Building the Ultimate Home Server with CTT

The Ultimate System

| March 20, 2024| Linux Windows

The Ultimate system looks different for everyone, but here is an outline of what you need to consider when building a system, as I outline my system.

The goal of my ultimate system is to maximize my PC experience while sacrificing nothing, doing everything I want at 100% efficiency.

Hardware

Not all hardware is created equal. While I could buy more powerful parts, this is one of the most powerful systems I can build based on my requirements. Here are all my hardware requirements and the link to my final system build.

• Low audio occupancy (not exceeding 30dB)
• Support for 2 GPUs (gaming and AV work simultaneously on multiple operating systems)
• A lot of full cores (no efficiency cores with lower performance in virtual machines).
• A lot of memory for virtual machines
• Expandable with a lot of PCIe ports (6+ ports, at least 2 16x slots)
• High-end motherboard (helps avoid IOMMU group errors)

These requirements are to avoid the problems I encountered in the past regarding systems. It’s not about getting the highest numbers but about avoiding the problems you faced before.

My Specifications

Build link: https://superworkstations.com/configurations/titus-hp-z8-g5-fury/

• Intel Xeon W5-3435X | 16 cores, 3.1 GHz base frequency
• 64GB (4x 16GB) 4800MT/s DDR5 ECC memory
• 2x 2TB NVMe M.2 PCIe 4.0 SSDs
• AMD Sapphire Nitro+ 7800XT (main GPU)
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 (2nd GPU)
• Single HP Z8 G5 Fury 1125W power supply

Basic Operating System

I always go back and forth between Debian and Arch Linux. They are both great options; Arch allows access to the latest hardware as it runs on newer kernels and software packages, while Debian is more stable with older packages. In the end, I have more fun on Arch and it will be my choice for the main system.

There are many guides on how to install Arch Linux, but here are some of my videos showing various methods I have used in the past.

Desktop

Most people need a user-friendly desktop environment, like the Plasma you choose during installation. While this is great for new users, nowadays, for me, a tiling window manager is the best. After years of switching, there is only one I find the best. DWM from suckless is the one where I can do anything without restrictions. If I want a new feature, I just patch it! Otherwise, everything works as usual.

DWM official website: https://dwm.suckless.org/ My DWM configuration: https://github.com/ChrisTitusTech/dwm-titus

Eliminating Friction

When using the desktop, consider the tasks you perform daily and whether they can be automated. This will save you time using the computer and provide a happier computing experience.

Examples:

• Starting my Windows 11 virtual machine happens daily! Solution? Start the VM on boot!sudo virsh enable win11

• Running the HUGO server to see my test website when creating pages. Solution? Create a user Systemd service that runs on user login:

~/.config/systemd/user/hugo.service

[Unit]
Description=hugo website server

[Service]
Type=simple
StandardOutput=journal
WorkingDirectory=/home/titus/github/website
ExecStart=hugo server -FD

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

Copy

Then issue the user command NO SUDOsystemctl --user enable hugo.service

• Run programs by launching the start menu. Solution? Hotkey programs for faster launching! In my case, I would edit config.h in my dwm folder.

Windows in Linux with PCI Passthrough

Linux is great, but sometimes it’s not the right tool to meet my needs. That’s why I have a full virtual machine with a dedicated GPU, NVMe, and USB card to meet any of my needs.

Note: PCI passthrough is not for the faint of heart. Some motherboards cannot properly isolate IOMMU groups, meaning you cannot isolate PCI slots to pass through them, and you cannot do this on those systems. Laptops and cheap motherboards have the biggest issues.

Quick Passthrough

Github: https://github.com/HikariKnight/quickpassthrough

Created by HikariKnight, this is an amazing project that simplifies the passthrough process. It automatically blacklists PCI IDs and makes the necessary system modifications while holding your hand through the entire process. If you see me run it, there’s a mkinitcpio error that made a MODULES=() entry. He has fixed this issue and says the latest version is better. While there’s no way to make it perfect and work on every system, it has eliminated a lot of legwork.

My Setup Video

This is all the live streams where I walk through the entire setup.

Demo Video

#PCI-Passthrough