Help me "game" on a server board? Need advice.

[Dimensionic]

Hi!
First of all - I don't really have a specific problem. I'd like to discuss my outlooks and get some advice  I think I'm kind of good at selling ideas, even if they're not too good, and even I'm selling them to myself, so...

Little intro/My current situation: 

I'm on a really, really tight budget right now and while I would like to build myself a new "proper" PC, I cannot do so. To top it off - I believe it's my motherboard that has been giving me occasional troubles for awhile now. I'm afraid it might give up all together, sooner or later.
Since I'm still rocking old hardware, I don't think it's worth replacing the motherboard. To be more specific, right now I'm on 3770k on z77 chipset. Looking at used boards on eBay, decent boards are still ~100€ and at the end of the day I'd be fixing a system that's already old, with used hardware...And I'd gain nothing.

So I was thinking about what are my options...

...well, I do have this old server with broken motherboard.

To be more specific:
HP Proliant DL180 G6 with dual socket 1366
Even though the motherboard is done for. I still have everything else - PSU, coolers, some memory, two xeons. And most of the parts are really cheap.

So right now I'm thinking about fixing up the server with the idea of it being my backup platform for daily driver in case something goes wrong with my current PC/Motherboard. Just in case.
It seems like a good idea to me because:

1. The server is just collecting dust. Spending money on that, instead of my (currently) working PC feels like a progression, rather than maintaining something I'd like to upgrade anyway, given the chance.
2. If I'm being paranoid, or my current mobo just happens to work for enough time for me to be able to upgrade my system, I'd still have the server in working condition for... whatever. Storage, dedicated game server... I'm sure I'd find something for it from time to time.
3. Two Xeons. Even if old.

I know what you're thinking
"Xeons aren't for gaming! Games only use 2 cores at best! You're stupid!"
Well, that's right to a degree. But I don't game a lot, and when I do I'm not looking for 4k Ultra 120hz performance. After all, I am still rocking old hardware, which I find adequate for my needs.
And yes, I realize that my current CPU will most likely outperform even 2x top-tier Xeons that I could place in these 1366 sockets in games, I believe this platform might make sense to me, because I also use my computer for various other kind of loads. I often have couple of programs open, for example - Photoshop, Blender, some programming IDE or Fusion 360. I often have even couple of these open at the same time.
So, it might make sense for me to go for this workstation-y build instead?

Besides, one could argue that even gaming is swiftly moving towards more threaded systems since mainstream processors are having increasing number of cores and gaming is following the trend. But that's besides the point.

For comparison, I'm looking at some numbers - PassMark CPU benches, my current processor rates as follows:

3770k @ 3.5-3.9ghz
Average CPU mark: 9523
Single thread performance: 2083
4 Cores / 8 Threads

However, compared to this, for potential example:
Dual X5680's @ 3.3-3.6ghz
Average CPU mark: 13598 (+42%)
Single thread performance: 1475 (-29%)
12 Cores / 24 Threads (x3)

I could totally look at that and say that I've "upgraded". That's kind of the reason why I like this idea, instead of replacing my current motherboard.
And - I could start collecting RAM onto the board, which is also nice (Board has max of 192gb of 1333mhz DDR3 on 6 channels, which is totally ridiculous from "Gamer PC" perspective)

Besides, I'd have a system that'd be rather unique, right?

That being said - WHAT DO YOU THINK?

What would you do if you were in my position? Does this seem like a good idea to you?

Now, situational stuff done, lets get onto the
MORE TECHNICAL STUFF

Okay, so - I do realize that it wouldn't be as simple as putting some coolers on some paste on some cpu on some motherboard into some case and done, like with regular PC.
From form factor to single thread performance to 1333mhz memory to noise to lack of I/O, installing the GPU...
That's where I need some help, if someone doesn't bring up some good arguments why I shouldn't do this.

Lets start from the top.

I am writing this in the form of "these are my ideas and how I understand this would fall together"
HOWEVER, I don't have any real experience with this stuff. Please tell me if something doesn't look right!

