Video Rendering Server Rebuild (Now With Game Streaming)

[@CraftComputing]

GPUs in a server? YOU ABSOLUTE MADMAN ;-)

[@tekvax01]

Most VMware ESI servers now have GPUs installed in the hosts so they can be accessed by the client operating systems.

[@succuvamp_anna]

​@tekvax01 if I miss interpreted your comment then im sorry. One of the biggest things that Craft Computing does is put GPUs in servers so they're being facetious. Very good channel too.

[@JordansTechJunk]

This guy's unhinged!

[@samuraidriver4x4]

Something something crypto when it was still profitable 😉

[@Jesselovespinball]

I never get tired of how excited you get about what you do . I’ll be honest , I don’t know much about most things you talk about . But the fact that you are so passionate about it , makes me enjoy watching your videos . Maybe that’s weird , but that’s just me . Keep up the great work !

[@nysaea]

nope, nothing weird about enjoying infectious enthusiasm! :3

[@drsunshineaod2023]

I love it how you put SO MUCH care and love into restoring and perfectly cleaning and soldering your vintage machines, and... the server that makes all the videos about them is just a jank-ass dusty mess with cables everywhere and tape covering pci buses so they don't conduct and a MacGyvered cooling fan made of plastic panes. Absolute unit! This is why I love PCs!! 😆🤣

[@CheapSushi]

right? lol was thinking the same; this thing is so unloved compared to everything else featured

[@porklaser]

I love this server. It's so real and utilitarian. Just a box with fans that holds a pile of usefull electronics that does it's job.

[@ht-dar]

Shelby, I mean this in the nicest way possible, but you have become a MOST UNEXPECTED style icon. Between the Memphis Design motifs of your merch/graphics and the absolutely 🔥🔥 outfit in this video - drip goes hard my guy

[@Blustride]

23:53 real ones remember Druaga2

[@ora2j251]

I always wondered what was the connexion between him and Shelby.

[@oskardzida]

That`s how I found out about AkBKukU

[@drsunshineaod2023]

I remember the collab video they did years back. Sadly it seems Druaga1 has moved on to other pastures.

[@needfuldoer4531]

I remember the SE/30 repair video.

[@gtrdriver27]

@@drsunshineaod2023 I still miss drauga1 his videos are fun, long and entertaining

[@Inject0r]

22:14 that SAS controller is set as a RAID controller. When flashing it to IT mode, you’ll be able to use it as an HBA. You won’t have to use any specific controller for it. That’s a lot easier when you need to recover data from the disks. Setting up ZFS or LVM should make it fully controller independent. In short: disks are now controller dependent. You’d want to fix that. :)

[@JORGETECHJorge]

Using the Steam Deck as a remote video editing workstation is something I didn't expect from this video, but it's a really cool idea and want to see more of that!

[@GeekOfAllThings]

That one screw location not lining up is very unusual for a motherboard that looks like it was designed as some variety of the ATX form factor. If you ever remove that motherboard again, put a standoff in that unused mount hole backwards with a small nut to hold it to the motherboard. That'll keep it from touching the case. I used to see plastic snap in standoffs used like that used in old AT style motherboards. Probably before they all started using a standard for all the mount holes.

[@PhobosTK]

Server updates are always exciting. Thanks to your videos I've got one myself and even landed a job.

[@stevekristoff4365]

LOL. Having been working in computers since the 70's, have some comments. 1) The enthusiasm you have for the *jank* parts setup reminds me of my very younger days when pulling stuff apart and building systems from scratch way back in the early days (70's/early 80's) when trying to get enterprise gear for home use. which is a good thing. :) 2) I *think* I've become wiser over the years and am just shaking my head at your setup and wonder why not build out systems properly which will need *MUCH* less twiddling. especially with such older gear that you have there. Most of your cooling issues are probably due to the types of fans you have (there's a reason why high static pressure/high rpm fans are used in enterprise gear) and with the congestion of cables and equipment you have there would make airflow very problematic with noctuas. All that being said, it's an enjoyable video even though I'm shaking my head with a smile on my face all through it. :P

[@tekvax01]

All of my builds are always state of the budget and never state of the art! :)

[@blitzwing1]

I think I can speak for many of us when I say, the jank and the twiddling is part of the fun. 😅

