Based on my hardware should I buy new?

[Henru]

Hello, 

 

I have an old pc, my first PC, that I’m debating turning into a home server / NAS but wanted some advice. 

 

Here is the gist of the hardware.
 

AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Black 3.3 GHz 6-Core Processor

Asus M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 ATX AM3 Motherboard

Corsair Vengeance 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR3-1600 CL9 Memory

Sapphire Dual-X Radeon R9 280 3 GB Video Card

 

Would this work well enough? My biggest concern is two fold. One is power consumption of the hardware. Is there a good way to determine that without setting it up as a NAS first?
 

Two is that is it getting to the point of being so dated that a cheap 2 bay NAS would possibly run circles around it or preform better?

 

My main use would be to back up family photos and video and less importantly I’d like to start some media playback over our network. Possibly also would like to use it as a way for my family to access my grandmas VHS tapes I have converted to digital using something like TrueScale. 
 

 

[Agall]

16 minutes ago, Henru said:

Hello, 

 

I have an old pc, my first PC, that I’m debating turning into a home server / NAS but wanted some advice. 

 

Here is the gist of the hardware.
 

AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Black 3.3 GHz 6-Core Processor

Asus M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 ATX AM3 Motherboard

Corsair Vengeance 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR3-1600 CL9 Memory

Sapphire Dual-X Radeon R9 280 3 GB Video Card

 

Would this work well enough? My biggest concern is two fold. One is power consumption of the hardware. Is there a good way to determine that without setting it up as a NAS first?
 

Two is that is it getting to the point of being so dated that a cheap 2 bay NAS would possibly run circles around it or preform better?

 

My main use would be to back up family photos and video and less importantly I’d like to start some media playback over our network. Possibly also would like to use it as a way for my family to access my grandmas VHS tapes I have converted to digital using something like TrueScale. 
 

 

Having to use a dGPU with a NAS at all is going to drive up the power consumption, unless the board's iGPU can actually BOOT in Windows 10. Only now a days is it potentially worth having an RTX GPU on a NAS so a local AI chatbot can help find files, but obviously that's something an R9 280 can't do.

 

I'd look at another platform if you're worried about power consumption. Probably end up paying for itself in the long run at a lower wattage if its running 24/7.

[tkitch]

That's a really old CPU...  

basically anything you buy could run circles around it.  

 

You'd be 100x better off with either an off the shelf NAS, or a newer used box running it.  

(They're also not low-power draw parts, so you'll be paying for the electricity too) 

[ChrisLoudon]

12 minutes ago, Henru said:

I have an old pc, my first PC, that I’m debating turning into a home server / NAS but wanted some advice. 

For serving files and storing stuff, you don't need much in the way of power to run a NAS so what you have already is plenty. My NAS runs a 3rd gen intel and 16GB ram and I have no issues.

 

The only thing you might want to look at is getting a GPU that can work with PLEX / Jellyfin to transcode stored media to be played back on the various Phones, Smart TVs and PCs on your network. I don't think the R280 can do video transcoding and the if your old Phenom has an iGPU, chances are it will be pretty sketchy at best.

 

I use an old GTX1650 for that task and it works a treat and takes all the heavy lifting away from my puny CPU.

[tkitch]

3 minutes ago, ChrisLoudon said:

For serving files and storing stuff, you don't need much in the way of power to run a NAS so what you have already is plenty. My NAS runs a 3rd gen intel and 16GB ram and I have no issues.

 

The only thing you might want to look at is getting a GPU that can work with PLEX / Jellyfin to transcode stored media to be played back on the various Phones, Smart TVs and PCs on your network. I don't think the R280 can do video transcoding and the if your old Phenom has an iGPU, chances are it will be pretty sketchy at best.

 

I use an old GTX1650 for that task and it works a treat and takes all the heavy lifting away from my puny CPU.

catch being your 3rd gen is much better than his phenom.  (also newer)

[ChrisLoudon]

1 minute ago, tkitch said:

catch being your 3rd gen is much better than his phenom.  (also newer)

Yeh, I suppose so but the 3rd gen intel was a drop-in upgrade from a crappy 2nd gen 2400. Its amazing what Linux / Unraid will run on and still feel snappy with.

[OddOod]

30 minutes ago, Agall said:

paying for itself in the long run at a lower wattage

This massively depends on where you live 
 

[Agall]

6 minutes ago, OddOod said:

This massively depends on where you live 
 

Yes, of course.

[Henru]

51 minutes ago, tkitch said:

That's a really old CPU...  

basically anything you buy could run circles around it.  

 

You'd be 100x better off with either an off the shelf NAS, or a newer used box running it.  

(They're also not low-power draw parts, so you'll be paying for the electricity too) 

Thanks. It’s old but top of the line for an AM3 system so I wasn’t sure. I was curious if because it’s a 6 core if it would outperform some of the 2-4 core CPUs I’m seeing on a lot of entry level Synology NAS for example. 

[voyager_]

I would look for a new dell optiplex with an igpu, I don't remember off hand the generation you want but you can find them pretty cheap. LTT has a video on it, it will be able to outperform just about any pre built nas and you will have much greater flexibility down the road but it will pull more power

[Needfuldoer]

That PC will work, but it's going to drink power like there's no tomorrow.

 

For your NAS, if you only want a couple of high capacity drives in a mirror, get a reasonably modern office PC.

 

For a first homelab machine, a single socket LGA2011-3 or LGA2066 workstation is a good option. They're much more modern than your old PC, and you can load them up with relatively cheap REG ECC server memory.

[JustIce12]

On 5/23/2024 at 5:57 PM, Needfuldoer said:

That PC will work, but it's going to drink power like there's no tomorrow.

 

For your NAS, if you only want a couple of high capacity drives in a mirror, get a reasonably modern office PC.

 

For a first homelab machine, a single socket LGA2011-3 or LGA2066 workstation is a good option. They're much more modern than your old PC, and you can load them up with relatively cheap REG ECC server memory.

also socket 2011 is dirt cheap its...

i got a thinkstation S30 from my work for "free" (they were upgrading their systems and removed the SSD and hard drive from the workstation and putted outside).

i bought a 12 core cpu for ~25$, 128 gb DDR3 REG ECC memory

got few hard drives of 4 tb for dirt cheap and a SSD (for the boot)... 

 

[Bersella AI]

On 5/22/2024 at 11:00 PM, Henru said:

Thanks. It’s old but top of the line for an AM3 system so I wasn’t sure. I was curious if because it’s a 6 core if it would outperform some of the 2-4 core CPUs I’m seeing on a lot of entry level Synology NAS for example. 

It did outperform the Celeron J4125 or Ryzen R1600 processor seen in entry- to mid-tier Synology boxes. When comparing scores from PassMark database, the Phenom 1100T had an advantage of 15~30% in performance over J4125 or R1600. However, the 1100T just consumes too much power, roughly 10 times higher than the latter, making it no longer feasible for use in home NAS where lower power, less heat and noises are preferred.
Also, as aforementioned, the R9 280 GPU would do nothing but eat up your electricity.

 

It's therefore recommended to switch to another platform back from 2015 (i.e. 6th gen Core), which provides way better efficiency and an integrated GPU for transcoding. However, there are some workarounds that can still leverage this ancient platform:

• Replace the GPU with a more recent one, starting from GTX 1050 or Quadro P400.
• Undervolt the processor. An offset of -100 mV would result in a drop of tens of watts in power consumption. More aggressive offsets can be tolerated in select processors.
• Replace the processor with another with much lower TDP configuration, for example, Athlon 610e (rated 45W).