THE BOARD.
Since I already have the DL180 G6 complete, minus the motherboard, I'm thinking of replacing it with the same one.
Just so I don't have to find new coolers and I know everything works on it. And it's cheap. It looks like I can get it 35€ shipped. I haven't found anything comparable. Most of the boards are ~60-100€+, and most of them don't have 16x pcie (either mechanical or electrical, often both)
So this is the board in question:


(608865-001 HP PROLIANT DL180 G6 Server System Board)
 

So the good about it this board:

1. The power connectors seem to be standard. 1x 24pin, 1x 4pin and 1x8pin (angled at the left side of the board, above the processor. It looks like I can use regular ATX power supply?
2. I have everything else to make it tick at hand
3. Did I mention it's cheap?
4. It has 3 PCIe slots.
   1 of 4x and 2 of 16x.
   
   As far as I understand, the two 16x slots actually have 16x electrical connectivity? HP sucks with their information about this board compared to other manufacturers. However, they do state this: 
   
   And they sell risers. One side of the riser block attaches to slots marked as 1 and 2. Offering, for example two times 8x PCIe 2.0 speeds in two x16 slots, plus one 4x PCIe slot with 4x PCIe 1.0.
   The other riser is sold for the slot marked as 3 - and as I understand, it's a 16x low profile slot, meant for quadro cards.
   Based on this information, I am hoping that at least one of the 16x slots has actual 16x electrical connection with PCIe 2.0 speeds. If anyone could confirm this, that would be a dream!
   It's actually possible place a GPU in the slot 3 directly. I'm hoping this would work. If not, I'm thinking of simply using one of the flexible 16x ribbon cable riser thingys.
5. Did I mention it's cheap?

The bad:

1. A ton of babysitting. There are like bazillion and one thermal sensors on this board itself. A lid sensor, intake temp sensor in the chassis itself. And most of it makes the fans ramp up to max. Even simply adding a PCI card makes the fans ramp up.
2. HP is bad with support and info. All the official software/firmware is apparently locked behind a paywall. Manuals are pretty basic, compared to competitors - just maintenance stuff, not exactly enough for modding the board to regular PC use. But I believe there are sources to acquire the software elsewhere, at least.
3. It has these 6pin fan connectors, and it won't boot without these fans installed. Luckily I believe I found a remedy for that in a form of this:
   https://www.moddiy.com/products/HP-DL160G6-{47}-DL180G6-{47}-SE316M1-4%2dPin-PWM-Fan-Power-Cable-(6-x-Fan).html
   So, I believe if I installed two 4pin PWM fans next to, or on top of the passive coolers, I could add additional 4 fans (either 3 or 4 pin) and I'd be done with cooling.
   And hopefully, the thing won't be as noisy as an industrial vacuum cleaner anymore.

What else...
Right now, assuming everything falls in place like I've described, I should be able to have a working system with two Xeons and some RAM powered by ATX PSU and being cooled by standard 3/4 pin fans, so it doesn't sound like a factory. Great.

What else...
SOUND!
Can't have a PC without sound. So a simple sound card should work, right? Do they still make these?

I/O
The board only has 2 USB2.0's and a header for 2 more.
Here's a thing though...
Given the sparsity of USB's, I'd like to use PS/2 as mouse/keyboard inputs. And - the manual for the board states that I/O includes PS/2 for mouse and keyboard - WHERE ARE THEY?! 
Also, what is "internal USB"? On the board it's like a 5-pin fan header...


GPU
In addition to the board having 16x slot, I've read that some servers don't actually display anything trough the GPU and are only meant to compute? Is that a thing?

 

Enclosure
I think at first I'd just run it on the table or in the rack chassis with the lid off to test it out. But if I want to keep it for myself, I'm thinking of mainly 3D printing a ("modular") chassis for it, maybe incorporate some plexi/glass into it to show off some stuff. It might not be the perfect solution, but it's what I have and it can take any form... So I'm not really concerned about the form factor, or fitting it into any specific case.
If not, I'll probably let it collect more dust in the rack chassis since none of what I plan to do is irreversible, I might try to sell it on.

I'm sure I will have more questions and problems. But I do think it's more than enough for now 

So to end it all off, I will once again talk about money.
if I replaced my current motherboard, I'd probably pay around 120€ with shipping for a used motherboard and have the same PC as I've had for a long time.
OR
I pay 35€ for server board including shipping, plus 14€ for the modded fan cables, and find some 4-pin fans and I'd have a running dual-xeon for 50€.

To make it usable for daily, I'd have to add some sort of sound card (10€?).

And to make it proper, I'd have to get some beefier Xeons like X5680 I mentioned above (70-100€)?
So a total of ~130-160€, but like I said, I could give it a test-drive for about 50-60€, and upgrade to whatever suitable CPUs and amount of memory I wish to, in the future.
But I'd have two working systems, and I could hopefully swap the GPU into whatever system I want or need to use to use.


