No idea which way to go

Hi all. My current server is a i5-9500t running unraid, all of the arr, jellyfin, jellyseerr, one VM. I frequently peg the CPU at 100% and end up waiting on it.

I want to add a warcraft server, and some VM to explore hacking, as well as leaving room in the future for increasing what is running on it.

I’m not sure whether I should be looking at something like a Dell R720xd or if I should be trying to piece together a more modern tower on a budget. Electricity is fairly cheap and I work for the power company so I’m not too concerned.

Which road should I be heading down?

Well what’s using your CPU?

Well it’s the combination of things. No one item is using all the CPU processes, each just uses a small chunk. When they are all added together and I decide to add something to SabNZBD to download when they start processing everything gets even slower and hangs. I am downloading to an NVME cache drive so it’s not the drive. When the mover runs things begin to crash.

I have decided to go 12th or 13th gen intel. Just not sure which chip yet. Way too many decisions.

You need to objectively gather some metrics. A better processor would be a good idea, but “one VM” isn’t really helpful in describing your use case.

Your VM could be running a magic mirror (signage type thing) using close to zero resources or it could be machine learning AI and taking 99% of the system resources.

“Warcraft Server” is a world of warcraft shard? Warcraft 3? OG Dos Warcraft in an emulator?

There are a lot of good builds. I’d go with something you can build and expand like a NasKiller 6 build linked here rather than a proprietary solution.

The current VM is Fedora with GPU passed through. I am using it as a daily driver remotely.

Warcraft server is meant to be a shared World of Warcraft server that would have about 10 individuals using it.

I do share access to Jellyfin with family, so at times there can be 8+ streams going with a max of 2 of those being local streams.

I’ll follow a NAS 6 Killer approach but with a more powerful 12th or 13th gen CPU and an appropriate ATX or E-ATX motherboard for expansion. Given what I am running now and the wall I am hitting I need to bump up the power a bit.

Thanks!