[@nickwallette6201]

For the most part, home-made server projects always look like this, because the only way you're going to cram that much stuff in that tight an enclosure w/o jank is to engineer the whole system to work together. I.e., you either buy a complete server built for purpose, or you buy the parts from one manufacturer (e.g., Supermicro board, Supermicro enclosure, Supermicro HBAs, Supermicro NIC, Supermicro cooling solutions), or you get creative and solve problems and take what you can find on the open market. I've had ill-fitting risers, fans dropped in places where they fit (barely), sheet metal curving around cables, motherboards slumping between stand-offs, lids that barely fit, missing IO shields because they DON'T fit, rough-drilled holes to put in my own mounting screws, etc etc etc... It is what it is. The hope is, it'll fit in whatever rack I could justify buying/retrieving from the "freebies" pile, it'll work, it'll stay within thermal limits, and maybe some day I'll forgive myself for the trauma when I open it back up and do maintenance on it.

[@jeremylindemann5117]

I thought servers had high static pressure fans for a couple of reasons .. 1 - The rackmount design is often long and skinny so smaller diameter fans have to be used to compensate for less airflow compares to larger fans. 2 - Server equipment is designed to be very stable and solid so the fan speeds get cranked up to very high flow (and volume) to keep things as cool as possible. This is fine in a clean server room with filtered airflow but not so great in the real world. I would have though that the three 120mm fans in his case would be okay even if they're lower static pressure, as long as the airflow is not restricted.

[@stevekristoff4365]

@@jeremylindemann5117 aside from physical dimensions (where you can use blower fans opposed to axial ones to fit as well) the point of the high static pressure was to ensure you had the correct VOLUME of air to hit the internal components in a highly constrained space. for that you want high static pressure and/or blower type fans (which are more efficient in moving air than axial). i.e. air flow /IS/ restricted in all cases (fans are not held in free air) so a system designer has to take that into consideration with a fully loaded system to maintain correct air volume movement per operational design specs.

[@Error42_]

I really like how this video shows things just how they are. All the things you've had to do along the way to make things fit or work are shown exactly as they are no matter how "unconventional" 😀

[@myleft9397]

Holy harddrives Batman! Great video.

[@tlmotorscbb]

28:03 why won't you cut the crew section of the stand and just bolt it to the mainboard? this will not tighten it up to the backplate but will give the needed strength not to touch it accidentally

[@bzuidgeest]

Don't put more and bigger drives in the server, move some old projects to cold storage. Even if you have good backups, bigger drives mean larger recovery time in case of disaster and more that can go wrong with the backup itself. You likely don't need a lot of the older content so it's doing nothing on there, but being subject to bit rot and possibly infecting your backups with that over time. You might even want to consider breaking up your jobs and storage between multiple servers, just to be able to keep some work going if one develops problems, single point of failure is never a good thing, just waiting for parts can break your schedule big-time. That's my advice anyway.

[@DEJ915]

You can always cut the threaded part off a standoff and screw it into the board so it at least has some protection for spots that don't have a hole in the chassis.

[@Vile-Flesh]

That is a good idea and I'll be employing that trick. Thank you very much.

[@jeromethiel4323]

That is outside of the box thinking. That is genius!

[@ryandary]

I love past-Shelby's willingness to shrug and just fully send it anyway (Not knowing which SSD is which / taping the PCI-E connector that sits in that heatsink)

[@LKComputes]

the server is cool and all but no one’s talking about the akbkuku lab coat

[@wolf1438]

The old server was total mess.... I liked it.

[@jeromethiel4323]

I built a video editing station for an event i work for, and while the mobo and processor were important, the video card was key. We needed as many CUDA cores as we could get. And it makes a HUGE difference in video encoding. The processor can outsource almost all of the video processing to the video card, which means the processor isn't heavily loaded at all. That and fast and vast storage is a must. Video takes up a LOT of space.

[@war77el]

Don't forget to archive your GOG library as well; the games we ACTUALLY own without being strictly account bound. That bundle of SSD's for scratch volume - goodNESS! 👍🏽

[@banguseater]

i dont own a server but a NAS, and one of things I love about it is just archiving steam game installs on a 4tb HDD, and then installing on my main PC SSD, doing this so I don't have to worry about my data caps when I want to reinstall a game. its pretty convenient considering youre just storing the archived format so you can save more space then fully installing it, and I might have to do this with my GOG game installs too.

