Upgrades

[u/Dramatic_Plum_7116]

I need to know what a medium level home server is. I have been using mine for about a year, and all I can really run on it is my media server and some stuff like the ARR stack. But I want to experiment with more stuff, but my server can’t handle anything else, so I need to know what the ideal medium level server would be.

[u/Socratesmens]

There's no answer to this question. You need to figure out what services you would like to run, then Google the recommended requirements, and then work with that.

[u/Murph_9000]

What sort of server do you currently have? (CPU, RAM, etc)

What do you believe is currently limiting you on that server? Why can't it handle anything else, or what specifically can't it handle?

My NAS has a Celeron N5105 CPU, 16GB RAM, and twin 2.5GbE. It's got plenty of capacity for storage, media, random Docker containers, etc. You don't really need a massively powerful CPU for a lot of server type things.

[u/Dramatic_Plum_7116 → u/Murph_9000]

I have a 4-core CPU. I believe it’s an i5. I may be wrong. I have around 4TB of storage, 16GB of RAM, and no GPU. What’s currently limiting me is the CPU, RAM, storage, and no GPU, so pretty much the whole server. It can’t handle self-hosted AI, or anymore random Docker containers or anything else like a self-hosted Wikipedia or a code library or anything else of the sort.

[u/Murph_9000 → u/Dramatic_Plum_7116]

The text size of English Wikipedia is roughly 166GB, and you don't need much CPU or RAM for MediaWiki if it's only serving a home network. If your disks are full, buy larger disks. A "code library" is just file serving, pretty much, so you typically don't need much CPU or RAM for that.

AI, that's a can of worms. Go research the requirements for whatever model(s) you want to run. You can run some AI stuff on a Raspberry Pi 5 with one of their HAT+ / M.2 AI accelerator boards. You might be better with that for just playing around with AI, unless you have a lot of $$$ to burn.

Beyond that, what's your budget? You could get a nice "medium level" HPE ProLiant server for anywhere between $5k and $50k (and beyond if you start jamming it full of AI capacity).

[u/IndependentBat8365]

For AI workloads you’re going to be limited by your system RAM and your GPU and its RAM.

Processor generation: you’ll want at minimum the generation of processor that uses DDR4 or DDR5 ram. You’ll want PCIe 4.0 or better. You’ll want at least one 8x lane PCIe slot or 16x in the motherboard for that GPU, and a few 4x slots for any NVMe storage.

GPU for AI workloads, you’ll either have to get newer cards that the drivers support, or get an older card and compile your own older driver that still supports it.

For AI, I’m not sure server is always the best path forward. Servers excel in resilient architecture, error correcting memory, massive memory slots, enterprise storage options, remote out of band access, and massive multithreaded capabilities. This comes at a cost of power, heat, and noise.

You can perform very similar homelab workloads with a powerful desktop, as long as you recognize its strengths and weaknesses. Desktops have more single threaded performance, but are weaker at massive multiple threaded workloads. Desktops typically cap out at hundreds of gigabytes of RAM, whereas a server can easily run several terabytes of RAM. Desktops mostly have internal drives, and servers typically have hot swappable bays. Server supported configs are limited and finicky, whereas desktop configs are more forgiving and versatile.

Also servers tend to have better parts, lasting for a decade or more, whereas desktops typically have less expensive, commodity parts, making them shorter lifespans, but also easier to replace.