Is this an upgrade?
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Long-time homelab enthusiast, first time writer.
I will be thankful for some insights.My homelab setup is currently as follows:
Compute: Supermicro Epyc 3251 (8 core, 16 thread) board, 128gb ECC ram, 500gb sata (XCP-ng boot drive) and 1TB ECC storage (local storage for VMs that need fast storage), the 1TB is unfortunately the largest NVME this board will take (only compatible with a few specific SKUs at all), networking via intel 710 10gb sfp x2, one of the 10gb ports for non-routed storage on the synology, other for regular high speed networking.
Storage: Synology 1821+, intel 710 10gb sfp x2, 6x14tb seagate exos
Networking: unifi (variety, not important here)My goal is to have at least 128gb of RAM for the server (currently using about 80gb), and to keep average power consumption as low as possible (my entire setup currently, with networking, router, switching, compute and storage AND the POE cameras and APs runs about 175W).
I am considering the Minisforum 795se with the 7845hx processor (16/32) now that I know it will support 128gb RAM as an upgrade. The upsides are that it appears to use about the same amount of power idle (50W or less) and is significantly faster (2x single core, 4x altogether) with more cores, and has support for 2 NVME drives that are not limited in capacity. The downsides are lack of out of band management and lack of ECC RAM.
The alternative I considered was building an Epyc 4004 system using 4464p (12/24) that has a relatively low power envelope… but the only board that’s worthwhile here is from Asrock Rack and seems to have a lot of concerns over memory compatibility and overall stability. It would also be rather expensive ($400-500 for the board, $400 for CPU, $600-800 for memory if I wanted to keep 128gb ECC).
I was hoping to get some thoughts on whether the Minisforum represents a real upgrade given the downsides and alternatives.
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Personally, I switched from a full 2U HPE + Epyc to a small... Protecli unit with 96GiB RAM (now you can go up to 128G I think?) using those Intel CPUs. To be fair, it works perfectly fine, 2x SFP+ and NVMe drives are large enough for my needs. Sure, it's a downgrade in some aspects (space to add PCIe devices, more drives etc.) but for my need it's enough. And the power usage is very low.
So all in all, what matters is to fine the right form factor/power for your usage. Now, mini PCs are really powerful and attractive for that.
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@olivierlambert said in Is this an upgrade?:
Personally, I switched from a full 2U HPE + Epyc to a small... Protecli unit with 96GiB RAM (now you can go up to 128G I think?) using those Intel CPUs. To be fair, it works perfectly fine, 2x SFP+ and NVMe drives are large enough for my needs. Sure, it's a downgrade in some aspects (space to add PCIe devices, more drives etc.) but for my need it's enough. And the power usage is very low.
So all in all, what matters is to fine the right form factor/power for your usage. Now, mini PCs are really powerful and attractive for that.
Thanks for your reply. Quick question - which CPU did you use - I thought XCP-ng did not work well with heterogeneous CPUs. That's why I was thinking of using the 795SE vs for example the MS-O1 from Minisforum which uses the Intel i9-13900H and has two types of cores. Have you had any issues?
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@efny I thought it wouldn't but in fact since I have it (almost a year) I had 0 bug. It's a Core i7-1255U.