[@Dutch-linux]

ffmpeg can do multi threading example you want to use 3 threads -threads 3

[@RisingRevengeance]

This is some very relatable jank. My computers may or may not be this messy...

[@GenericSweetener]

Oh my goodness, I remember the stream where the NIC cooler was "engineered," I'm so happy/terrified to see it made it this long!

[@elikirkwood4580]

I originally found your channel through the videos where you first built this server,so It's always fun to see updates on it. Glad to see it's less jank now and is working well for you. I actually have that same motherboard and im trying to cram it into an early 2000s atx case since I pulled it out of my server to save electricity

[@Afsafs123]

The old adage I tell myself while writing any code applies here: if it's stupid and it works, it isn't stupid.

[@bundesautobahn7]

Notice the old AkBKuKu (?) logo on the shirt. I still remember. And sorry if I butchered your old KZbin name, I can still use Druaga 2 if necessary. ;)

[@Fractal_32]

0:13 Server content is always fun to watch especially when there’s special considerations that need to be taken for someone’s use case.

[@nekomasteryoutube3232]

yeah I mean, for larger setups they might do some customization to tailor for their needs but when it comes to people like youtubers needing them for render and/or storage, you run into some interesting setups that sometimes can be tricky to work with when you may not be well versed with the oddities that server and High end desktop setups come with (at least with their motherboards, bios and raids options sometimes)

[@nadtz]

Just the right amount of jank for a home server without it being a dumpster fire. I shudder at seeing one of those Adaptec raid controllers after so long, I had so many of those things die on me back when I worked in a datacenter. Otherwise that's a pretty nice (if a bit messy) build, it's always interesting to see the things people do with their servers.

[@tekvax01]

Why not just drill the case floor to add another stand-off in the back corner? Much better than non-ESD pink bubble wrap... I think just about every time I have built a new system, I always end up drilling at least one or two new holes to fasten parts down correctly...

[@Numfuddle]

Power supplies shouldn’t be exciting. When power supplies get exciting usually something went really wrong.

[@VikingDudee]

Man I love server upgrade or build videos, and some of the jank that goes with it. I as well have all my steam games installed onto my server, nearly 400 games, its faster than my internet to have it install from my server to my PC, epically when games are nearly 100gb or more.

[@humidbeing]

When I need to add support under an area of mobo I use rubber feet. Easy to cut down to the right height with wire cutters or a knife.

[@nicolaspeter1679]

Man, that server really is a sight to behold. I get money being an issue but it sounds as if you get a lot of gear donated. With that said wouldn't it have been a better idea to just build a new machine with the new components, and transfer your data over.

[@imark7777777]

That was surprisingly more interesting than I already thought it would be.

[@amirpourghoureiyan1637]

An old AT motherboard spacer would be a decent fix for the missing mounting post

[@lieftheshinigami]

9300-16i made my day lol! I used to be a server tester for a local system builder, and I got VERY familiar with SAS cards

[@ik4692]

The video feed at 38:25 was nostalgic. Cheers.

[@AddieDirectsTV]

8:54 hey Shelby… do you have those scripts available anywhere? Davinci Resolve on Linux is one reason my main machine is still Windows 11.

[@K-o-R]

I hope you have better luck keeping the drives cool in those hotswap (operative word: HOT) bays. I couldn't get any significant airflow over the drives when I used that style of case.

[@nysaea]

Plenty of reasons tu run a GUI on a server. At my job, we process medical images and the most practical solution was to use health data certified servers to host everything and NoMachine in through a VPN to do the graphical processing! :3 Works great!

[@dans.]

Why are you not using one of those plastic feet that used to hold old mobos in, instead of that plastic bubble bag? That bag will just hold heat in that spot 😢

[@kissfaq]

That was a seriously distressing moment. The plastic standoffs, which I still have from the nineties, were uber useful for non-compatible mounting. Various flavors could simply be snipped to mount level in the case. On a couple of occasions, my fav case of the moment had boards in it with more plastic mcGyver jobs than screws, but still maintained good separation between board and case.

