Your Old PC is Your New Server

[ColinLTT]

39 minutes ago, James Evens said:

 

18W and still looking to reduce it by 5-10W for reasonable cost.

7W difference are 20€ per year.

 

Wait for the windows update bricking the system. To make it worse a lot of the software is build around Linux so good luck. With windows file share you probably setup a SMB share. Good luck making your security camera or scanner/printer talk via SMB and a lot of android apps are build around FTP and not SMB.

Another benefit of Proxmox you can easily transfer it to a new machine or add another VM if needed (e.g. pfsense). Also keep in mind Microsoft's Windows 10 EOL in 2025. Not unusual that you want to use this setup for more then 3 years.

 

You probably mean the virtualization option you tick to run VMs. SR-IOV is something entirely different/unrelated so not everybody includes it into the bios and I doubt Windows 10 home supports it.

 

 

 

How much work or parts will it take you to reduce your cost by  20€ per year? Is it worth it? 

As for windows update bricking the system, not only is that rare in the first place, we used WinAero Tweaker to disable windows update to prevent exactly this. 

I've got a video coming out very soon (currently in editing) about running VMs in Windows 10/11

[Luscious]

That Pulseway sponsorship sticks out like a sore thumb. You keep dropping them all throughout the video when Teamviewer still is a working alternative that does essentially the exact same thing - give you control of a system remotely. Oh that's right, Linus has a beef with Teamviewer so now THEY ARE EVIL!!!

 

I'm beginning to think these sponsored videos really aren't about educating the viewer or about what's best for solving a problem - it's a damn advertisement unashamedly thrown in your face. Word to the wise - I don't need that. Not when I'm genuinely looking to solve a problem. And certainly not when better solutions exist than what YOU PAID SHILLS are feeding down my throat.

 

When I started my tech journalism career 13 years ago I made it a key objective to be hands-on, unbiased, and critical when giving my first-impressions of a product. There was no "script" to follow, the same way there was no money involved since when I started everything came out of MY pocket, Yet I had the expertise to tell the difference between a genuinely great product versus what was garbage, and CONVEY THAT message to my audience. I had integrity, I stood behind what I said and I didn't hesitate to actually go out and buy and use what I reviewed and recommended. I worked to a very high standard and I was proud of my work. I was that guy you came to for the NO BS advice. And I learned along the way. Not just about the products I was reviewing, about how they were being marketed and reviewed... but also by just how much of an effect money has on that opinion you see being written in those "articles".

 

But perhaps most importantly, I never once hesitated to CALL OUT the clown suits and glorified muppets who were strutting their stuff online. Absolute jerks who were so clueless they knew nothing about tech, were completely paid off to say whatever somebody else wanted them to say, or were on some charisma trek with their highly inflated egos. I despise people like that - personal preference has NO PLACE in professional opinion. Who you are in bed with I don't care, the same way I don't care about who you were in bed with in the past. But don't bring that to work and use it as your excuse and have it cloud your judgement.

 

I'm just wondering when Hot Pockets gets on the sponsor train at LMG so you can throw out a video with the title FEED THAT ALL NIGHT GAMING HUNGER.

 

How LOW does the bar go???

[ColinLTT]

5 minutes ago, Luscious said:

 

 

I'm just wondering when Hot Pockets gets on the sponsor train at LMG so you can throw out a video with the title FEED THAT ALL NIGHT GAMING HUNGER.

 

How LOW does the bar go???

Hot Pockets would be a sick sponsor ngl

[tkitch]

9 minutes ago, Luscious said:

I'm beginning to think these sponsored videos really aren't about educating the viewer or about what's best for solving a problem - it's a damn advertisement unashamedly thrown in your face.

...  Sponsored Videos ARE an advertisement.  

 

Welcome to 2021, can I get you a COVID Vaccine, with a side of Booster shots?

[Colty]

I'm a bit disappointed some important things were left out. 

If you're transcoding on Plex/Kodi (running HDR/4k content to 1080p or mobile displays), you should grab a CUDA enabled GPU. With this, it's important to use Linux if you've got a lot of HDR content. Plex on Windows doesn't support HDR to SDR tone mapping with hardware acceleration. Linux does.

There are many tools to setup a storage backup on a local server. This is huge, and likely a big reason why people have the high capacity Google Drive storage plans.

