make shift server

[Lord Shaft]

i own an dimension 3100 dell computer, i want to transform this into a server. as far as hardware goes i really dont want to break the bank when it comes to buying new materials, i need more ram i want a sufficient amount i was thinking 8 Gigs? will the single core 3 ghz processor be enough? as far as hard drive space goes i will be upgrading it in the near future, should i wipe the hard drive im currently using to use freenas? i dont use it at all so its ok to do so. i will mainly be using this as a gaming server (minecraft) in the beginning but as i get more hdds ill will want to store music and videos on it and to be able to access it remotely, like from my phone and laptop for example. is all this possible using freenas? im looking for input on what kind of ram i should buy, is this even possible, tutorials on how to do this kind of thing. 

 

thanks 

[Razor512]

While it will be enough for a NAS setup, it will not work well for minecraft. A friend of mine  tried it with a tekkit micecraft server, and it lagged if you had more than 2 or3 people in the server doing stuff, especially if 1 player decided to explore the area.

 

If you need a basic server, and don't mine risking old prebuilt systems, you can find a number of core 2 duo e7500 based systems for under $100 if you are willing to go refurbished on sites like rakuten. Those are able to handle a small-medium minecraft server fairly decently, though ideally, a NAS/ minecraft server, would use something like a core i3 4th generation or newer (minecraft is still single threaded).

[uzarnom]

It might be an idea to list out the applications you want to run long term,
pick the operating system best suited for it and go forward from there.

wow so i just googled it and here is a guide to setup a minecraft server on freenas. though i advice moving away from it, much easier to get a minecraft server running on ubuntu or something. (guide https://tapalla.wordpress.com/2012/08/18/setup-a-minecraft-server-on-your-freenas/)

setting up a samba share though requires a bit more work
an alternative though (something cool to check out) is owncloud a nice syncing service name says it all, supports mobile and stuff

lastly if your planning or running just vanilla minecraft server i had a Pentium 4 server with 4GB ddr2 ram running a 4.5TB network share, minecraft server and gitlab (github clone) not too long ago