[@fordesponja]

Maybe you could consider bluray for archiving. A good brand disc will be M discs, which are certified to last for 1000 years or so they say,. The downside is the cost, 100gb rewritable discs aren't cheap and more physical space is needed. I wouldn't rely on hdds or ssds for archival purposes.

[@suzyL420]

i’ve been considering backing up some non essential stuff on dvdr discs i have lying around just to make some room on my daily rig. seeing this setup makes me want to cry hahaha

[@truckerallikatuk]

Kinda shocked you went Sandy Bridge to Ivy Bridge, with Haswell and Broadwell server available so cheaply. Heck, even faster chips are at somewhat sensible prices. Also, I run a Dynatron 2u active cooler on my Xeon Scaleable, and it's perfectly quiet with the stock fan.

[@SomeMorganSomewhere]

FWIW in my 3RU SuperMicro box (SC836 which I got branded as a Dell CT-040 chassis) I run a pair of Noctua NH-D6DX i4 3U's in never had any thermal issues even though I've swapped out all the original SCREAMER fans with Noctua fans.

[@CisumAPRAT]

as long as it works it’s fine, my first server was an old pentium t4200 laptop with the mobo exposed and a 120mm fan that i made to work on usb for power, to cool the 2.5 hdd, had that thing running unraid for 1 year without skipping a beat 😂

[@CoffeeOnRails]

Just staring the video, but as a historian who often uses Tesseract, it brings every computer to its knees. End of video edit about Ubisoft. WatchDogs Legion (the London one) launches fine on my system via Lutris and Ubi Launcher. I roll Kubuntu 24.04 on a Ryzen 1600/GTX 1060 if that’s of any use!

[@thesavo]

The terminal laptop is mentioned at time code 5:10. It's called a nexdock

[@rager1969]

Being a Windows guy, I was wondering how smooth the hardware upgrade would go on Linux. It's interesting it had that issue with that RAID1 set and I was also perplexed that you put off the NIC swap, since I would've thought that change in Linux would've been fairly straightforward for you.

[@michaelwood9866]

I’m not sure if you have seen Adrian blacks channel but he need help from the community on a failing self test problem. The machine in question is a plexius /20 server machine from 1985 with Unix 1.2. He has imaged the drive while he was able to get into it so he has that uploaded and has ppl scouring through code to see what the failure is hardware wise

[@nicolaspeter1679]

On another point regarding your game streaming setup. I have a similar setup where I use my Nintendo switch on Android to connect to my home network using tailscale, and stream games off my main Windows PC. When looking at your video it appears as though you just have all your games in the steam folder on your server, and then you just select the drive on your steam deck. You didn't mention how you're streaming it or what OS you're using for compatibility since proton isn't 100% I assumed you were using a Windows virtual machine.

[@AdriaanZwemer]

i usually try to -vcodec copy as much as possible (idk about davinci resolve, but you said you'd just get video only, so it might work?)

[@golimonkey]

You can convert video audio to pcm without touching video at all with ffmpeg. Its faster and lossless

[@erickvond6825]

Dang Shelby, I don't think I've seen you this excited since the Hydro Thunder videos.

[@halitimes2]

I would consider separating storage and compute, you basically have two machines already. All you need is another case 🙂

[@nickwallette6201]

If this were me, I would decouple the storage and compute into two separate chassis. This gives you a bit of leeway to optimize the solution for the task -- a case with lots of storage bays, and lots of slots for HBAs; and either a 3U case with a riser, or another tall case for your full-height graphics card, plus a few front SSD sleds for scratch disks and the OS. The other benefit here is when you have failures or maintenance, you aren't in that "all eggs in one basket, everything is down until I fix this" scenario. And, if you're going to use SM boards, buy a SM case with the correct removeable PSUs. It'll cost you a few hundred bucks, but at this point, you can probably afford it, and it just sidesteps so much of the anxiety of finding point solutions to every little issue you run across trying to get random components to fit and work together. Buy once, cry once, and later upgrades are drop-in.

