Looking to turn an old PC into a home server, advice welcome - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Microdoser
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2023, 03:58:25 pm
content: I have a couple of old PCs and I would like to turn one of them into a home server, possibly to store video footage for editing. I'm thinking of getting a 2.5Gb network card for it, and a switch that has 4x2.5Gb ports and 2x10Gb ports, which should hopefully provide a little future proofing.What I would like advice on, is what sort of filesystem (ideally free) is best to run on the server for maximum data security and performance? (I have a bunch of older spinning drives that in combination could easily max out a 2.5Gb network port) would I be better getting a CPU with more cores, even though it has a lower clock speed? (I've seen you can get an old Xeon with 16 cores/32 threads for £15 and a MB for £50) or would the current I5 4570 be enough? How much RAM would I need to avoid RAM being a bottleneck? (currently it has 16GB) Also, if I connect one port at 2.5Gb, will it operate at that speed even if 1Gb connections are made on other ports? (not so important, could just get 2.5Gb cards for the other machines)We will be using a maximum of 2 remote computers to access the server, although it is possible that down the line, they would both want to edit video from it (not intensive stuff, getting the speed of a spinning hdd would be fine). Trying to keep costs down as much as possible, this is just a side project.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 10, 2023, 04:07:38 pm
content: Not the smartest thing to do. By using old junk you'd pay more in electricity that saving on buying new low power hardware or off the shelf NAS.

author: Microdoser
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2023, 05:58:54 pm
content: Quote from: wraper on October 10, 2023, 04:07:38 pmElectricity and basic hardware I got. I don't have upfront costs for new low power hardware or a NAS.

author: themadhippy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2023, 06:06:34 pm
content: QuoteCheapskate "nas" option,usb drive case plugged into the usb port on your modem (if its got one)

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 10, 2023, 06:17:20 pm
content: Quote from: Microdoser on October 10, 2023, 05:58:54 pmYou'd likely break even in a year or less. If it's just a file server, you do not need expensive HW. I just googled UK residential electricity price being 34p/kWh. If you say buy HW with 20W lower power consumption and running 24/7, then it would be£175175kWh/£59.5 difference in electricity bill annually.

author: Bicurico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2023, 06:57:20 pm
content: I tried It all: old PC as file server, cheap NAS, ..., Synology NAS in Rack Format.At the end, my conclusion was to just fit all hard disks into my (new) main computer and let it run 24/7. Much more convenient, comes with all the protocols I need, Serviio turns it into the ideal media server for smart TV and alikes.And it is cheaper than having yet another device running in parallel.

author: Microdoser
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2023, 07:38:07 pm
content: Quote from: wraper on October 10, 2023, 06:17:20 pmI'll try again. I don't pay for electricity, so I would be down whatever the upfront costs are.

author: Microdoser
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2023, 07:38:42 pm
content: Quote from: themadhippy on October 10, 2023, 06:06:34 pmUnfortunately no

author: Microdoser
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2023, 07:53:32 pm
content: OK, I can see this thread suffering the standard 'geekspread' and losing focus in discussions about things that aren't relevant, like rack systems, AC, power consumption and so on. Start a different thread if you want to talk about that, please.I already have a case, motherboard, CPU, 16GB DDR4, 256GB SSD, many spinning hard drives. The downside is it only has a 1Gb ethernet connection and I5 4570. I don't pay for electricity, our solar easily covers far more than we use even in winter. We have a hefty house battery system that can nearly last us a week, so no worries for non-sunny days.I'm wanting to get a server together so that we are not dependent on either of our main computers being active for either of us to access a shared pool of data. We'd both like to minimise the desk space for our main computers and have a box sat somewhere else that takes care of looking after the drives, reporting problems, maybe running some light network based QOL apps.I'd like to saturate a 2.5Gb connection, and I have enough spinning drives to do that. I know seek times will be terrible, but I have a few SSD drives, so I could set up nearly a terabyte of cache. I know there are many filesystems and setups that can be used, ZFS, TrueNAS, and so on. Do any of these benefit from more than 4 cores? Are there benefits to using one over another? Are any of them free?

