Is it worth to upgrade? (Is it even an Upgrade?)

[Unoacaso]

Hi everyone,

first of all I would like to say that this is like the second time in 24 years that I'm posting something on a forum, so I apologize for eventually missing some rules and also for my bad english.

I recently found my old pc inside a closet and wanted to try Anthony's guide on how to build an home server from old pcs. Needless to say I really got into it and wanted to try more, but despite my medium knowledge on how to build a pc, I'm really lost when we talk about servers. 

So I started digging the internet, as I did when I was younger and just starting discovering pc building, and I came up with something. Now the problem is that I really have no idea of how to rank "Server Hardware" or what is required for what I need the server to do.

At the moment the system I run the server on is the following:

Spoiler

- CPU: Intel I3-3220 3.3 GHz Dual-Core

- MOBO: ASRock B75 Pro3 ATX 

- RAM: Crucial Ballistix Sport 8 GB (2 x 4 GB) DDR3-1600 CL9

- SSD: 2 x SanDisk SSD PLUS 120 GB

- PSU: Ms-Tech 450W

That is a pretty old setup, but right now is serving me well and i'm not having any issue. I'm using it as a plex media server and as a small NAS.

The reasons I feel like I need some power up are the following:

• I recently filled it up with movies and I have no more space for files (or more movies );
• I'm giving access to my libraries to some of my friends and I'm expecting to have up to 5/6 people watching movies togheter, while also running some processes in the background (such as AdGuard Home, for example);
• Right now I only have loaded old movies from dvds that I have at home but I'd like to buy and integrate some bluerays in the future and I read that some encoding/deconding power is needed;
• I'm sincerely having fun learning this stuff and I would like to learn more.

So after looking at some guides I came up with this:

Spoiler

- CPU: Intel Xeon E5-2650 V2 2.6 GHz 8-Core ( 23, 00 € )

- HS: Deepcool GAMMAXX 400 Blue ( 26, 00 € )

- MOBO: MSI X79A-GD45 Plus ATX ( 120, 00 € )

- RAM: 4x8GB (32GB) - 1600 MHz Samsung M393B1K70CH0-CH9Q5 ECC ( 55, 00 € )

- SSD: SanDisk SSD PLUS 120 GB ( Unchainged )

- HDD: Seagate BarraCuda Compute1TB ( 62,00 € )

 

- GPU: GTX 960 4g - ( 65,00 € )

- PSU: Ms-Tech 450W (Unchainged)

The grand total is about 350€ (~400 usd, the prices here in Italy are a bit high) and all the pieces will be bought from ebay (also this would be the first time for me buying used hardware for a build), so here's my questions:

• Is this even an upgrade? I mean of course the added storage and the GPU will help, but are the extra cores and threads worth the cost?
• Is there something better that I could have done in terms of prices and/or hardware?
• Do I need this? Right now i'm not having any issues but what do I have to expect for the future, given what i want to do with that?
• Would you suggest to use trueNas or anything similiar other than windows 10? As I said I followed Anthony's guide and then deepen the topic, but honestly I'm doing fine with windows and I don't know if I'm missing something with other alternatives (I don't need to access my files by phone or similiar right now)
• Can you give me some advice on how Encoding / Deconding works on Plex? How to set it up? When it's needed? Can you pass me some guide (video or forum) to read more?

So thank you to everyone that managed to read all and thank you in advance to anyone who wants to help me doing this.

[PDifolco]

Really you'd be wasting money for old sh#t with this, you could get much better for less :

 

[PCPartPicker Part List](https://it.pcpartpicker.com/list/FXyXLs)

Type|Item|Price
:----|:----|:----
**CPU** | [Intel Core i3-12100 3.3 GHz Quad-Core Processor](https://it.pcpartpicker.com/product/qrhFf7/intel-core-i3-12100-33-ghz-quad-core-processor-bx8071512100) | €159.00 @ Amazon Italia 
**Motherboard** | [MSI PRO B660M-E DDR4 Micro ATX LGA1700 Motherboard](https://it.pcpartpicker.com/product/3NTp99/msi-pro-b660m-e-ddr4-micro-atx-lga1700-motherboard-pro-b660m-e-ddr4) |-
**Memory** | [Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory](https://it.pcpartpicker.com/product/jjZ2FT/corsair-vengeance-lpx-16gb-2-x-8gb-ddr4-3200-memory-cmk16gx4m2b3200c16w) | €89.70 @ Amazon Italia 
**Storage** | [Western Digital Blue SN570 500 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive](https://it.pcpartpicker.com/product/9FH7YJ/western-digital-blue-sn570-500-gb-m2-2280-nvme-solid-state-drive-wds500g3b0c) | €61.00 @ Amazon Italia 
**Storage** | [Toshiba P300 3 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive](https://it.pcpartpicker.com/product/8PYLrH/toshiba-p300-3tb-35-7200rpm-internal-hard-drive-hdwd130uzsva) | €74.20 @ Amazon Italia 
 | *Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts* |
 | **Total** | **€383.90**
 | Generated by [PCPartPicker](https://pcpartpicker.com) 2022-02-04 16:04 CET+0100 |

