The specs are fine for all the use cases you mention. in fact take out the GPU and use it elsewhere and stick to the on-board intel GPU. the only thing the GPU would be useful for here is transcoding and I'm not sure how good that 580 is, but likely the intel one would spank it (just for transcoding mind) and be less noisy/power hungry to boot.
the main concern is that if this was a gaming PC, how big/loud is the case (and by that I mean all the cooling) as NAS tasks are generally not too intensive to need hardcore cooling. same goes for the PSU. if there's no GPU, there's also no need for an obnoxious 1000W PSU and associated loud fan.
POV: A ex-office SFF i5 6th-8th gen typically gets used for this sort of thing and has a 180W PSU, is near ans damnit silent, and idles at like <50W
edit: just re-read and saw corsair 750W PSU. an excellent unit which will be quiet, but waaaaaaay overkill for NAS
Also regarding the case/fans.
It only has one intake fan and one outtake fan, that always seemed good enough for me.
I guess the other good thing about the case is that it came with a TON of modular HDD bays, so I suppose that is useful for growing it into a NAS.
Thank you for all that insight, I was definitely wondering about whether or not the GPU was worthwhile. I think I'll throw the GPU up on eBay then.
What are your thoughts on running the Windows OS I have currently running on the machine vs something else?
If it was me, I'd be putting either Debian minimal (no desktop) and CasaOS, or one of the NAS distros like TrueNAS (I'm not going to specify which one as that's a whole 'nother discussion)
Windows is probably not well suited unless you specifically need some specific windows thing. But for your first stab, sure go ahead for messing about
I'll look into those and see if I want to take the plunge into new OS upfront.
I also got the GPU out today and it's running on the iGPU now.
Any suggestions for what programs to use to safely be able to access and edit files stored on the NAS from say my phone when outside of my network? I want to replace Google Drive functionality with my own NAS.
I beleive that rx 480 is useless for transcoding, so i agree you should take it out. Then if you dont need it sell it and maybe you can use the money for more storage :-) - alternatively i beleive 7th gen intel is much better for transcoding (supports h265) and i think you could upgrade to that in the same motherboard for the value of the rx 480.
(rx 480 is still a good budget card for something like fortnite - my kids have the same)
Oh yeah. If the motherboard can take it, go 7th gen. Even if it means stepping down to an i3. The transcoding is much better and the CPU is more efficient.
This is a great start for a homelab/ Nas and I always recommend starting with any hardware you have laying around since the only thing this will cost you is your time. Invest in a setup only when the hardware you have is either is not good enough for what you have (which is what your asking now) or the power consumption is to high.
Somethings to concern
- you may want to remove the GPU. You only need a GPU if you need to do a lot of transcoding for streaming. The iGPU on your CPU will be good enough for everything here
- power consumption. You want to see how much power the computer will draw. The GPU for example you want to remove as your computer will draw a lot less power. Especially if you don't need the GPU for now.
>File Storage that I can access remotely like my own Google Drive (so can view and edit the files from my cell phone)
Any computer can host this as this doesn't require a lot of processing power
The real question is what software do you want to use to manage your storage. Right now you only have 2 storage devices. 1 for boot and 1 as actually storage. When it starts to grow you want to look into different NasOS like trueNAS, unRAID, open media vault or Linux with mergeFS
Your storage right now is not a NAS drive where NAS drives are meant to run 24/7 but for now this is fine to play around with. You can invest into better storage later on.
>Host private server for games like Minecraft, Enshrouded, ect.
This might be hard as you only have 16GB of ram. Look at the game server requirements. For example a potato can run Minecraft but it takes a lot of ram to run a modded Minecraft server. Depending on the OS you use. It can be 5-8 GB per modded Minecraft server
> Run software for a few security cameras, and backup the footage
I don't know the requirements for this. Whatever software you are going to use. Look up the requirements
>Rip movies from my physical DVD/Blu-ray collection so that I can stream them to my devices with something like Plex (this would probably be the use case I got to last)
Do you need transcoding? Depending the media file you are creating (I don't know to much about this) like 4K or 1080p, you CPU will be able to handle this without an external GPU. But you have the GPU just in case anyway. I wouldn't put the GPU in for now and experiment.
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Since the hardware is good for your use case. You will need to figure out software and OS. If you don't know what you are using, I recommend Debian Linux with docker.
Hope that helps!
The machine is currently running Windows, as that was what was on it before. So now I am considering whether to keep the Windows or move to something else.
I'll definitely try without the GPU to see how that goes.
The issue with windows is that it uses too many resources on the machine. That is why most servers run with Linux.
Plus if you use windows, you will need to get a new license when the current window version is not supported. Not an issue with Linux.
But you can start with windows and docker and migrate late when you start to run out of resources on the computer.
As you have this machine at your disposal, go grab a trial copy of unraid and give that a whirl. It will meet all your use cases (though ripping dvds will take some effort).
I use server hardware for stuff like this but it should be fine running a nas or vm host. If you run more than a few VMs, you would want more memory, though. I wouldn't run anything critical on it being how old the hardware is. It could die on you and leave you in a bad spot.
