Is my old hardware enough for more than NAS?

[Demonic Donut]

I'm looking at using my old rig as a nas and possible Plex server. I'd also like to use it for F@H if possible.

 

I plan to use Linux, not sure on which distro yet. Mainly to not buy another windows key. All I need, if I can reuse everything, are drives. I need one for the OS and then the rest for storage. I have 6 SATA ports, planning just 2 drives for now, mainly picture/video storage. Planning to do raid 1 for now, if and when I need more space, I'll probably go to raid 6.

 

My question is if I'll be able to do so with decent performance with what I have laying around. I know it'll be fine as a NAS, but I'd like to use it as a Plex server too, and run F@H when not in use.

 

I don't have the exact motherboard model but I've got an I5 3470 with 12gb RAM (one of my 4gb sticks died) and Nvidia660 TI and Nvidia 760. 650W PSU.

 

[Windows7ge]

I'm not sure how many simultaneous streams you'll get out of it or at how high of resolution but this should double as a PLEX server fine.

 

I can't say the productivity will be very high for F@H but every bit helps assuming you're willing to eat the electrical cost.

[Demonic Donut]

20 minutes ago, Windows7ge said:

I'm not sure how many simultaneous streams you'll get out of it or at how high of resolution but this should double as a PLEX server fine.

 

I can't say the productivity will be very high for F@H but every bit helps assuming you're willing to eat the electrical cost.

I won't bother with F@H if it's not much power. I wasn't sure how well it would do. I'm at 2.4mil a day with both of our PCs going, although we actually use them about 2-4 hours a day so I'm doing less than that.

 

If I could get (1) 1080P stream I'd be happy. 2 at the same time would be great. No 4k here, not big TV watchers. I just made the 1440P upgrade when I rebuilt my PC.

[Windows7ge]

2 minutes ago, Demonic Donut said:

I won't bother with F@H if it's not much power. I wasn't sure how well it would do. I'm at 2.4mil a day with both of our PCs going, although we actually use them about 2-4 hours a day so I'm doing less than that.

 

If I could get (1) 1080P stream I'd be happy. 2 at the same time would be great. No 4k here, not big TV watchers. I just made the 1440P upgrade when I rebuilt my PC.

If you can deal with the electrical cost I'd still chip it in.

 

My expectation is it should work fine. Have to admit I don't use PLEX though so take it with a grain of salt.

[Demonic Donut]

1 hour ago, Windows7ge said:

If you can deal with the electrical cost I'd still chip it in.

I'll test it and see. Probably do that before I buy storage drives just to get the system running, and it's something to play with now.

 

It's still heating season for the most part so I really don't mind running electronics for a good cause.

[beersykins]

That should be fine.

 

I ran a 3570 Plex server on top of a 4x mdadm RAID 5 array hosted in a colo without any real issues.  It won't transcode a dozen streams concurrently but most clients support direct play anyway.