DO NOT BUY THE $400 DRIVES. I can't begin to understand this. Get a "shuckable" external drive. I got a 10TB WD drive for less than $180 years ago. That's much better $/GB.

Don't get a "SFF" machine if you can avoid it. You'll get a lot more expandability if you just get a "mid-size" tower.

Create an RDP shortcut on your main machine. I don't understand why this was skipped. Even if you use Pulseway, it's helpful to have it on your desktop. 

Enable wake from LAN in your BIOS and get an app to turn your PC on from your phone.

Configure the BIOS to turn the machine back on when it loses power.

Get a UPS!


And lastly... You can also just do this on a gaming rig. I've got Plex, file share, ect on my main machine. It hasn't affected anything, I just leave my PC on all the time. The only thing that's tempting me to move things to a headless server is file backups on a different machine and the HW HDR mapping for Linux on Plex. 

[octaviodmz]

Pretty interesting that you guys posted a video about a thing that I've been thinking about doing for the past couple of weeks.

 

Unfortunately (for me) I don't have any spare/old pc and used ones are ridiculously overpiced (imagine seeing a Pentium 4 desktop running XP for 100€, welcome to portuguese used market )

[tkitch]

11 minutes ago, James Evens said:

Not a fan of hardware raid. If it goes wrong it goes wrong. With software there is more of a chance to get it back (with RAID 1 probably not an issue).

that's a fair opinion.  Of course, this breaks a little when talking about 3+ disk arrays, as they're now RAID3/5/7 (not 1) and are now harder to recover after the fact.  (Not impossible, just harder.)

 

Quote

See it differently. Those guys use what ever they have laying around or need at the time. Like a 1TB drive from a old laptop they upgraded to an SSD. So you need quicker more drives or replace the existing ones.

 

Let's look at the cost of my setuo:

Hardware

4th. gen Intel PC from Fujitsu (pre covid): 50€

i350 (probably also pre covid): 10€

2x3TB HDD (back then): 100€ each

boot SSD (laying around): so maybe 20€

16GB RAM: not easy to say since they where from other PCs harvested/collected over time: 20€

----

200€

 

power:

18W

cost: 0,32€/kwH

-----

50€ per year

expected lifetime: 5 years -> 250€ for electricity. Somewhat equal to the hardware cost.

 

other cost

If you want 3€/month for 1TB cloud storage to backup/mirror the important files or a UPS which I would just approximate with 3-5€/month(device, battery, increased power consumption).

A) Your cost is 300 not 200.  2x 100 for drives is 200.  (unless that's a mistake)

 

And none of what your saying has any significant impact.  For most people a 2$ change in the electric bill won't even be a blip.

 

I know my gaming desktop at home will have a /much/ higher idle draw than 20W, and it's running 24/7 as well.

[Luscious]

1 minute ago, tkitch said:

...  Sponsored Videos ARE an advertisement. 

That's kind of the point of my rant - a paid advertisement is not the same as a product review, or in this case, a help guide.

 

ANY legitimate outfit will watermark it with the words PAID ADVERTISEMENT, simply to avoid confusion and dodge the lawsuits. The trouble happens with those DUMMIES media outlets who don't know the difference and make you think it's an unbiased review, when they in fact got paid to just say something. At that point your credibility goes down the toilet.

[tkitch]

1 minute ago, Luscious said:

That's kind of the point of my rant - a paid advertisement is not the same as a product review, or in this case, a help guide.

 

ANY legitimate outfit will watermark it with the words PAID ADVERTISEMENT, simply to avoid confusion and dodge the lawsuits. The trouble happens with those DUMMIES media outlets who don't know the difference and make you think it's an unbiased review, when they in fact got paid to just say something. At that point your credibility goes down the toilet.

you're whining about absolutely nothing.

 

And they 100% said at the beginning and end of the video that it's sponsored by pulseway.

 

 

So....  Go yell at a different cloud?

[tkitch]

25 minutes ago, ColinLTT said:

Hot Pockets would be a sick sponsor ngl

So, Colin, apparently according to @Lusciouswe need to make sure hosts are wearing sponsor branded shirts?  Since a large Chiron at the beginning, as well as stating the sponsorship out loud isn't cutting it?

Can you arrange to get a Pulseway shirt photoshopped onto Anthony for this video?  lololol

[Luscious]

1 minute ago, tkitch said:

So, Colin, apparently according to @Lusciouswe need to make sure hosts are wearing sponsor branded shirts?  Since a large Chiron at the beginning, as well as stating the sponsorship out loud isn't cutting it?

