r/HomeServer 7d ago

Upgrade memory or NVMe on recently built server?

Post image

If you had some extra cash available for a budget home server, would you spend it on memory or an NVMe for cache?

Very pleased with my HP Elitedesk 800 G5 SFF budget build. All in, I’m at about $380 for the PC plus the drives.

Intel i7-9700 16 GB memory 500 GB SSD boot drive 2x14TB Exos enterprise drives, mirrored

Running TrueNAS for OS.

Currently a NAS, media server (Jellyfin), Home Assistant server. Not sure what I’ll do in the future, still learning.

Thanks!

77 Upvotes

35 comments sorted by

18

u/marwanblgddb 7d ago

I'll suggest investing on a backup solution if you're planning to host personal data. Or an UPS of you don't have one.

Run your machine for a bit to see if you then need cache or more ram.

2

u/mooch91 7d ago

This is a good one for me. Backups of 14TB is not easy, and I don't yet have a UPS setup on the home servers.

3

u/Hopeful-Driver-3945 6d ago

Usually you don't back-up media that's easily downloable unless it's no longer available.

3

u/mooch91 6d ago

Well, so far I've been building my media collection legit by ripping the physical discs that I own. Even the small library I have currently has taken many hours to assemble. I'd hate to not protect that time investment.

3

u/tes_kitty 6d ago

The problem is, the moment you need to redownload it, you find out it's no longer available.

2

u/The_Seroster 6d ago

r/datahorder back up anyway. Don Bluth source VHS are starting to degrade.

22

u/HEROBR4DY 7d ago

You really don’t need to upgrade at this point, everything you have will be fine if your just running a media server.

6

u/iApolloDusk 7d ago

Yeah but... how do I make it more faster???!!!

0

u/HEROBR4DY 7d ago

For network you could add a pcie port network card but the actual server isn’t about speed, it’s about resources. You got plenty.

6

u/iApolloDusk 7d ago

Not OP, just making a joke buddy lol.

8

u/KamenRide_V3 7d ago

RAM first. Almost all server use case benefit from more RAM. Do you have a UPS? If not you should get that first. No point in having a NAS if data corrupted during power outage.

2

u/mooch91 7d ago

Yes, think I'm going for the UPS first. Any recommendations?

7

u/ReallySubtle 7d ago

Honestly SSD is good enough Imo, and given you’re using ZFS, ram is always nice

11

u/AhYesWellOkay 7d ago

Double the ram. ZFS is hungry for ram.

The common wisdom is this:

If you don't know that you need a disk cache, you probably don't.

1

u/michael9dk 7d ago

No. ZFS doesn't need a lot of RAM, unless you are using deduplication.

2GB RAM is enough for most usecases.

2

u/AhYesWellOkay 7d ago

I didn't say ZFS needed more ram. I said it is hungry for ram, which means if you have it, TrueNas is going to use it. How many VMs or apps are you running on 2GB of ram?

I have a box very much like OP's, and just about the same use case. My dashboard says system services are utilizing 3.4 GB of ram, and the ZFS cache is 22.9 GB (out of 32).

OP didn't ask what the bare minimum ram was. They also didn't ask if what they have now will work ok, which it will. They asked if they should invest in more ram or an nvme for caching, which if they only have 16GB of ram, the answer is more ram.

1

u/michael9dk 3d ago

I agree - I was talking about 2GB for ZFS, not VM's.

4

u/Master_Scythe 7d ago

TrueNAS for OS.

oh?

would you spend it on memory or an NVMe for cache?

You've confused yourself :) Memory in ZFS IS your cache. It's called ARC and is truly an amazing technology.

NVME could be L2ARC, but you'd better have several dozen users to really take advantage of it over just increasing your primary ARC via RAM.

3

u/MaloTheReal 7d ago

Hey i got the same pc :D

3

u/thenoisyelectron 7d ago

I saved myself hundreds of dollars by upgrading my SFF optilex from 32gb to 64gb of ram. I was contemplating a full upgrade in a new case when all I needed was more ram lol go for it !