[@jeremylindemann5117]

You're a brave man for making such a big change to a mission critical machine in this way. I would be very inclined to look at getting a second server case and moving some of those SSD's out of your current server. The airflow looks like quite badly blocked in there and the dust build-up means your thermals are going to suffer quite a bit which has knock on effects for performance and hardware longevity. It seems lucky that you haven't had any issues as yet. The setup you have is fascinating but seems very janky and if something was to go wrong, like things not working when you did the motherboard changeover, then you don't have a server to work with for many days while you're trying to figure out technical issues. As you showed though you're really risking data loss by changing a motherboard in a computer that has such a custom and obscure setup. It would be wise to rethink your current setup in a more modular fashion and divide your workflow tasks between two servers. Perhaps having a second server or at least moving some of those hard drives into an external JBOD would make maintenance and upgrades much easier not to mention minimising resistance to airflow so that everything can run optimally. That will also help your hardware to live longer. You already have a spare server motherboard, CPU and RAM so you would just need to find a case which you can probably find second hand for a decent price.

[@valshaped]

And you know what the Deck has? Displayport alt mode over USB-C. Perfect for that modern day terminal of yours :P

[@blitzwing1]

I bought one a year or two ago, it's definitely one of those "how much!" for a laptop without the computer bits moments, but for accessing headless servers when something goes wrong, or my deck or even the Nintendo switch it's definitely paid for itself in convenience and time saved.

[@sokoloft3]

Have you tried moonlight/sunshine instead of just steams in home streaming?

[@Chrish1981]

Heyyyy nexdoc, cool use!!

[@matthewgregory395]

I watched all the previous server videos before this (yes, had taken a bit of time), what is the plan for the older parts?

[@steampog]

What version of Linux are you using? I've had really good luck with Ubuntu Studio, OS: Kubuntu 24.04 LTS x86_64 Kernel: 6.8.0-35-lowlatency

[@MaMuSlol]

Someone should send this video to Wendell from Level1Techs, he would both get a smile out of this and be horrified at the same time.

[@PrinsessePeach]

You could also just use a program that just converts AAC to AC3, and just copies the video to the new file without converting it, that saves a lot of time.

[@balloth]

I think the problem with the raid1 array could be caused from the fact that you build an array with disks and not partitions (dev/sdj and /dev/sdf, not /dev/sdj2 ...) where one is partitionned and the other is not. Just my 2cents

[@CheapSushi]

I love server / workstation build videos like this. I would have honestly at least upgraded to Haswell/Broadwell (Xeon V3/V4) for more power savings, higher IPC and still plenty of cheap Xeon CPUs with a lot of cores. Of course, you'd have to switch to DDR4, not DDR3. But there's plenty of boards, and cheap RAM available too. V4s are pretty old too at this point also but lots of good value. But I know the board was given to you, so why not and it fixed the janky GPU setup. So I understand. I was just taken by how unloved your server is compared to all the other things you feature, hah. I use my system for everything, so really take care of it. Personally, I would look into the Intel Arc A380 or other cheaper Intel cards because for the price (cheap), they are EXCELLENT for video editing because of the codecs Intel put in them. Like seriously, crazy editing value. I'm using an Intel card and an RTX GPU combined. I installed all my Steam library too; about 200 games. But anyway, this was a fun watch.

[@HalianTheProtogen]

Things I want but likely can never have: an akbkuku lab coat in my size

[@m4dcat1990]

What's the name of that LCD thing he has with the keyboard? I'd love to have one!

[@thiagodluz]

One question, which program are you using to access remotely without lag? VNC is impossible for me.

[@toutubesfriend]

i still use 1080ti for my server still works great

[@woodenotaku]

If you're feeling serious about preserving your Steam games library it might be worth backing them up outside of Steam. You might've missed it but there was recently a minor scandal involving Capcom adding an additional layer of DRM to their entire Steam library, so even though games aren't ever supposed to get removed from your Steam library (still possible but very very very rare) they might very well get updates that either change the game in undesirable ways or cause major compatibility issues such as the new Capcom DRM not liking Linux as much. Since you've already got everything installed just temporarily rename your Steam executable and try running games directly on their own. Some games run just fine out of the box without Steam, others might require SteamAPI replacements or renaming the SteamAPI DLL file, some need proper executable replacements and some need other patches like XLive DLL replacements for old GFWL games.