Can you arrange to get a Pulseway shirt photoshopped onto Anthony for this video?  lololol

Right - because this is just an advertisement wrapped as a product review and help guide. We're not really trying to teach you something, just buy our product LOL

[tkitch]

3 minutes ago, Luscious said:

Right - because this is just an advertisement wrapped as a product review and help guide. We're not really trying to teach you something, just buy our product LOL

did they tell you how to reset windows?
Did they tell you how to configure storage spaces?
What useful apps you could install and use?

Yes, yes and yes?

K.  That's a guide.  They just also were pitching the sponsor of the video.  Congratulations, that's how that works.

 

Are you this upset when they pitch ASUS products on the ROG Reboot videos?

[Luscious]

8 minutes ago, tkitch said:

did they tell you how to reset windows?
Did they tell you how to configure storage spaces?
What useful apps you could install and use?

Yes, yes and yes?

K.  That's a guide.  They just also were pitching the sponsor of the video.  Congratulations, that's how that works.

 

Are you this upset when they pitch ASUS products on the ROG Reboot videos?

There is a fundamental difference here. You can be a tech reviewer, or you can be an outfit that takes money to push other people's product. Blur the lines enough and people won't know the difference.

 

The fact that Teamviewer isn't even mentioned as an option is what I am concerned about, if this is to be treated as a guide and not just an in-your-face media stunt. And that goes back to what I said in my very first post - paid advertisements really don't help. For one, the guys throwing you the cash certainly won't want their competitor mentioned. Two, whoever is getting paid to talk will certainly go along with that, more so if they fell out of bed with said competitor. Three, the viewer ends up with an extremely biased presentation.

 

Transparency is something that cannot be overlooked, and is just as important as being unbiased and critical. You may be OK with the wool being pulled over your eyes - I'm not.

[tkitch]

13 minutes ago, Luscious said:

There is a fundamental difference here. You can be a tech reviewer, or you can be an outfit that takes money to push other people's product. Blur the lines enough and people won't know the difference.

 

The fact that Teamviewer isn't even mentioned as an option is what I am concerned about, if this is to be treated as a guide and not just an in-your-face media stunt. And that goes back to what I said in my very first post - paid advertisements really don't help. For one, the guys throwing you the cash certainly won't want their competitor mentioned. Two, whoever is getting paid to talk will certainly go along with that, more so if they fell out of bed with said competitor. Three, the viewer ends up with an extremely biased presentation.

 

Transparency is something that cannot be overlooked, and is just as important as being unbiased and critical. You may be OK with the wool being pulled over your eyes - I'm not.

You're again ranting about the fact you're not paying attention to what is blatently shown to you in the video

 

 

They're not hiding anything about it being sponsored, so your arguments are literally wrong.  

 

There was /NOTHING/ in this video that was a damned review.  It was a guide, and they were advertising a sponsored product.  End of story.  

[gamagama69]

4 hours ago, tkitch said:

....  Okay, so....

 

Any decent desktop case like the one shown in the video (or HP or Lenovo equivilant) will have 3-5 SATA ports on the motherboard.  They all come with 1 drive + optical, and at least 1 spare.  I've never seen a business desktop with less than 3, outside of the super-tiny cases.

 

Drive Bays:  Get creative, you can fake it.  Also, they all support at least 2x 3x5" drives.

 

Energy Consumption:  They're generally very low powered boxes, so the exact opposite.

 

Most business desktops support intel virtualization in the bios, I think from 4th or 5th gen on?  I've personally enabled it on 4th gen Lenovo towers.

 

as for "never use windows bullshit"?  As anthony said, no.  Windows is easier for people who use windows.  

hell if it's a full size case you can mount drives to pcie slots covers

[gamagama69]

What I'm wondering is if that cpu is enough to play the video that needs to be played with whatever compression needs to be done. Could that handle 4k bluray rips? What about 4k60 home videos? Would a gpu need to be added? Genuinely curious.

[tkitch]

31 minutes ago, gamagama69 said:

What I'm wondering is if that cpu is enough to play the video that needs to be played with whatever compression needs to be done. Could that handle 4k bluray rips? What about 4k60 home videos? Would a gpu need to be added? Genuinely curious.

The last I looked at the Plex site, the user bible said:  Don't transcode 4K.

