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Low Spec Server CPU Advice

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Hi guys,

I am building a tiny Fileshare PC and I need some advice on CPU buying, please?

I have got most of my components and I have between £50 and £100 to spend on the CPU. Obvs I would like it to be as cheap as possible, but I understand that the OS I use will dictate the CPU I need, and I'm a bit lost with OS X Server 5 requirements.

So my max is a Skylake i3 at around £100
My minimum is a 3.3 dual core Pentium at £50

As this is essentially a NAS with Server 5, is there a massive difference between using 1151 over 1150? It doesn't need to be massively future-proof as it's essentially just storage

I know there are a lot of posts about this but some are way above the spec I need, some are a bit old and some don't use OS X Server 5. Unfortunately I am massively constrained in terms of price (I work for a charity) which of course effects a drop in spec.
Thank you very much for all your help,

H


OSX Server 5 Hackintosh (not allowed Linux so no Ubs or Mint, and I guess S5 is better than a desktop like Yosemite)
Mini ITX - either sock 1150 or 1151
8GB RAM
4TB drive (partitioned to 50GB OS, 100GB recovery and the rest data)
Connected to 10Gbs network in the office (no outside traffic all local)
Simply for sharing files and backups - no media playing, graphics, sound etc.
Max concurrent connections 10
 
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Those are very modest needs. The dual core Pentium you mentioned should be able to handle this easily but I don't know how difficult it would be to get OS X installed with a Pentium.

Just out of curiosity, why is Linux not allowed?
 
Hey mate,

Yes that's what I thought - power-wise the Pentium is fine but I need to buy 6, so I have to be 100% on compatibility before ordering.

The Linux is entirely a user-preference thing. I use it for everything (Ubuntu, Mint, Kali, Tails) but my place of work is a Mac-only house. They don't like to use anything else, even if the alternative is far easier/better/free.

I actually prefer to be doing Hackintosh because it's a much bigger challenge with more to consider. Building a machine for Linux is beautifully easy these days, but I would like to learn a bit about Mac architecture - I prefer a challenge sometimes :)

Thanks for the reply mate, much appreciated. Will post back here with any results! Have a nice weekend, bro.
 
I don't know if you've ever heard of XPEnology, but it's an open source implementation of Synology. Essentially, it allows you to use your own hardware to build your own Synology. It works in a very similar manner to Clover. Install a boot loader, then run the Synology OS/OS X.

It may serve your needs perfectly. I've put together a few XPEnology NASes and I have to say that the Synology OS is absolutely fantastic. My first build was just using an off the shelf Intel SS4200 NAS (found it on Ebay for $75) and installing the software. It took about half an hour and I was up and running.

I highly suggest you search around for some info on it. It sounds like the perfect match for what you are trying to do.
 
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Thanks man, I will do! That sounds great.

The CPUs I am looking at are:

1151
Intel Pentium G4400 3.3Ghz
Intel i3 6100 3.7Ghz

1150
Intel Pentium G3240 3.1Ghz
Intel Core i3 4170 3.70GHz

The Pentiums are half the price so I'd like to go with one of them, but can't find any specific info online that says yay/nay to them being good for OSX Server 5.
 
Again, I don't know how well Pentiums will run OS X or if it's even possible to install. But I can tell you that even an old Celeron can easily saturate 1GbE if you are only going to be doing file sharing on XPEnology.

On my main NAS, I have a C2550 (essentially a modern Atom class CPU) that gives me over 700Mb/s reads and about 300Mb/s writes over 10GbE and can handle Plex media server. This is an eight drive array with two of the eight being redundancy drives.
 
That sounds amazing. I need a home solution as well (too many externals and arrays) so I will def give XPEnology a try. I've got an old HP somewhere so will try it out. Thanks man.

Unfortunately the key thing for this is the OS - it has to be OSX server because they all know the desktop.
 
Today, OS X server isn't an os, just an add-on App running on ordinary MacOS. So you'd better search how to install El Capitan (for OS X Server 5) anyway.

In addition, the share of OS X Server is almost zero and you may struggle with finding the useful infos on the web.
 
Awesome, thanks man! Yeah it seems more undersupported so I might follow pastrychef's plan after all, plus it will mean spending slightly more on hardware. I might just flavour up Linux and see if anyone actually notices :)

Thanks a lot guys, really helpful.
 
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