[@dant5464]

21:40 that is horrible! ... PCBs shoved between heatsinks should be wrapped in kapton, not scotch! 🤣

[@seimeianri]

I love videos like this, keep it up

[@ajslim79]

so, the 2 times video render performance equals 1 video each week to be released :D

[@ondrejsedlak4935]

So that's what would happen if Hillbillies decided to build servers. Very impressive everything worked so well together. Seriously well done.

[@jamesschecter2149]

Plastic standoffs will help with those odd screw holes on the motherboard.

[@Ashene64]

Is that laptop a console? What is that I need one!

[@a_funyun]

That's the same 1070 model I had, retired her in 2021 and then lent it to my girlfriend's brother, amazing card

[@DaChezePufz]

Watching this on an HP Z620 workstation with a Xeon E5-2690 v2

[@sego.]

No AAC audio on Resolve for linux? Oh heck yeah! Earlier versions didn’t even had h264 codecs to begin with so i take this as a good step forward

[@Fractal_32]

15:05 why not use ZFS instead of RAID?

[@Meat_City]

Was wondering the same, all those sketchy raid cards make me nervous, lol.

[@blitzwing1]

Agreed. I'm all for the old parts jank of it all, but when it comes down to storage yea, no. Hardware raid in "current year" when ZFS exists and is easy to set up and maintain is a strange one to say the least, and here it's worse with so many points of failure. Snapshots alone have rescued me more than once.

[@IOwnCalculus]

@@blitzwing1 I don't think he's using the Adaptec as true hardware RAID - it's just one of those janky RAID controllers that refuses to just pass drives through to the OS, and then he's running software mdraid on it. With that said, full agreement. Swap that out for another 9300-16i and move to ZFS. There's no good reason to use mdraid in 2024.

[@geografiainfinitului]

I noticed the tesseract speeds up the fans and "burns" every CPU from Apple M2, Intel and AMD, I think tesseract should be on benchmarks of new CPUs I would buy PCs that perform well on tesseract

[@digitalplayland]

Amazing channel. Many thanks.

[@dkehrerproductions]

Shout out from Mesa .

[@Alfenium]

all of my ops are from Mesa...

[@jimiphillips1170]

silly east siders ;)

[@MSquared135]

Shelby, have you considered water cooling your server?

[@Chris-yc3mm]

Wow, the inside of that old server is a mess

[@SketchNI]

You think a RAID0 is spooky? I have 4 RAID0 arrays in my server and that array is RAID0. I effectively have a RAID0+0. It's insane but it works(for now) until I can get some decent drives and actually do a proper RAID5 (Maybe even RAID50 if I feel spicy enough).

[@mlmmt]

me: "Why does an E5-2690 sound so familiar" *checks cpu currently in server* : e5-2687W v4, sounds so close, but very very different chips lol.

[@EdwinNoorlander]

why not use btop instead of htop

[@steampog]

BTW @41:00 the drive failure is probably the HBA controller going bad. If not, yeah you've got a bad drive bub

[@ZiggyTheHamster]

I loved the idea of the NexDock/LapDock, when I had a Lumia. I used the CRAP out of my LapDock. And then Windows 10 Mobile got EOL'ed :(.

[@andresbravo2003]

Rendering could be a challenge.

[@infiniteduality7712]

Yay!!! My Fav of your vids! 😄

[@TylerDurden0331]

Styczne techniczne. Lubie to

[@Mr_Meowingtons]

nice i have the same E5 2690 v2 in my over kill PLEX server lol

[@galeng73]

Heh... I'd wondered how long it'd take you to use the new motherboard.

[@danthompsett2894]

hope the new 10G NIC works out ok for you cause that old one is pretty janky cobbled together from used parts and a custom fan blower invention, yeah those 6 heatpipe 90mm fan heatsinks are pretty effective for server cpu's even the 5 heatpipe units handle intel Xeons very well, im using a SP3 socket version of the same pattern 6 heatpipe heatsinks on my dual epyc hdd server and like yours i max out at 60'c after stress testing with cinebench R23. Yeah if your not doing any ray tracing use or ray trace gaming although the GTX1080Ti probably can do a little bit of DX12 work just not full ray tracing mind you unless you have a 4070ti or higher you wont be able to use all the ray tracing features. but yeah its possible the 1080Ti could beat, match or at least come close in video rendering times compared to the 2070.

[@todd1748]

lol, so eager to put the gpu in. gpu is always last in pc building