File server advice

Gapehorn · May 21, 2020

Hello! I've recently been quite interested in setting up my own file server at home, and had a few questions regarding it. Basically, I'm re purposing an old HP z230 workstation and I wanted to know if the specs would be sufficient/suitable to run whatever I have in mind, also I'm not sure how the server will fare when I'm running it 24/7 since its using consumer grade hardware like the i5-4690. I also want to be able to transfer files to and from my server and I'm unsure about the simplest way to achieve this. I will also probably be running this as a plex server.

Here are the specs:
CPU: i5-4690 ($0)

Motherboard: Asus Z97-K ($81 USD)
Ram: 16GB DDR3 ($0)

SSD: 250GB Samsung 860EVO ($57 USD)
HDD: Seagate Ironwolf NAS 6TB ($190 USD)
PSU: Seasonic GX550W Modular ($95 USD)

Thanks in advance

Windows7ge · May 21, 2020

Aside from features and testing that state server hardware is rated for 24/7 operation it's not all that different from desktop hardware in terms of how it runs.

There is the possibly you could run into issues down the road but that comes with the territory of building your own systems regardless of weather the hardware is proper or not.

For transferring files you can setup a network share. How you do that depends on your OS.

I can't comment on PLEX. I've heard it likes faster cores over more cores (unless you're running many simultaneous streams) and I think it can take advantage of a GPU but I don't know if that would benefit your use case.

Gapehorn · May 22, 2020

10 hours ago, Windows7ge said:

Aside from features and testing that state server hardware is rated for 24/7 operation it's not all that different from desktop hardware in terms of how it runs.

There is the possibly you could run into issues down the road but that comes with the territory of building your own systems regardless of weather the hardware is proper or not.

For transferring files you can setup a network share. How you do that depends on your OS.

I can't comment on PLEX. I've heard it likes faster cores over more cores (unless you're running many simultaneous streams) and I think it can take advantage of a GPU but I don't know if that would benefit your use case.

alrighty, thanks for the help!