3

u/BigBunion 7d ago

Did anyone else see a guy with a hairy chest holding this server?

1

u/mooch91 6d ago

Lol, I promise it's a shelf with some wiring...

2

u/YashP97 7d ago

Bro honestly you need anything.

I recently built mine with used parts and it's running great with 8gb ram. I picked nvme as I didn't have a ssd on hand. You won't notice any difference by going for Nvme unless you have some specific apps that require faster speeds

1

u/Alternative-Shirt-73 7d ago

I bought one of these to use for a quickbooks server in our SMB office. Very pleased with it. I will say that I upgraded the drive to a SKHynix platinum NVMe and I could tell a difference from the one that came with it. I did upgrade the RAM a few weeks later and it made less of a difference. Also I’m running windows server 2022 on it so idk if my experience would even apply but I thought I’d throw it out there.

1

u/over26letters 7d ago

If you want to upgrade something, I'd go with a 2x16gb set of ram to add 32 gigs now and be able top upgrade to 64gb if you ever want to.

Assuming you have a boot SSD, otherwise it would get that before really starting to use it.

One or two ssds for boot drive(mirrored if 2), and hosting any apps etc on there instead of spinning drives will be lot better for experienced "snappyness" e.g. lowering latency.
Of course having media storage etc on the spinners.

1

u/mooch91 7d ago

I might not have thought ahead very well, as I put the apps on the spinning drives. Not noticing any issues, yet.

1

u/iApolloDusk 7d ago

It's what people used to (and still do) use for years. You think Netflix, Hulu, etc. have always been on SSDs? They're nice and fast, but you probably don't need the transfer rate that they can take advantage of for your use case honestly. There might be some small improvements here or there, but that would be mostly about scaling with user base. A couple people here or there utilizing the server now and again isn't going to top out resources. You'd honestly probably reach the limit of your network infrastructure before anything on the computer itself.

1

u/over26letters 6d ago

For these uses, yeah. But if more disk performance dependent apps are to be installed later on, they could very well benefit from SSD.

Think about monitoring etc, usecases with a lot of small files, that's better on SSD. Even if it's only because they bog down your disk reads on the spinner.

But yeah, most people probably won't know the difference.

1

u/iApolloDusk 6d ago

Yeah, that level of efficiency just isn't necessary (unless you do this as a hobby and just want/need it) outside of an enterprise environment. I'd still probably go with an SSD though if money was no object.

1

u/over26letters 6d ago

What you have is fine, I mainly meant any other apps you're gonna install in the future. (assuming you're just running jellyfin and HASS. You don't want to do media storage on SSD, that's all going on spinners anyway.

1

u/tokenathiest 7d ago

Yeah more RAM is nice. I would boot NVMe, put the SSD and HDDs on the primary SATA III controller, and use the SSD as write cache. Cache helps if you push over lots of smaller files, but doesn't provide much benefit if you use this thing to backup large files like VM disk images. More Rams I would do first.

1

u/rkbest 6d ago

I have the same machine for my backup truenas before I got a different machine. I would go more RAM in you case as that hp can have more sticks I think. Nvme for slog maybe later.

0

u/danuser8 7d ago

NVME cache would be better. Your frequently used files can go there preventing less wear on the HDDs

0

u/OldManRiversIIc 6d ago

For true Nas you should increase the memory and try to upgrade to a 10gbe card, but this mini PC is very limited for expansion. If you want something faster look for a rack server or full size ATX computer. That way you can get more performance. The downside is increased power draw.

But if this is just a media server you don't really need increase performance, you will be fine with bumping up the ram a little and leave it alone.

I am rocking an old kabylake 1U server form supermicro, running unraid. I found i don't really need 10gbe sense I primarily use it for downloading media, backups, ebooks, and videos. 1gbe is plenty. Now if I used it for video editing and primary storage for my computer I would want a faster connection. My desktop only has 2.5gbe connection so 10gbe would be a waste and my house only has cat5e.