TL;DR/Actual questions:
My motherboard is sketchy. I don't have many money. I'm thinking of building a backup platform on old Xeons.
 

1. Should I?
2. Can I use ATX with this board?
3. Does this board have x16 lane?
4. Does the x16 slot actually output to display, if I jab a GPU in it?
5. Do I have to use the HP risers or can I just use the PCIe slots directly or with PCIe extenders?
6. Why no PS/2? Manual says is. Where? Isn't anywhere.
7. What is "Internal USB"?
8. What am I missing?
9. What would be the best CPU's to put in it?
10. Should I?
11. Are there any better options available to me? 

[Ashleyyyy]

you might want to ask here:

 

[Dimensionic]

16 hours ago, firelighter487 said:

you might want to ask here:

 

Thanks for the tip.

[AbsoluteFool]

On 10/6/2018 at 10:35 PM, Dimensionic said:

Hi!
First of all - I don't really have a specific problem. I'd like to discuss my outlooks and get some advice  I think I'm kind of good at selling ideas, even if they're not too good, and even I'm selling them to myself, so...

Little intro/My current situation: 

I'm on a really, really tight budget right now and while I would like to build myself a new "proper" PC, I cannot do so. To top it off - I believe it's my motherboard that has been giving me occasional troubles for awhile now. I'm afraid it might give up all together, sooner or later.
Since I'm still rocking old hardware, I don't think it's worth replacing the motherboard. To be more specific, right now I'm on 3770k on z77 chipset. Looking at used boards on eBay, decent boards are still ~100€ and at the end of the day I'd be fixing a system that's already old, with used hardware...And I'd gain nothing.

So I was thinking about what are my options...

...well, I do have this old server with broken motherboard.

To be more specific:
HP Proliant DL180 G6 with dual socket 1366
Even though the motherboard is done for. I still have everything else - PSU, coolers, some memory, two xeons. And most of the parts are really cheap.

So right now I'm thinking about fixing up the server with the idea of it being my backup platform for daily driver in case something goes wrong with my current PC/Motherboard. Just in case.
It seems like a good idea to me because:

1. The server is just collecting dust. Spending money on that, instead of my (currently) working PC feels like a progression, rather than maintaining something I'd like to upgrade anyway, given the chance.
2. If I'm being paranoid, or my current mobo just happens to work for enough time for me to be able to upgrade my system, I'd still have the server in working condition for... whatever. Storage, dedicated game server... I'm sure I'd find something for it from time to time.
3. Two Xeons. Even if old.

I know what you're thinking
"Xeons aren't for gaming! Games only use 2 cores at best! You're stupid!"
Well, that's right to a degree. But I don't game a lot, and when I do I'm not looking for 4k Ultra 120hz performance. After all, I am still rocking old hardware, which I find adequate for my needs.
And yes, I realize that my current CPU will most likely outperform even 2x top-tier Xeons that I could place in these 1366 sockets in games, I believe this platform might make sense to me, because I also use my computer for various other kind of loads. I often have couple of programs open, for example - Photoshop, Blender, some programming IDE or Fusion 360. I often have even couple of these open at the same time.
So, it might make sense for me to go for this workstation-y build instead?

Besides, one could argue that even gaming is swiftly moving towards more threaded systems since mainstream processors are having increasing number of cores and gaming is following the trend. But that's besides the point.

For comparison, I'm looking at some numbers - PassMark CPU benches, my current processor rates as follows:

3770k @ 3.5-3.9ghz
Average CPU mark: 9523
Single thread performance: 2083
4 Cores / 8 Threads

However, compared to this, for potential example:
Dual X5680's @ 3.3-3.6ghz
Average CPU mark: 13598 (+42%)
Single thread performance: 1475 (-29%)
12 Cores / 24 Threads (x3)

I could totally look at that and say that I've "upgraded". That's kind of the reason why I like this idea, instead of replacing my current motherboard.
And - I could start collecting RAM onto the board, which is also nice (Board has max of 192gb of 1333mhz DDR3 on 6 channels, which is totally ridiculous from "Gamer PC" perspective)

Besides, I'd have a system that'd be rather unique, right?

That being said - WHAT DO YOU THINK?

What would you do if you were in my position? Does this seem like a good idea to you?

