I've got an old workstation I built in college for rendering and 3d work (3d animation/modeling major). My career path post college has led me more towards Marketing and Design but I still enjoy Motion Graphics and rendering and am trying to pick up more freelance work in this area. I won't get anything out of selling my old workstation but I figured it could be a killer network storage and render machine. I've made a new computer with more streamline gaming type hardware for speed now and am wanting to slap a few NAS drives in my old workstation and let it live on, it's one of my few possessions to make it out of the Camp wildfire in California.
I'm wondering the best way to optimize power setting and if I should mess with any hardware besides more drives, or if a another configuration I'm not thinking of is better. My goal is
After Effects and Premiere Render node, PLEX media Server, File share and redundancy backup (lost some data to the fire), and ftp (FileZilla) access to my files when I am away from home if need be. I also have some old websites I'd like to self host eventually to keep the cost down, they are just used as demos at this point for freelance work.
Hear are the current specs
2 Xenon 6 core drives (slower)
48gb ram (this is when ram was cheap)
Windows 10 Pro
Super Micro server mobo (pain in the ass in windows 10, may downgrade to 7)
AMD Firepro w7000 workstation card (same as mobo)
512gb ssd
1050w gold power supply
Older Omega Audio Card (this thing is pretty sweet but fits an old pci slot, no combination of adapters got it working in my new machine)
What I plan to add
Network card with Wake on Lan
4 6tb NAS drives
Should this thing be more of a media home center attached directly to my living room or just let plex rock it? Anything I can do to get the power usage down, pull the audio and graphics card and smaller power supply? Is windows server going to be a lot better for every application I want? I would like a workflow where I have the option to save the project and render off my main pc as well, that's why I thought maybe I should keep the graphics card in there (launching After Effects independently). Audio card maybe stays if its more of a media center with direct hookup to stereo?
This setup is new for me, any advice would be appreciated!