 

If you're streaming a 4K file at 4K over the LAN, the GPU isn't needed.  

[YoMansHigh]

This is helpful, but I'd honestly rather not use windows and am reasonably comfortable with linux. I just built my own similar system from an older Dell XPS with an i5 and 8gb of ddr3. I would love a video comparing all of the free NAS software options. I was considering OMV, but see that Anthony recommends TrueNas core and didn't mention OpenMediaVault. Can anyone else here help?

 

Also, take a look of this absolute unit of a 90's desktop case I built it into. Don't worry, I used the dremel and jigsaw to add well hidden cooling, lol.

[CWH]

1 hour ago, tkitch said:

You're again ranting about the fact you're not paying attention to what is blatently shown to you in the video

 

They're not hiding anything about it being sponsored, so your arguments are literally wrong.  

 

There was /NOTHING/ in this video that was a damned review.  It was a guide, and they were advertising a sponsored product.  End of story.  

 

I didn't have an issue with the Pulseway sponsorship until I went to the link on the youTube page.  There's currently nothing on that page indicating the cost of Pulseway.  Some advertising and a sign up button with a discount.  "Just sign up, and we'll tell you the price later."

 

You have to do an internet search to see that it has a $32 monthly fee with an 'onboarding' fee of $149.

 

My problem is that it feels shady.  Go to the link, see a big picture of trustworthy Linus on the Pulseway webpage along with sign up buttons.  No mention of pricing, no visible links going to the main Pulseway page.  I'm not saying it's a scam, but it comes across as slightly off.

 

[Ultraforce]

8 hours ago, rickeo said:

I thought this was standard practice for every new PC upgrade. I think i've done this every time. 

I think it might depend on tech savyness and households in my case every laptop upgrade has lead to the old one being given to my father who either occasionally uses it or just keeps it in storage for unknown period of time that will end presumably some time in the future.

[Ultraforce]

7 hours ago, finest feck fips said:

Yeah, it doesn't make much sense to use an old Windows box for redundant storage, either, because Windows doesn't support decent filesystems unless you pay big $$$$ for workstation or server licenses, and absent a filesystem with good software RAID, you can't get good RAID without an expensive hardware RAID controller. By the time you're buying $800 worth of additional drives in pairs for the sake of redundancy, it doesn't make sense to stay on Windows anymore.

is there a way if you change a windows laptop to a non-windows OS to combine a bunch of laptops as a centralized storage system so you don't have a bunch of external Hard Drives for everything?

[AkIonSight]

Also, if you run windows on a server, its gonna mostly keep resources barely leaving it for other programs, imagine buying a PC with lets say 4 gigs of DDR3 RAM, putting windows 10 or hacking out something and installing 11 and its gonna use more than 70% of the memory at idle

[alphaLONE]

Apart from the obvious need to integrate the subject of the sponsor, I don't really get the point of not using something else directly. Windows is a real resource hog and there's not much of a learning opportunity in making a windows server for your own home (Active Directory skills maybe? I'd want to avoid wasting my time learning skills that will be restrained by convoluted licensing schemes). So why not directly adopt good practices by installing TrueNAS (or even a Linux system) and then installing Plex and setting shares up on that?

 

It might be a bit more complicated to the completely unexperienced but it's a cool learning activity and, to be honest, the fun is in the journey. Someone that just needed network shares or a Plex server could grab a Synology or spin PMS up in two clicks on their local machine (as others have mentioned in this thread). It'd be more power efficient, simpler and more reliable. This just feels like the worst compromise.

[poochyena]

I don't really see the point? What would I gain by having a home server? Why not just add more harddrives to my main PC

[tkitch]

4 hours ago, CWH said:

 

I didn't have an issue with the Pulseway sponsorship until I went to the link on the youTube page.  There's currently nothing on that page indicating the cost of Pulseway.  Some advertising and a sign up button with a discount.  "Just sign up, and we'll tell you the price later."

 

You have to do an internet search to see that it has a $32 monthly fee with an 'onboarding' fee of $149.

 

My problem is that it feels shady.  Go to the link, see a big picture of trustworthy Linus on the Pulseway webpage along with sign up buttons.  No mention of pricing, no visible links going to the main Pulseway page.  I'm not saying it's a scam, but it comes across as slightly off.

 

I'd agree to that. I never checked for a price, as I don't need it. Not having clear pricing is not consumer friendly, and is more business grade solution tech.