author: abeyer
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2023, 08:04:15 pm
content: Quote from: Microdoser on October 10, 2023, 07:53:32 pmAFAIK TrueNAS is just a layer of tools on top of the opensource implementation of ZFS, not a different filesystem.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2023, 08:24:14 pm
content: Quote from: Microdoser on October 10, 2023, 07:53:32 pmYou have ample resources for a NAS right there when using anything other than Windows. I take it do-it-yourself Linux is out of the question?In general, you don't need much CPU at all to stuff a 2.5G ethernet as full as it can be (typically limited by packets-per-second, and not actual bandwidth, by your hardware) given enough storage bandwidth (for example, using software RAID 0 or 1 on a bunch of spinny-rust drives). Just add a 2.5G PCIe ethernet card (say, TP-LINK TX201), or even trunk the connection if your switch supports trunked connections (combining more than one Ethernet cable into one effective connection), install a suitable Linux distribution, configure it, and then maintain it. If you pick a NAS-oriented Linux distribution, like TrueNAS core, the distribution can help you with the three last steps.You could also go the BSD route, just verify the network interface card(s) you use are supported.The only thing that you'd need to pay for above is for the added ethernet card, if you do add one.

author: Shonky
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 10, 2023, 08:57:42 pm
content: Quote from: wraper on October 10, 2023, 06:17:20 pmConcept is correct. Maths is wrong0.02kW x 24 x 365 x 0.34 GBP/kWh = 59.57 GBPRemember thought that generated power is not exactly "free" if you have feed in tariffs. If your electricity provider pays you for generated energy fed back to the grid you would get less payback so effectively it costs you money.I5-4570 is perfectly capable of NAS type functions mentioned. It should be able to saturate 2.5Gbps assuming the disk hardware is capable. A single spinning disk particularly older ones would not be able to read / write at that kind of speed.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 10, 2023, 09:45:47 pm
content: Quote from: Shonky on October 10, 2023, 08:57:42 pmI calculated exactly like this but apparently somehow did not multiply by 0.34 at the end, so it turned out plain kWh, not the price. Anyway when comparing running old 16 core xeon, and modern NAS the difference in consumption will be way more than 20W.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 10, 2023, 11:50:02 pm
content: TrueNAS.Free, powerful, and the pools use ZFS which is far superior to traditional RAID setups. It's probably not suitable for beginners, but if you have a reasonable amount of knowledge on networking, configuring disks, setting ACLs etc... you'll be fine.Tom Lawrence does some excellent videos showing you many aspects of TrueNAS.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 11, 2023, 01:05:47 am
content: Quote from: wraper on October 10, 2023, 09:45:47 pmNo kidding, you'll never get a 20W power draw with an old Xeon-based system, not even in idle, even in the OP's wildest dreams. It'll be more like 100W to 150W just idling. Now the cost per year is not exactly the same indeed.

author: darkspr1te
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 11, 2023, 06:55:36 am
content: As many have mentioned there is TrueNAS & FreeNAS linux based file servers but I would not recommend as entry setups though, I know many a youtuber sings the praise of them but when they go wrong and trust me they will do on older h/w due to some quirks of that software, it's a little unforgiving and can kick drives out for some silly reasons leading you down a data recovery nightmare rabbit hole.If it's the learning you want and a solid start will "less frustration" then a LAMPS server will give you all round tools to start building and adding to your home server, very easy to setup shares , backups, home web pages, home media servers, VM's for other systems too like automation servers, personal vpns, solar tracking systems.There are some "out of the box" server OS's out there too like Zentyal which was centos LAMP server with web page for app/user/tool management , I started with these but due to what ever reason packages would break I found myself more at command line fixing things so I fell away from a lot of web managed servers for my minor setups.Another option is something like Proxmox which you can host multiple Virtual PC's on and setup and play with what ever server you want. it has in app house keeping tools for mirror and backup which are easy to understandAs you may have guessed , running any server system be it new or old at some point will need repair/fixing so you might as well learn on the cheapest h/w and learn how they are made , what makes em tick, whats different between what you build and say what QNAP sell as one stop solution for home/small business.When you decide to upgrade major H/w you will find you already have the tools and knowledge to transfer to your shiny new power house should you wish,OS wise I would try and stick to debian/arch based systems first , while some of the other OS's do offer some powerful features like ZFS they also can go bang real easy , I cannot remember which BSD based setup it was , but a command to save a drive used P for recovery and little p for "drop the drive forever" , you can imagine the pain that caused to new players made worse by the OS's designer's questionable choice of terminal font and screen resolution and no scrollback. Anyway my point is that there has been a lot of work done on those mentioned distro's to assist new users and support some of the more Elderly hardwareAnyway, thats my 2 cents in the Home server side.darkspr1te

author: jonpaul
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 11, 2023, 07:54:02 am
content: rasbery pi, or arduinotiny size/powerUse only SSDsj

