings before trying them on my normal LAN.

Proxmox has live snapshots, which lets you save a vm break it and go back.

Okay yeah, I have no idea about anything about routers, modems and and NICs, do you have a good youtube video or guide that explains everything you just said? thanks.

 

[failboat]

I wouldn't worry about doing anything with the routers unless that's someone you want to learn. there are tons of youtube videos on it. QoS is quality of service. it can help you keep latency low and let certain traffic have better priority.

If the mobo you pick has extra pcie slots you will have expand-ability for what ever you want in the future. If you can fit a full size case in the closet you may as well go for atx.