The primary advantage I can think of switching from a dual 2011 Xeon to an NK6 is certainly lower energy usage. RAM faster than the stated supported speed would likely clock down to match what the system could use. RAM and PCIe speed aren’t “offsetting” lower CPU performance.
What is it you use the system for? What makes the CPU bench score a concern?
I’m just debating whether the $200 (motherboard and CPU, I already have everything else) is worth it in saved electricity and time to move to the newer platform. Currently I utilize it as a NAS, media server (up to 8 users), and several other docker containers. No VMs and utilizing the 1660ti for Plex transcoding. Just wanted to consider if moving to newer system with lower pass mark score could potentially cause worse performance for my use.
Your stated uses aren’t going to suffer if your cpu passmark is lower. Unless you’ve got some really intense containers. Focus on the passmark if you’re using lots of CPU, else, it doesn’t really matter.
You can ditch the gpu too, save more energy, and potentially money again if you sell it. The iGPU of the nk6 will handle the transcodes.
Thank you for the info. Greatly appreciated.
If you want to expand more here we can describe better how impactful the switch will be. For the majority of users, not much difference
Added a 16TB option from RTG.
Adware, Tdarr, Plex, Heimdall, Tautulli, Mediamanager, Sonarr, FileZilla, Octoprint
This sounds fairly standard and not too crazy. You won’t have any problems moving to an i5-8500T.
Really appreciate everyone’s help. Just placed the order for the parts. Looking forward to the saved money in electricity.
What did you end up ordering?
What kind of power consumption is to be expected from the standard build? Both at idle and at load. 
The power consumption would be moderately low, but not Intel Atom/Avoton or Raspberry Pi low.
The i5-8500 (non-T model) uses approximately 50 watts at full load, and about 5-10 watts at idle.
Thank you for the quick answer. I assume that is without disks?
Correct, each type of drive consumes different amounts of power at idle and while busy.
You can spin the drives down while not in use, but if you do - I would highly recommend you read my primer on HDD caches in Unraid.
Supermicro X11SCA-F (~$100), 9500T (~$75), and Thermalright Assassin X120 ($18). Figured the slight boost of the 9500T versus the 8500T couldn’t hurt for the fairly minimal difference in cost. I already have G.Skill DDR4 Trident Z 3200Mhz from an old build I’ll use for the RAM. For ~$200, before selling the old parts to recoup cost, I’m thinking I can cut the electricity usage by more than 75%.
I know I said above, but really appreciate the knowledge and information you post on this website. Was a crucial resource when I initially got into homelabbing.
Great to see the new guide! Thank you for putting this together!
This is similar to the upgrade I performed on my NK 5.0 earlier this summer.
Jumped forward 4 CPU generations from an LGA 1150 E3-1200 Xeon to a:
Everything else I was able to carry over from the previous build.
I was originally looking for a i3-9300, or maybe a i3-9320 with a plan to save a little money for now, keep ECC support, and upgrade to a Xeon later, but I couldn’t find an i3-9xxx for under $100 at the time and for twice the price the E-2276G felt like a more substantial upgrade over the previous 4c/8t E3 Xeon.
The E-2276G (Coffee Lake 8th/9th gen) iGPU seems to have good transcoding performance / quality so I moved Plex from a dedicated quick sync box to the NAS and that has been working well so far.
Even though It was a nominal increase in advertised TDP (65W to 80W) the generational improvements actually appear to have shaved 2 - 3 watts off the idle power draw. Went from about 18W to 15W (drives / cache not included) at idle even with the extra 2 cores. At full load it does draw quite a lot more power. It spikes to 100+ Watts under load and even hits as high as 150+ Watts running Prime 95.
That said it also has about double the passmark score. So it was a big upgrade in efficiency (passmark / watt) and in real world usage It shaves a few watts off the older system.
I’ve been happy with it so far, VMs seem snappy and responsive, It now has IPMI, and most importantly memory was expanded past the 32GB limit of LGA 1150 and even has room to expand further if necessary.
Not a necessary upgrade or justifiable at the price, but a satisfying upgrade none the less. I’m happy with it.
Looking to build one of these in Canada, any advice for local parts sources or is it best to source from the US?
I am curious what the CPU speed affects if I use the system purely as a NAS. I currently run Open Media Vault on a Pi4 with some external drives but want to upgrade to a larger, more cohesive, and reliable build.
I only have gigabit networking hardware and likely won’t change that for several years unless I encounter a compelling reason. My NAS is accessed by Seafile (which is primarily used for backing up 4k drone footage), Plex (at most 3 concurrent 1080p streams, I have an Optiplex 5050 that will be repurposed for transcoding), and general network storage via Samba and NFS for backing up my personal and work data and keeping large Steam games downloaded locally.
Thanks for the excellent info!
I personally would not trust my data to OMV on a RPi.
CPU speed affects how many docker containers and VMs you can run, as well as unpack speed, transfer speed, and more.
It seems that you wouldn’t benefit too much from what I can tell, but the NK 6.0 would be a large upgrade in what you could do.
I would source from the US or ship parts from China.
Cross border shipping services are also an option.