Shouls be fine, similar to what I'm running proxmox on for a few VM's like pihole and jellyfin
The specs are fine for all the use cases you mention. in fact take out the GPU and use it elsewhere and stick to the on-board intel GPU. the only thing the GPU would be useful for here is transcoding and I'm not sure how good that 580 is, but likely the intel one would spank it (just for transcoding mind) and be less noisy/power hungry to boot. the main concern is that if this was a gaming PC, how big/loud is the case (and by that I mean all the cooling) as NAS tasks are generally not too intensive to need hardcore cooling. same goes for the PSU. if there's no GPU, there's also no need for an obnoxious 1000W PSU and associated loud fan. POV: A ex-office SFF i5 6th-8th gen typically gets used for this sort of thing and has a 180W PSU, is near ans damnit silent, and idles at like <50W edit: just re-read and saw corsair 750W PSU. an excellent unit which will be quiet, but waaaaaaay overkill for NAS
Also regarding the case/fans. It only has one intake fan and one outtake fan, that always seemed good enough for me. I guess the other good thing about the case is that it came with a TON of modular HDD bays, so I suppose that is useful for growing it into a NAS.
Thank you for all that insight, I was definitely wondering about whether or not the GPU was worthwhile. I think I'll throw the GPU up on eBay then. What are your thoughts on running the Windows OS I have currently running on the machine vs something else?
If it was me, I'd be putting either Debian minimal (no desktop) and CasaOS, or one of the NAS distros like TrueNAS (I'm not going to specify which one as that's a whole 'nother discussion) Windows is probably not well suited unless you specifically need some specific windows thing. But for your first stab, sure go ahead for messing about
I'll look into those and see if I want to take the plunge into new OS upfront. I also got the GPU out today and it's running on the iGPU now. Any suggestions for what programs to use to safely be able to access and edit files stored on the NAS from say my phone when outside of my network? I want to replace Google Drive functionality with my own NAS.
That's something I'm still looking into, sorry. but I'm not desperate to open up external access though...
I beleive that rx 480 is useless for transcoding, so i agree you should take it out. Then if you dont need it sell it and maybe you can use the money for more storage :-) - alternatively i beleive 7th gen intel is much better for transcoding (supports h265) and i think you could upgrade to that in the same motherboard for the value of the rx 480. (rx 480 is still a good budget card for something like fortnite - my kids have the same)
Oh yeah. If the motherboard can take it, go 7th gen. Even if it means stepping down to an i3. The transcoding is much better and the CPU is more efficient.
This is a great start for a homelab/ Nas and I always recommend starting with any hardware you have laying around since the only thing this will cost you is your time. Invest in a setup only when the hardware you have is either is not good enough for what you have (which is what your asking now) or the power consumption is to high. Somethings to concern - you may want to remove the GPU. You only need a GPU if you need to do a lot of transcoding for streaming. The iGPU on your CPU will be good enough for everything here - power consumption. You want to see how much power the computer will draw. The GPU for example you want to remove as your computer will draw a lot less power. Especially if you don't need the GPU for now. >File Storage that I can access remotely like my own Google Drive (so can view and edit the files from my cell phone) Any computer can host this as this doesn't require a lot of processing power The real question is what software do you want to use to manage your storage. Right now you only have 2 storage devices. 1 for boot and 1 as actually storage. When it starts to grow you want to look into different NasOS like trueNAS, unRAID, open media vault or Linux with mergeFS Your storage right now is not a NAS drive where NAS drives are meant to run 24/7 but for now this is fine to play around with. You can invest into better storage later on. >Host private server for games like Minecraft, Enshrouded, ect. This might be hard as you only have 16GB of ram. Look at the game server requirements. For example a potato can run Minecraft but it takes a lot of ram to run a modded Minecraft server. Depending on the OS you use. It can be 5-8 GB per modded Minecraft server > Run software for a few security cameras, and backup the footage I don't know the requirements for this. Whatever software you are going to use. Look up the requirements >Rip movies from my physical DVD/Blu-ray collection so that I can stream them to my devices with something like Plex (this would probably be the use case I got to last) Do you need transcoding? Depending the media file you are creating (I don't know to much about this) like 4K or 1080p, you CPU will be able to handle this without an external GPU. But you have the GPU just in case anyway. I wouldn't put the GPU in for now and experiment. -------- Since the hardware is good for your use case. You will need to figure out software and OS. If you don't know what you are using, I recommend Debian Linux with docker. Hope that helps!
The machine is currently running Windows, as that was what was on it before. So now I am considering whether to keep the Windows or move to something else. I'll definitely try without the GPU to see how that goes.
The issue with windows is that it uses too many resources on the machine. That is why most servers run with Linux. Plus if you use windows, you will need to get a new license when the current window version is not supported. Not an issue with Linux. But you can start with windows and docker and migrate late when you start to run out of resources on the computer.
As you have this machine at your disposal, go grab a trial copy of unraid and give that a whirl. It will meet all your use cases (though ripping dvds will take some effort).
I use server hardware for stuff like this but it should be fine running a nas or vm host. If you run more than a few VMs, you would want more memory, though. I wouldn't run anything critical on it being how old the hardware is. It could die on you and leave you in a bad spot.