Now, situational stuff done, lets get onto the
MORE TECHNICAL STUFF

Okay, so - I do realize that it wouldn't be as simple as putting some coolers on some paste on some cpu on some motherboard into some case and done, like with regular PC.
From form factor to single thread performance to 1333mhz memory to noise to lack of I/O, installing the GPU...
That's where I need some help, if someone doesn't bring up some good arguments why I shouldn't do this.

Lets start from the top.

I am writing this in the form of "these are my ideas and how I understand this would fall together"
HOWEVER, I don't have any real experience with this stuff. Please tell me if something doesn't look right!

THE BOARD.
Since I already have the DL180 G6 complete, minus the motherboard, I'm thinking of replacing it with the same one.
Just so I don't have to find new coolers and I know everything works on it. And it's cheap. It looks like I can get it 35€ shipped. I haven't found anything comparable. Most of the boards are ~60-100€+, and most of them don't have 16x pcie (either mechanical or electrical, often both)
So this is the board in question:


(608865-001 HP PROLIANT DL180 G6 Server System Board)
 

So the good about it this board:

1. The power connectors seem to be standard. 1x 24pin, 1x 4pin and 1x8pin (angled at the left side of the board, above the processor. It looks like I can use regular ATX power supply?
2. I have everything else to make it tick at hand
3. Did I mention it's cheap?
4. It has 3 PCIe slots.
   1 of 4x and 2 of 16x.
   
   As far as I understand, the two 16x slots actually have 16x electrical connectivity? HP sucks with their information about this board compared to other manufacturers. However, they do state this: 
   
   And they sell risers. One side of the riser block attaches to slots marked as 1 and 2. Offering, for example two times 8x PCIe 2.0 speeds in two x16 slots, plus one 4x PCIe slot with 4x PCIe 1.0.
   The other riser is sold for the slot marked as 3 - and as I understand, it's a 16x low profile slot, meant for quadro cards.
   Based on this information, I am hoping that at least one of the 16x slots has actual 16x electrical connection with PCIe 2.0 speeds. If anyone could confirm this, that would be a dream!
   It's actually possible place a GPU in the slot 3 directly. I'm hoping this would work. If not, I'm thinking of simply using one of the flexible 16x ribbon cable riser thingys.
5. Did I mention it's cheap?

The bad:

1. A ton of babysitting. There are like bazillion and one thermal sensors on this board itself. A lid sensor, intake temp sensor in the chassis itself. And most of it makes the fans ramp up to max. Even simply adding a PCI card makes the fans ramp up.
2. HP is bad with support and info. All the official software/firmware is apparently locked behind a paywall. Manuals are pretty basic, compared to competitors - just maintenance stuff, not exactly enough for modding the board to regular PC use. But I believe there are sources to acquire the software elsewhere, at least.
3. It has these 6pin fan connectors, and it won't boot without these fans installed. Luckily I believe I found a remedy for that in a form of this:
   https://www.moddiy.com/products/HP-DL160G6-{47}-DL180G6-{47}-SE316M1-4%2dPin-PWM-Fan-Power-Cable-(6-x-Fan).html
   So, I believe if I installed two 4pin PWM fans next to, or on top of the passive coolers, I could add additional 4 fans (either 3 or 4 pin) and I'd be done with cooling.
   And hopefully, the thing won't be as noisy as an industrial vacuum cleaner anymore.

What else...
Right now, assuming everything falls in place like I've described, I should be able to have a working system with two Xeons and some RAM powered by ATX PSU and being cooled by standard 3/4 pin fans, so it doesn't sound like a factory. Great.

What else...
SOUND!
Can't have a PC without sound. So a simple sound card should work, right? Do they still make these?

I/O
The board only has 2 USB2.0's and a header for 2 more.
Here's a thing though...
Given the sparsity of USB's, I'd like to use PS/2 as mouse/keyboard inputs. And - the manual for the board states that I/O includes PS/2 for mouse and keyboard - WHERE ARE THEY?! 
Also, what is "internal USB"? On the board it's like a 5-pin fan header...


GPU
In addition to the board having 16x slot, I've read that some servers don't actually display anything trough the GPU and are only meant to compute? Is that a thing?

 

Enclosure
I think at first I'd just run it on the table or in the rack chassis with the lid off to test it out. But if I want to keep it for myself, I'm thinking of mainly 3D printing a ("modular") chassis for it, maybe incorporate some plexi/glass into it to show off some stuff. It might not be the perfect solution, but it's what I have and it can take any form... So I'm not really concerned about the form factor, or fitting it into any specific case.
If not, I'll probably let it collect more dust in the rack chassis since none of what I plan to do is irreversible, I might try to sell it on.

