Old office HP Elitedesk Gen 3 for home server?

[ralphespan]

I've been thinking of building my own home server (for photos, movies, and general storage), but I don't really know much about building one from an old system yet.

Just saw an HP Elitedesk Gen 3 being sold for only 100USD only. (HP ProDesk also available for 60USD only)

Will be posting the exact specs once the seller replies but do you think this is worth a buy for a home media server?

[Dutch_Master]

That depends entirely on said spec's. As long as it's a fairly recent quad-core proc and has 8+ GB of RAM as well as at least 3 SATA ports it's probably gonna suffice for your needs. At least initially.

[ralphespan]

May I know why only "initially"?

Also, this option below is definitely a worse choice right? Seeing how the specs don't meet the criteria you gave (quad core, 8+ RAM,, etc). It's a Synology 220 Plus priced 400 USD here in the Philippines

4 hours ago, Dutch_Master said:

That depends entirely on said spec's. As long as it's a fairly recent quad-core proc and has 8+ GB of RAM as well as at least 3 SATA ports it's probably gonna suffice for your needs. At least initially.

 

[Dutch_Master]

It will do the job, but will be limited in speed. Don't expect 4K transcoding in real time, it's simply not up to the task.

 

I mentioned initially because as you become more experienced, it's likely you'll want to do more things with the server. Which is understandable, and why I spec'd some serious hardware earlier. If you go for the bare basic hardware, like the Synology unit you've quoted, you'll have a worse experience later as it can't handle the additional tasks.

 

Given your location, I'd suggest you do some research to see if a self-build NAS could be a cheaper option, using Aliexpress or similar. My suggestions are

• an AMD A75 or better A88 chipset mainboard (in no particular order: Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, Asrock) FM2+ platform,
• an AMD FM2+ APU (that's a CPU with integrated GPU) like the AMD PRO A10-8750B (I actually bought one for less then 50 USD, early March this year),
• 2x4 GB RAM, if you have some budget left, expand to 2x 8GB or even more,
• a no-name case suitable for the components, like a mini-ITX case or bigger,
• reliable 350W PSU (theoretically you could lower it to 200-250W, but that does limit any expansion plans you may have. Best to plan ahead!)
• the SSD and 2xHDD combo I alluded to before.

You can get AMD Athlon CPU's for the FM2+ socket for (dirt) cheap (like, 20 USD or thereabouts), but those don't have an iGPU so you'd need a traditional GPU instead, driving up costs. There's a reasonable chance you can have it for 200-250USD (for the 2x4 GB RAM option, but without the SSD and 2xHDD).

 

HTH!

[NelizMastr]

14 hours ago, Dutch_Master said:

It will do the job, but will be limited in speed. Don't expect 4K transcoding in real time, it's simply not up to the task.

It does have quicksync, being an Intel unit, but even a 3rd gen HP Elitedesk (which means it's skylake) will only transcode h264 at best.

[silentdragon95]

Another thing to consider though is energy consumption and noise levels (depending on where you plan to put the server). If you don't plan to do any media transcoding on your server and don't want to run VMs or the like, I'd consider going with a "smaller" config. A Synology or similar would also have the advantage of being much easier to use, the software on these is really good. Besides, some NAS boxes do support media transcoding via the CPUs integrated graphics, which is going to be way more efficient than CPU-based transcoding. Personally though, I haven't really felt the need for transcoding media on my server in a long time, as generally viewing devices tend to have enough power these days to do it themselves.