Dvrman123

From what I can see it’s running at 3200MHz perfectly. 

Wont help for file sharing at all
 
Unraid is made for this. Made your biggest drive the parity drive, then you get the capacity of all the other drives combined and can lose any one drive iwth no data loss.

Hello, 
 
I have an upgraded my computer this year and have my old parts of one sitting in boxes collecting dust. I currently use a terrible WD My Cloud as a home backup storage but I have no redundancy built in I back it up every month or so but if it dies I will loose data. I would like to create a home server with this PC if possible, i'll link the specs below:
 
PC to be converted:
i5-6600k 
16gb ram
Motherboard: GIGABYTE G1 Gaming GA-H170-Gaming 3 (rev. 1.0)
some older 500 watt power supply
 
I've never dived into something like this and I look around reading and kind of get overwhelmed, I know this will be a steep learning process and would like to ask for help as to where to get started. I would like to access my files externally from my home network and continue running plex. I'm trying to stay under $500 if possible Some questions I have:
What OS do I use? Windows 10 pro(someone mentioned storage spaces to me) Some other NAS software, Windows server os?  Thinking of using this case but if you have suggestions that would be great too? Antec Performance Series P101 Silent What type of hard drives should I buy? What type of Raid? I'm trying to stay on a budget of under $500 I've honestly never messed with raid but would like the ability to add more as I go maybe start low and increase my WD is 3tb and I have 2tb filled so I would like to at least start with having 3tb available. Do I need a cache drive? What exactly does this do? Any other tips would be fantastic. Just want to say thank you in advanced! I'm a little nervous but think this is a better thing to do then to buy another NAS with some crappy atom or celeron processor.

Ive used both.
 
Unraid makes it super easy to add drives as you want later on and mix drive sizes, this is harder in freenas.
 
Freenas is normally faster, but that won't matter here.
 
Unraid has a free trial, id just give it a shot.
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Yep you can do that all on windows 10, it uses smb, just like unraid and freenas can.
 
 
This is about the same price and 8tb, might as well get these and remove from the case.
 
 

Another option may be the SkyHawk Surveillance HDD, that one supports many writings too.

OS: Multiple options, you could just use windows, or unraid or freenas. Since you have very basic requirements any of these will do, so none of them will really stand out but if you already have windows 10 ill suggest just using that one.
 
HDD: Best option will be NAS drives such as WD Red of Seagate Ironwolf.
 
Cache: If youre limited by your network speed (which you probably are with 1gb) cache drives wont speed up anything. Its more of a datacenter thing and not really useful for home solutions.
 
Case: should be fine, as long as all of the drives can fit in it.
 
The processor is extremely overkill for a storage server but it gives you the opportunity to play around with vm's, like a vpn server for remote acces.

Unraid is pretty simple to use with a web instaerface. Windows 10 will also work fine.
 
How many tb do you need? Id just get as many 8tb drives as you ned.
 
You don't need a cache for backups, they speed up data(exactly how depends on os + filesystem), but backups really don't need much speed.
 
Case depends on how many drives, so how many tb do you need.

Thats just because adobe is horrible at fixing things they break in a timely manner, they dont optimize well for intel hardware either btw (took almost 5 years for them to utilize more then 8 cores in a beneficial way) 
 
Ryzen has always been a bit slower, but in most programs thats fine as its impacts performance slightly. Adobe CRAVES speed, the faster the CPU the better it can perform. a 4c8t Chip at 5 GHZ has been shown to be able to compete with a 6c12t or 8c16t Chip at 4ghz and such, and honestly thats just utilization and optimization

Very cool, I appreciate you honesty and I love that AMD is making Intel innovate again. The funny thing is that my 6600k is actually bottle necking my Vega 56 in CPU intensive games. I honestly didn't think that would happen. I could probably stay with the 6600k for another year or so but I really want to shrink my pc from a full ATX to a mini ITX and RGB the hell out of it lol damn you vega and your light up radeon logo, you made me crave RGB.

If you want me to be brutally honest, no. But they will certainly be an amazing value compared to Intel chips, even though they may not take the crown for gaming.
 
But keep in mind that this is just speculation. We'll get to see real benchmarks later this year (hopefully).

No. Zen 2 is an improvement for sure, but its not gonna blow any chip out of the water. It looks like its gonna be 4.5-4.7 ghz, not 5 ghz, and its gonna take a lot more for ryzen to fully catch up to intel on the gaming front, but as for adobe goes, thats on adobe to optimize and they just dont care

In that case, the 9600K is the obvious choice as Adobe applications favour Intel CPUs, and the 9600K is one of the best CPUs for gaming.
 
That being said, I suggest you wait until Zen 2 chips hit the market, and then decide what CPU to buy. 

Depends on if you want to work/stream/edit on it, just gaming and you can blow the cash for a few extra frames 9600K, the other two its basically the same, pay more for a few more frames/faster productivity. Also the higher the resolution, the less of a gaming difference you'll see.

Make sure when you successfully mount the So I then make sure it does not kink because that will definitely cut your flow rate, dangerous... likely not unless it collapses more. 

That cooler's massively overpriced for its performance. You can get more for less.
If you want RGB, I recommend the corsair H115i RGB Platinum
 
It's a liquid cooler, so there's another thing called "pump speed" to manage. Treat pump speed like fan speed, but I tend to be more conservative in the pump speed curve because while fans can be easily replaced, pumps cannot and a pump fail outside of warranty means you need to buy another one. 
Thermal paste application is the same as with air coolers.
You prevent leaks by avoiding sharply bending the tubes.
Because it's closed in, the only maintenance is to get rid of the dust that could get stuck in the radiator. This is exactly like air coolers, only in the heatsink rather than radiator.

thermal past should be pre applied but if you want to use your own paste you can apply like any other cooler.
how to prevent leaks? unless you're pulling really hard on the tubes it shouldn't come close to leaking.
Maintenance: clean out the radiator of dust and that's about it.

Thank you everyone for your help. I'm going with the z390-I motherboard and the H200. My water cooler comes with an RGB hub that will hook in and work with the 4pin asus aura sync RGB or whatever it is called, so I can add in my strips later if i'd like to in theory.
 
 

If those are your mobo options, obviously the z390. It is pointless to buy an unlocked processor to pair it with a locked mobo. As for the case, I know this wasn't one of your options, but the NZXT h200i is a really nice case