author: AndyBeez
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 11, 2023, 09:54:58 am
content: Free electricity? Cool: As well as running FreeNAS, you might want to consider pooled crypto mining too? Antpool, Binance, BTC.com... etc. No billing, no loss.Just replace the HDD with a SSD, max the RAM, max the CPU and replace your OS with a Linux distribution.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 11, 2023, 10:17:18 am
content: Quote from: wraper on October 10, 2023, 06:17:20 pmPC idle consumption has been all over the place over the last 2 decades. However. most generations of medium performance Intel CPU based PCs idle at something like 10W-12W with a couple of big low power hard disks. How are you going to save 20W from that, unless your family keeps the server busy and high consuming for most of the day? Using Intel's own motherboards really helps idle consumption. Using things like WD Green disks saves a lot over using, say, WD Black drives. Old modest performance PCs can work well repurposed as a family server. PCs which were build for high performance probably have a horrible idle consumption you wouldn't like with current electricity prices.

author: Bicurico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 11, 2023, 02:58:58 pm
content: OP explained he wants to use his existing hardware and that power consumption is not an issue.Moving on, my contribution is to vote for TrueNAS, formerly known as FreeNAS. I used this myself in the past (FreeNAS) and it had all required functionality, including feeding TV's with multimedia files.The only issue I had back then was that USB drives would never get the signal to enter sleep mode. This was an issue for me, not due to increased power consumption, but obviously the reduction in life expectancy of a drive which has the motor spinning at 7200 rpm 24/7.I hope that this is fixed by now.The other option would be to just use Windows 10/11 and share the drive. I liked this option over FreeNAS, because a PC running 24/7 is a great gateway and server for much more than just a file server.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 11, 2023, 03:22:56 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on October 11, 2023, 10:17:18 amYour power consumption numbers make no sense for older and most of newer desktop systems. I could believe for CPU alone, but not the whole system. Here some real numbers from 2011 with no GPU.https://www.legitreviews.com/intel-core-i3-2120-3-3ghz-sandy-bridge-processor-review_1650/16

author: iMo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 11, 2023, 04:02:44 pm
content: My notebook (I've been writing this post on) is almost identical setup as the OP's one (I5 dualcore_max2.5GHz/16GB_ram/500GB_SSD/GPU_on_I5) and it pulls ~13-18W displ on, ~9-11W displ off (watching the meter now).Add up say 4 HDDs, 2.5Gb netw card and the switch and you are at ~50-55W while writing the post..

author: darkspr1te
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 11, 2023, 04:18:43 pm
content: Quote from: Bicurico onTodayat 04:58:58 pmI had this same issues, along with many others i wont go into, most were a noob's understanding issue of terminology between devices/systems/hardware support/software support etcit's kinda why i didnt push it first over maybe a blank ubuntu and apt install samba and edit one file and make a folder , later maybe add a cron rsync to another drive , I mean you gonna hit that command line at some point ?Dont get me wrong, i dont dislike them , i have some licensed sites as part of my company, i just think that not having to think around the many layers that can be setup from the freenas/truenas/nas4free that could create a simple JBOD to a encrypted raid with 0 pool addition ability (at this time you could not add USB to a ZFS array) and end up in failure mode of no additional disk's or ability to expand the pool.Dont ask me how i know this.I also did think about the windows option to suggest then i remembered that the last two times i installed windows was 11 then 10, win 11 i was a 1 and 30 mins in with questions and updates that changed my install on the fly despite my "fixed and minimal windows iso" so i gave up and went back to 10 from usb-iso and in 30 mins i was playing games again. not saying that windows 11 is filled with telematics and undefined options but it's download size make my african 4Mbp/s connection quiverdarkspr1te

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 11, 2023, 04:26:35 pm
content: Quote from: iMo on October 11, 2023, 04:02:44 pmLaptop power consumption is not relevant to the desktop. Not to say it's not similar at all. Half number of the cores and much lower frequency.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 11, 2023, 05:01:07 pm
content: Quote from: wraper on October 11, 2023, 03:22:56 pmI happen to have a Sandy bridge i3 box here. I just checked its consumption from the wall. I'm not sure which speed grade CPU it has, but its on an Intel mATX board. There are 2 WD Green 2TB drives in the box. There is 16GB of RAM, although that probably makes little difference. It has an Antec ECO bronze PSU. Its idling at 15W-16W, bouncing around a little.

author: Microdoser
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 11, 2023, 07:36:15 pm
content: If anyone finds this thread looking for info on how to turn an old PC into a server, here's a useful video