[Unoacaso]

Thank you for the response but I have some questions, first of all I think you missed the cost of the motherboard, I checked what you suggest to use and would bump up the price to a total of 500€, that's about 150€ more than what i've found

5 minutes ago, PDifolco said:

**Motherboard** | [MSI PRO B660M-E DDR4 Micro ATX LGA1700 Motherboard](https://it.pcpartpicker.com/product/3NTp99/msi-pro-b660m-e-ddr4-micro-atx-lga1700-motherboard-pro-b660m-e-ddr4) |-

I mean this is not necessarily a problem if it was worth the cost, but the point of the topic was more about understanding what I'm doing, than finding good hardware (I could simply build a mid range pc and run everything on that ).

 

Also all my questions are still up!

[PDifolco]

31 minutes ago, Unoacaso said:

Thank you for the response but I have some questions, first of all I think you missed the cost of the motherboard, I checked what you suggest to use and would bump up the price to a total of 500€, that's about 150€ more than what i've found

I mean this is not necessarily a problem if it was worth the cost, but the point of the topic was more about understanding what I'm doing, than finding good hardware (I could simply build a mid range pc and run everything on that ).

 

Also all my questions are still up!

Ok my bad the board I had chosen was available here in France but isn't in Italy, go figure !

Anyway the reasoning still holds, there's not much reason to spend €500 on 10 year old tech parts when you can have new ones much more performing for the same price... plus you will have new parts and warranty instead of parts that are just about to die !

You can save a bit by keeping your small SSD as boot drive and just add a big storage SSD, total €460 still, but imho much better investment :

 

[PCPartPicker Part List](https://it.pcpartpicker.com/list/mRzYJM)

Type|Item|Price
:----|:----|:----
**CPU** | [Intel Core i3-12100 3.3 GHz Quad-Core Processor](https://it.pcpartpicker.com/product/qrhFf7/intel-core-i3-12100-33-ghz-quad-core-processor-bx8071512100) | €159.00 @ Amazon Italia 
**Motherboard** | [Gigabyte B660M DS3H AX DDR4 Micro ATX LGA1700 Motherboard](https://it.pcpartpicker.com/product/WNjBD3/gigabyte-b660m-ds3h-ax-ddr4-micro-atx-lga1700-motherboard-b660m-ds3h-ax-ddr4) | €138.00 @ Amazon Italia 
**Memory** | [Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory](https://it.pcpartpicker.com/product/jjZ2FT/corsair-vengeance-lpx-16gb-2-x-8gb-ddr4-3200-memory-cmk16gx4m2b3200c16w) | €89.70 @ Amazon Italia 
**Storage** | [Toshiba P300 3 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive](https://it.pcpartpicker.com/product/8PYLrH/toshiba-p300-3tb-35-7200rpm-internal-hard-drive-hdwd130uzsva) | €74.20 @ Amazon Italia 
 | *Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts* |
 | **Total** | **€460.90**
 | Generated by [PCPartPicker](https://pcpartpicker.com) 2022-02-04 16:53 CET+0100 |

 

[Helpful Tech Witch]

1 hour ago, Unoacaso said:

Can you give me some advice on how Encoding / Deconding works on Plex? How to set it up? When it's needed? Can you pass me some guide (video or forum) to read more?

like any other encode or decode?

YOU dont need to, if its required it will do it automatically

if the device doesnt support the type being streamed to it. H264 mp4s should be fine for bassically everything without encode or decode

 

 

you dont need a gpu in a server if you wont need to encode or decode, plus its behind a pay wall on plex iirc.

since price is the name of the game here and not performance really, (a lot of systems can do plex 100% fine, it functioned on a c2q for me with one stream), this system would save some money.

https://it.pcpartpicker.com/list/kJpGXy