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Old Gaming PC to HomeStorage/Server/NAS (No Idea what I'm talking about)

MTalbs90
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Hello everyone, 

 

First post, long time LTT viewer on Youtube. Quick background but i have been involved with PC's for most of my life from my original pc build with my cousin, torrents and overnight download sessions just to get a single album. I have advanced a long way, and just recently built my first, from individual parts, Gaming PC. I now have my old CyberPowerPC that i was going to sale, but i am thinking about turning it into a storage/server for my families photos, videos and other stuff that may be better to keep on there. 

 

PC Setup: Ryzen 2700x, rx 580 gpu (4gb), 16gb ram. I have a 1tb hard drive and a 1 tb SSD currently installed in the system and plan on leaving both in there and probably adding additional hard drives for more storage.

 

My question: I have reviewed the video on LTT regarding the old computer to home server and think that is somewhat in line to what i should do but still wanted to throw these questions out here. 

  • Is what i have currently in this pc good for doing what i want it to do? (mainly storage of photos and videos but other ideas would be nice)
  • I believe PLEX is the go to, but is there anything else or recommendations?
  • Can i give mobile access to my iphones to upload photos directly to the server remotely to free up storage on our devices? Also same for access anywhere?

Really any and all recommendations or guidance is greatly appreciated. 

 

Thanks in Advance. 

 

MTALBS

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33 minutes ago, MTalbs90 said:

Is what i have currently in this pc good for doing what i want it to do? (mainly storage of photos and videos but other ideas would be nice)

That's at least ten times as much compute power as you need for a home NAS. It can easily do what you want to do. 🙂 

 

I'd add some more bulk storage though, at least a pair of mirrored hard drives. Save your SSD storage for your media's metadata library (descriptions, thumbnails, posters, etc), because the server being able to instantly load all those small files will make the clients feel a lot more responsive. You don't need super-fast SSDs for bulk storage, because you'll be limited to about 100 MB/sec over Ethernet anyway.

 

33 minutes ago, MTalbs90 said:

I believe PLEX is the go to, but is there anything else or recommendations?

Plex and Jellyfin are the two big ones. Personally I bought a lifetime Plex Pass subscription years ago, and it's been worth it. (I use it as a DVR, and Plex Pass gets you TV listings. It also gets you hardware video encoding, which is a feature I don't recommend doing without. You'll get better quality video with less power consumption.)

 

Jellyfin is free and open source, so you can use all its features without paying anything. However, it's free and open source, so you'll have to jump through some hoops if you want it to do everything Plex can do right out of the box.

 

33 minutes ago, MTalbs90 said:

Can i give mobile access to my iphones to upload photos directly to the server remotely to free up storage on our devices? Also same for access anywhere?

You want to run a VPN like Tailscale to get remote access to your NAS, rather than opening it up to the wild Internet.

I sold my soul for ProSupport.

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Thank you for the advice, i was wondering about a VPN for this and that does make since. I was looking at the PLEX accounts and they have the remote watch pass and the Plex Pass. For the access remotely, would i need the full plex pass or will the Watch Pass allow me to do the same thing? The information on there site doeesn't really make sense for what i am looking to do with the iphones uploads. 

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29 minutes ago, MTalbs90 said:

Hello everyone, 

 

First post, long time LTT viewer on Youtube. Quick background but i have been involved with PC's for most of my life from my original pc build with my cousin, torrents and overnight download sessions just to get a single album. I have advanced a long way, and just recently built my first, from individual parts, Gaming PC. I now have my old CyberPowerPC that i was going to sale, but i am thinking about turning it into a storage/server for my families photos, videos and other stuff that may be better to keep on there. 

 

PC Setup: Ryzen 2700x, rx 580 gpu (4gb), 16gb ram. I have a 1tb hard drive and a 1 tb SSD currently installed in the system and plan on leaving both in there and probably adding additional hard drives for more storage.