I'm sure I will have more questions and problems. But I do think it's more than enough for now 

So to end it all off, I will once again talk about money.
if I replaced my current motherboard, I'd probably pay around 120€ with shipping for a used motherboard and have the same PC as I've had for a long time.
OR
I pay 35€ for server board including shipping, plus 14€ for the modded fan cables, and find some 4-pin fans and I'd have a running dual-xeon for 50€.

To make it usable for daily, I'd have to add some sort of sound card (10€?).

And to make it proper, I'd have to get some beefier Xeons like X5680 I mentioned above (70-100€)?
So a total of ~130-160€, but like I said, I could give it a test-drive for about 50-60€, and upgrade to whatever suitable CPUs and amount of memory I wish to, in the future.
But I'd have two working systems, and I could hopefully swap the GPU into whatever system I want or need to use to use.


TL;DR/Actual questions:
My motherboard is sketchy. I don't have many money. I'm thinking of building a backup platform on old Xeons.
 

1. Should I?
2. Can I use ATX with this board?
3. Does this board have x16 lane?
4. Does the x16 slot actually output to display, if I jab a GPU in it?
5. Do I have to use the HP risers or can I just use the PCIe slots directly or with PCIe extenders?
6. Why no PS/2? Manual says is. Where? Isn't anywhere.
7. What is "Internal USB"?
8. What am I missing?
9. What would be the best CPU's to put in it?
10. Should I?
11. Are there any better options available to me? 

Why don't just get a dual cpu socket motherboard for workstation? The 1366 CPU servies was commonly used in workstations so your best bet is to get a workstation board, as it can use mostly all of the server features aswell. Why limit yourself in a rack chassis?

 

People often ask why you have Xeons when you game. But the truth is xeons wortks great for gaming. And it's not a multitread issue. It's a speed issue. Most xeons (Without paying for it with your head.) Lays around 2-2.5Ghz, while I7 have a massive boost over the xeons and therefore make it more appealing for the consumer market. So my question would be why do you need a I7 when a core 2duo with a boost in GHz would do the trick for gaming? The horrible truth is that people chase their own tails.

[Dimensionic]

4 hours ago, AbsoluteFool said:

Why don't just get a dual cpu socket motherboard for workstation? The 1366 CPU servies was commonly used in workstations so your best bet is to get a workstation board, as it can use mostly all of the server features aswell. Why limit yourself in a rack chassis?

 

People often ask why you have Xeons when you game. But the truth is xeons wortks great for gaming. And it's not a multitread issue. It's a speed issue. Most xeons (Without paying for it with your head.) Lays around 2-2.5Ghz, while I7 have a massive boost over the xeons and therefore make it more appealing for the consumer market. So my question would be why do you need a I7 when a core 2duo with a boost in GHz would do the trick for gaming? The horrible truth is that people chase their own tails.

Thanks for the reply

I am looking at the server board because I already have everything else that goes with that specific board - for example these proliant boards have proprietary CPU coolers/mounts, plus it's the cheapest board I can find for dual socket 1366. Only 35€ shipped.

So in short - the reason I am looking at server boards is money. Having everything other than the board to make it work = less stuff to buy. And I haven't found anything that comes close to the price for even the board alone. As far as I've looked, server boards generally start at about 50€ plus shipping, and workstation boards are much more sparse, and generally go for around 100-150€ and more.

As for server chassis - I wouldn't play on using the actual server chassis. I mention this is my original post. I'm thinking custom enclosure and I found these adapters for HP proprietary fan connectors that should allow me to attach any 3/4pin fan to it, so it doesn't sound like a hurricane.

===

But I do have doubts going with server board. The main points I'm worried about are that

• I'm afraid the GPU wont work optimally or at all. I've read various information. Some people even stating that some server boards are not meant, and don't, display trough PCIe GPU at all. I'm not sure if the PCIe ports are pure 16x or some weird servery implementations, that need the server specific risers. Looking at the riser I have it seems pretty plain and straight-forward. But it does contain some chips and stuff I can't really read simply looking at it. Might me nothing, might be some proprietary server majingy that would make it unsuitable for me.
   
