this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2025
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37
New server sanity check (piefed.social)
submitted 1 day ago by JeanValjean@piefed.social to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
16 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

So, for the last couple decades, I've been lucky enough to be a professional geek doing server support for what is essentially an MSP. Every few years when they cycle their servers, I get a free upgrade from the e-cycling pile. That's worked great, but the third utility price increase in the as many years has me looking to rightsize my home server.

I'm currently running a Dell 720 which was a VDI server in its previous life, meaning 384G of memory and 40 cores of Xeon E5-2680, but I'm only using 20G of memory running about a dozen Docker containers, including Jellyfin; my load average is less than 1. I've been using Debian on that server, but I'm comfortable in any distro.

Unfortunately, the iDRAC says this is running between 200 and 250 watts at base. The hardware is vastly overspec'ed and I'd like to lower my power usage, if possible, as I'm certain it's not going to get any cheaper as time passes.

I also need to retire an old W10 box running BlueIris and migrate to a Frigate Docker container before October, because I'm not buying a Windows 11 machine just for that.

So I need a sanity check for my plan, as I've been on the server-side so long that my knowledge of desktop technology is sorely lacking, and I suspect some people here are running the EliteDesk 800 as a server.

I want to pick up an HP EliteDesk 800 5g SFF with an i9-9500 or i7-9700, such as: https://www.amazon.com/HP-EliteDesk-800-G5-Desktop/dp/B0BZ9J54WK

I'm not beholden to buying from Amazon, it was just the first link I found at a reasonable price.

I've chosen the EliteDesk because of the AMT KVM, and the SFF to add 3 1/2 HDDs.

I have DIMMs I can borrow or buy to get it to 48 or 64 gigs.

I'm using less than a TB of local storage on the 720, as it uses expensive 10k SAS drives, so most storage is NFS from the NAS. As a result I'm looking at a 1TB NVME for local OS storage.

I plan to use a couple 4TB spinning rust SATA drives for Frigate storage in the new system.

Are any of the M.2 slots on the board compatible with the Coral M.2 accelerators for Frigate? Preferably the Dual Edge variety? I'm having a hard time finding what kind of slots they are. I know I can get a PCI-E adapter, but native is better.

Is the i5-9500 enough, or should I pay the extra $150 for the i7-9700?

Is the i5/i7 iGPU strong enough for Jellyfin or should I be looking for a discrete GPU?

Those of you running one, what does your power consumption look like?

Am I going about this completely wrong?

Thanks in advance for any help.

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[–] monkeyman512@lemmy.world 14 points 1 day ago

Intel iGPU are very good for transcoding.

[–] Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org 11 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I'd like to lower my power usage, if possible

40 cores of Xeon E5-2680

So there are your power whores. TDP 4 x 115 W. But they are old and very poor....

my load average is less than 1

... because nobody ever comes to visit them. Kindly give them the boot.

my knowledge of desktop technology

No worries. You don't need to go that far :) At least don't touch things that have "Gaming" as their firstname. Just look for some (nearly) modern CPU(s) because they are so much more power efficient, and spend some hours at https://www.cpubenchmark.net/

An example from the other end: my current server runs an Intel G4560T (35W). My next server will get 1 or 2 Ryzen 5825U's (15W each).

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 day ago

Intel 10th gen got some love on power vs perf and has a better igpu. I wouldn't drop below 10th.

[–] Ptsf@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

Since you clearly plan on keeping this equipment for the long-term, you may be better served by a newer lower power option that will likely be more performant for less long term cost.

[–] kayzeekayzee@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

For Jellyfin? You really don't need much. A raspberry pi can run jellyfin if you don't have a transcoded format. My main server is only using a 6th gen i3, and Jellyfin runs perfectly for everything. Never tried going above 1080p though.

[–] curbstickle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Ive got a bunch of tiny/mini/micros running everything and the kitchen sink - mostly lenovo right now, but with a couple hp elitedesks and dell micros. I only store VMs locally though, so its all m.2 and general storage on the NAS's.

JF you've got plenty of processing with the iGPU for any compatible codec.

Couldn't tell you on the frigate side, but otherwise youre perfectly fine with that hardware.

[–] Passerby6497@lemmy.world 2 points 23 hours ago (2 children)

What do you do to protect your micro's m.2 disks? I had one that cooked itself, and I haven't put much load on it since I replaced the drive.

[–] Andres4NY@social.ridetrans.it 2 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

@Passerby6497 @curbstickle I have a Minisforum hm90 that tried to cook the nvme (it triggered a smart error before actually frying, thankfully). Since the m2 slot is on the bottom near some vents, I just put the minipc on top of an AC Infinity usb fan (I forget if P12 or P14 - use whatever fits your minipc best) that blows up into the case and over the nvme.

[–] Passerby6497@lemmy.world 1 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

I'll give that a look, thanks!

[–] Andres4NY@social.ridetrans.it 1 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago)

@Passerby6497 np! Any usb-powered PC fan will do, btw. I also have some Arctic fans that I like even better, but for the minipc I'm using an AC Infinity because that's what I had handy.

[–] curbstickle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 23 hours ago

Nothing special in the slightest.

The rack has good airflow, I keep the case clean and dust free so the fans dont have to work hard, and the room its in is at the same 72F the rest of my home is. Haven't had any issues so far with any m2's, and I've lost one dell micro (mobo failure) in... 8ish years?

[–] ChillPill@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

I was running an old t410 with dual X5650s for ages. Super power hungy. I've recently moved to an older Dell Optiplex 7020 with an i5 4570, running 32 gb ram (not supported according to dell, but works fine). I'm running like 7 vms on proxmox and I haven't seen any issues.

I just spun up a second 7020 as a proxmox backup server and my whole home lab power consumption went from around 130 watts to around 170 watts.

[–] tal@lemmy.today 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

Not saying getting smaller hardware is the wrong move, but have you tried just reducing power with software on your existing machine?

I mean, if you're happy with it other than on idle power usage, I imagine that one can probably do things like:

  • Set a power-down time using hdparm on the rotational drives, so that disks that you aren't using spin down. On my system, I've coupled this with an autofs mount, which means that the mount point doesn't have to be visible and rotational drives don't get spun up by anything just touching the filesystem and looking in /mnt or whatever. Handy if you have a drive that you do want to have a rarely-touched filesystem on.

  • Run # powertop --auto-tune.

  • Run # powerprofilesctl set power-saver if you're using power-profiles-daemon.

  • I dunno if and how Xeon on Linux exposes any ability to force a core to power down, but maybe # cat 0 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu1/online and so forth.

  • I imagine that it's probably possible to lower the minimum fan speed in whatever hardware control Dell provides.

That being said, I haven't used terribly large hardware, so I don't know how far one can go in bringing minimum power usage down.

[–] non_burglar@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The 720 is not going to benefit from power savings, even going to hot-spare for the power supplies. These things are relics from the time when power was cheap.

I couldn't get my r720 down below 160w, which is unacceptable for just running some containers.

[–] SheeEttin@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 day ago

I know, having had one, that you can set a power budget... but it's going to clock your CPUs all the way down and still run at least 120W with horrible performance.

[–] rimu@piefed.social 2 points 1 day ago

Data center servers are a different breed. I got an old one for cheap once and only ran it for a few minutes because it sounded like a jet engine. No way to make that thing efficient.