 

My question: I have reviewed the video on LTT regarding the old computer to home server and think that is somewhat in line to what i should do but still wanted to throw these questions out here. 

  • Is what i have currently in this pc good for doing what i want it to do? (mainly storage of photos and videos but other ideas would be nice)
  • I believe PLEX is the go to, but is there anything else or recommendations?
  • Can i give mobile access to my iphones to upload photos directly to the server remotely to free up storage on our devices? Also same for access anywhere?

Really any and all recommendations or guidance is greatly appreciated. 

 

Thanks in Advance. 

 

MTALBS

To second what @Needfuldoer said, I too bought the Plex Lifetime Pass and am very happy.  Was like $120?   Basically a really god date night cost is all.

 

I originally used a Ryzen 1600, 8GB RAM, a 1050Ti and 2x 4GB drives for my NAS/Plex.  It was overkill since Plex and our familiy's file sharing were almost non impactful.

 

I have since passed down more to it but all that is to say you don't need much at all.

 

I'd take the SSD and HDD out.  Get a small 250GB for the OS and a couple large HDD's for redundancy.  a 1tb SSD can be used in another machine for good storage, as a Plex/Nas doesn't need SSD except booting really.

 

And yes, you can give access to basically anything.  I use Windows 10 for my NAS, it's easy, I know it well, and I don't have to learn anything.  If you want to tinker, there are a lot of other software like Unraid etc.

"Do what makes the experience better" - in regards to PCs and Life itself.

 

Onyx: AMD Ryzen 7 7800x3d / ASRock Taichi 7900xtx OC / Gigabyte B650 AORUS Pro AX / G. Skill Flare X5 6000CL36 64GB (4x16GB) / Samsung 980 1TB x3 / Super Flower Leadex V Platinum Pro 1000 / EK-AIO 360 Basic / Fractal Design North XL (black mesh) / AOC AGON 35" 3440x1440 100Hz / Mackie CR5BT / SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro / Cherry MX Board 3.0 / Logitech G502 - https://valid.x86.fr/my9nnr

 

7800X3D - PBO -30 all cores, 4.90GHz all core, 5.05GHz single core, Cinebench 23: 18401 multi, 1779 single

 

Sage: Ryzen 7 7800X3D - Gigabyte B650 Gaming X V2 - ASRock Steel Legend 7900GRE - G. Skill Flare X5 32GB 6000CL32 - TeamGroup MP44L 2TB - Super Flower Leadex Platinum SE 1000w - NZXT H5 Elite

 

Emma: i9 9900K @5.1Ghz - MSI 6900XT Gaming X Trio - Gigabyte AORUS Z370 Gaming 5 - G. Skill Ripjaws V 32GB 3200CL16 - 750 EVO 512GB + 2x 860 EVO 1TB (RAID0) - Super Flower Combat FG 850w - Thermaltake Water 3.0 Ultimate 360mm - Fractal Design Define R6 - TP-Link AC1900 PCIe Wifi

 

Raven: AMD Ryzen 5 5600X3D - ASRock B550M Pro4 - G. Skill Ripjaws V 16GB 3200Mhz - Asus Prime 9060XT 16GB - Samsung 980 1TB + Crucial MX500 1TB - Cudy AX3000 PCIe Wifi 6 - Gigabyte GP-P450B PSU -  Cooler Master MasterBox Q300L -  LG 34" 3440x1440

 

Plex: AMD Ryzen 9 5900XT 16c/32t - Gigabyte B550M AORUS Elite AX - TeamGroup T-Force Vulcan 64GB 3200CL16 - MSI 1050Ti 4GB - Crucial P3 Plus 500GB + TeamGroup MP44L 2TB (Game) + WD Red NAS 4TBx2 (Plex) - TP-Link AC1200 PCIe Wifi - EVGA SuperNova 650 P2 - ASUS Prime AP201

 

GF Rig: Steam Deck 512GB OLED, Vizio 43" 4K TV

 

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OnePlus 11 5G - 16GB RAM, 256GB NAND, Eternal Green

OnePlus Watch 2 - Radiant Steel

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Other Interesting Tech:

- 2021 Volvo S60 Recharge T8 Polestar Engineered - 415hp/495tq 2.0L 4cyl. turbocharged, supercharged and electrified.

