Am repurposing old pc's as home servers,and have questions.

[trainergames]

Ok question 1,i know that with pics,and music files,the specs won't matter much,(i will be using the weakest ones for them),but will the hardware specs matter for storing HD video if it will be streamed over the network to my gaming rig? If so what is the bare min specs you would suggest?

 

Also i was thinking of going into the bios and turning the "Restore from AC power loss" and have them plugged into 1 or 2 power strips,and then before i go to bed at night i can just flick the switch in the power strips to turn them off,and then just flick it agian in the morning and they would hopefully boot up automaticly. Would that work? Or could it be bad for the pc's?

 

Also Would it be bad for me to have them sitting agianist each other,and mabye one or 2 smaller ones on top of others?

 

Thank you guy for the help and advice.

[MrBucket101]

just make sure the server has at least a 100megabit ethernet port. 

 

i leave my server on 24/7, cause im lazy

 

If you really want to get fancy with it, you can enable Wake-on-LAN (WOL). The server will goto sleep, until a machine requests something from it, then it wakes up and does its thing. I wouldn't really advise interrupting the power to the machines on a regular basis, there's a reason we have startup and shutdown routines.

[dalekphalm]

Ok question 1,i know that with pics,and music files,the specs won't matter much,(i will be using the weakest ones for them),but will the hardware specs matter for storing HD video if it will be streamed over the network to my gaming rig? If so what is the bare min specs you would suggest?

 

Also i was thinking of going into the bios and turning the "Restore from AC power loss" and have them plugged into 1 or 2 power strips,and then before i go to bed at night i can just flick the switch in the power strips to turn them off,and then just flick it agian in the morning and they would hopefully boot up automaticly. Would that work? Or could it be bad for the pc's?

 

Also Would it be bad for me to have them sitting agianist each other,and mabye one or 2 smaller ones on top of others?

 

Thank you guy for the help and advice.

How "old" are we talking? Pentium 4? For streaming a single HD video file, you really don't need much power at all. Your gaming rig will actually be doing all the heavy lifting. As long as the HDD is fast enough (Any SATA drive will be. Even IDE should be fine, though I have not tested this), then you should be totally fine.

 

As for just switching off the PC via the power bar: Yes, flipping the switch back on to power it up should be fine, but cutting the power suddenly isn't good for the computer. It will increase the chances of system errors and corrupted files (Especially if the PC is doing something important at the time of power down). The occasional hard reset is totally fine, but doing it all the time isn't recommended.

 

In terms of having them close together, that entire depends on cooling and general ambient room temperature. What kind of cases are you using? OEM pre-built ones? Basically, as long as they all have front intake, then just load them up with 120mm fans at low RPM and they'll be fine. In my living room I have a HTPC, a Server, and a 16-bay HDD enclosure all stacked on top of each other.

[trainergames]

just make sure the server has at least a 100megabit ethernet port. 

 

i leave my server on 24/7, cause im lazy

 

If you really want to get fancy with it, you can enable Wake-on-LAN (WOL). The server will goto sleep, until a machine requests something from it, then it wakes up and does its thing. I wouldn't really advise interrupting the power to the machines on a regular basis, there's a reason we have startup and shutdown routines.

Thank you i think i will do that instead of turning them off.

 

How "old" are we talking? Pentium 4? For streaming a single HD video file, you really don't need much power at all. Your gaming rig will actually be doing all the heavy lifting. As long as the HDD is fast enough (Any SATA drive will be. Even IDE should be fine, though I have not tested this), then you should be totally fine.

 

As for just switching off the PC via the power bar: Yes, flipping the switch back on to power it up should be fine, but cutting the power suddenly isn't good for the computer. It will increase the chances of system errors and corrupted files (Especially if the PC is doing something important at the time of power down). The occasional hard reset is totally fine, but doing it all the time isn't recommended.

 

In terms of having them close together, that entire depends on cooling and general ambient room temperature. What kind of cases are you using? OEM pre-built ones? Basically, as long as they all have front intake, then just load them up with 120mm fans at low RPM and they'll be fine. In my living room I have a HTPC, a Server, and a 16-bay HDD enclosure all stacked on top of each other.

Well i have almost a dozen old pc's lol,the oldest one's are a 445mhz compaq,and a dell p3 1ghz(i will use these for pic's and mp3's)the rest are single cores 2 ghz and higher,and a mix of pentiums,celerons,semprons and athlons,expect for one dual core amd 5600+.

 

I guess i won't be doing the power that way lol.

 

Also all the pc's expect for like 2 or 3 are OEM pc's,the rest are some old cheapo cases.