• I/O and audio- this also relates to PCI doubts I have. The specific board I mention has two 16x slots and one 4x slot. Now, assuming that they are what they seem and I can simply plug in any appropriate PCI card - I could manage just fine. A GPU, A sound card, couple of extra USB ports. I wouldn't need any more.
   
• Server board specific f#@kery. Lid sensor, Intake air sensor, fan tach matching? etc. etc. There is a lot of stuff on these boards I know nothing about. But I do know about some that exist, and I'm not sure how to approach this. I'm worried there might be something game breaking. Most of the stuff makes the fans go wild, but sensors can be fooled. Especially temperature sensors and some lid switches. And even then I could just add a manual fan control if nothing else remains. But would I need to also fool the fan tach sensing? What if I want to use some 200mm 900rpm fans, instead of some ridiculous 3mm 9,000,000 rpm howlers? Would the board derp out because it thinks that the cooling is not sufficient?
  
  And that's just the stuff I'm aware of, and have somewhat of an idea how to possibly manage it, to make it a working board. But again - I'm worried there's something that I will find out once I'm already in it.

 

[Dimensionic]

Generally I try to adhere to the forum ethics and don't double post.

However, since my posts here drag, I will make an exception. After all, it is my thread, eh!
I would still like to get advice/support/input on this as I go along. I really don't know anyone I could discuss motherboards with, let alone server boards - and I feel the need to. And even if I don't get much of that - maybe one day someone like me will find this thread helpful as I write my thoughts and process here.

So when I wrote my last post I noticed for myself, that my main questions/issues evolve around PCIe. Getting graphics, sound and general input to be workable as a daily-driver, general purpose PC.

We now have PCIe 3.0 x16 as kind of 'standard' on modern motherboards for running a GPU. So I thought that surely I must have AT LEAST PCIe 2.0 x16 if I want to run games trough dedicated GPU. After all, 3.0 is already twice as fast as 2.0, so 2.0x8 slot is 4 times slower than what is 'meant' for modern GPU's - right?



Well - I now know that it's not necessarily the case.

Here's an example analysis for 1080 of how PCIe scales with a modern GPU:


As you can see, the impact of the PCIe bus speed is relatively marginal, and this is for 4k resolution - funnily enough, larger resolutions seem to scale better.
Because of this, my options of choosing a platform has opened up a lot. I was almost obsessed by the fact that board must have at least 2.0 x16 electrical slot, instantly ignoring the board if it didn't.
However, I can now re-evaluate, since - for me - PCIe 2.0 x8 (or even PCIe 1.1 x16) seems perfectly reasonable for using modern GPU for high-end games.

And actually - even the lowest (PCIe 1.1 x4) at 83%, and anything in between is not nearly as bad as I thought!
I thought that putting a GPU in PCIe 2.0 x8 slot would bottleneck it to something like 50-80%... ish...??? That would be unacceptable. However, I could live with 98% of GPU if it means them dual xeons, mountains of slow, but hexa-channel RAM - and getting it at a bargain...

You can find more information about this by googling "PCI express scaling". You could even find relevant information on your specific GPU.

[Ramaddil]

I am curious what is "really tight budget" how much are we talking?  Because I would seriously recommend putting off buying/using old server hardware for gaming unless you have no choice.  I would save up and build something that is newer on the relative cheap. 

[Dimensionic]

12 hours ago, Ramaddil said:

I am curious what is "really tight budget" how much are we talking?  Because I would seriously recommend putting off buying/using old server hardware for gaming unless you have no choice.  I would save up and build something that is newer on the relative cheap. 

Basically zero.
I don't have any fixed budget, I will just get what I need in time. The closer the sum is to zero, the better.
I just know that I can't build the PC I'd like to, at this time. And preemptively fixing my current PC seems like... a waste, compared. I just feel like fixing the server and building it into a PC would be the better option in my position.

Why would you recommend putting off using old server hardware?

I'm not trying to assert my opinion onto you. I simply state my point of view. I would really appreciate yours, but I would like some solid facts/reasoning behind any opinion.

I do realize that if one were to build a pure breed gaming PC there would be better options available. But I want to use it as general purpose PC on which I also game. And for me - general purpose is not playing fortnite and watching youtube videos. I could appreciate extra memory and cores on a number of loads I place on my PC. I wrote more about this in the first post.

As for server hardware, I also trust it more than say - a used PC motherboard, as most of it becomes from professional environments and is built for higher standards. But this does come with problems as well - that's why I'm here with questions.