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Welcome back to the forums!

30 minutes ago, MTalbs90 said:

believe PLEX is the go to

I use Plex and do recommend the lifetime sub. That being said, they're painfully slow to fix real problems. They still haven't fixed the list of basic requirements Linus laid out to them years ago literally just asking them to fulfil the commitments they lay out in the features list.
 

14 minutes ago, MTalbs90 said:

For the access remotely, would i need the full plex pass or will the Watch Pass allow me to do the same thing

You should be able to stream remotely from your own server without any pass. 
For accessing your *server* remotely, I agree, tailscale.

I agree with Needful on more drive space. A couple 10TB recertified drives in a mirror will do very well. 

5950X/4090FE primary rig  |  1920X/1070Ti Unraid for dockers  |  200TB TrueNAS w/ 1:1 backup

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1 hour ago, MTalbs90 said:
  • I believe PLEX is the go to, but is there anything else or recommendations?

I personnally suggest you look into Jellyfin. It is a free alternative to Plex that has the vast majority of the features.

I might be experienced, but I'm human and I do make mistakes. Trust but Verify! I edit my messages after sending them alot, please refresh before posting your reply. Please try to be clear and specific, you'll get a better answer. Please remember to mark solutions once you have the information you need. Expand this signature for common PC building advice, a short bio and a list of my components.

 

Common build advice:

1) Buy the cheapest (well reviewed) motherboard that has the features you need. Paying more typically only gets you features you won’t use. 2) only get as much RAM as you need, getting more won’t (typically) make your PC faster. 3) While I recommend getting an NVMe drive, you don’t need to splurge for an expensive drive with DRam cache, DRamless drives are fine for gamers. 4) paying for looks is fine, just don’t break the bank. 5) Tower coolers are usually good enough, unless you go top tier Intel or plan on OCing. 6) OCing is a dead meme, you probably shouldn’t bother. 7) "Bottlenecks" rarely matter and "Future-proofing" is a myth. 8) AIOs don't noticably improve performance past 240mm.

 

Useful Websites:

https://www.productchart.com - helps compare monitors, https://uk.pcpartpicker.com - makes designing a PC easier.

 

Bio:

He/Him - I'm a PhD student working in the fields of reinforcement learning and traffic control. PCs are one of my hobbies and I've built many PCs and performed upgrades on a few laptops (for myself, friends and family). My personal computers include 4 windows (10/11) machines and a TrueNAS server (and I'm looking to move to dual booting Linux Mint on my main machine in future). Aside from computers, I also dabble in modding/homebrew retro consoles, support Southampton FC, and enjoy Scuba Diving and Skiing.

Fun Facts

1) When I was 3 years old my favourite toy was a scientific calculator. 2) My father is a British Champion ploughman in the Vintage Hydraulic Class. 3) On Speedrun.com, I'm the world record holder for the Dream Bobsleigh event on Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games 2010.

 

My Favourite Games: World of Tanks, Runescape, Subnautica, Metroid (Fusion and Dread), Spyro: Year of the Dragon (Original and Reignited Trilogy), Crash Bash, Mario Kart Wii, Balatro

 

My Computers: Primary: My main gaming rig - https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/user/will0hlep/saved/NByp3C Second: Hosts Discord bots as well as a Minecraft and Ark server, and also serves as a reinforcement learning sand box - https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/user/will0hlep/saved/cc9K7P NAS: TrueNAS Scale NAS hosting SMB shares, DDNS updater, pi-hole, and a Jellyfin server - https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/user/will0hlep/saved/m37w3C Foldatron: My folding@home and BOINC rig (partially donated to me by Folding Team Leader GOTSpectrum) - Mobile: Mini-ITX gaming rig for when I'm away from home -

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