This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
This is likely also true when you start serving stuff and need transcoding etc.
My GPU failed on my old (vista) PC and can no longer boot. Should I throw it away?
Integrated graphics?
This is a 2005 desktop. I can't even get it past the bootloader. Ideally I would run Linux on it headless, but i can't even get to that stage.
I got an old server and it has a hardware raid card on it. I installed trueNAS on it. Shows 18tb raid right away (24tb 4tbx6). And it does not help that I'm new to this stuff.
Is hardware raid any good for truNAS? should I just get a pcie to sata and connect drives individually?
or
I love my trueNAS!
I have an old machine been using as a Unraid server for years. It's an i7-3770 paired with 32GB of ram and like 4x2TB drives.
Finally upgrading it because it's just not going to keep meeting needs and frankly it's wicked old (might keep it as a gitlab runner server or something). Finally "upgrading" by taking some old hardware (and bought some new), to have a full compute + storage setup. Proxmox (Ryzen 9 5900XT + 128GB ram) with all the compute and TruNas (Ryzen 7 3700X + 64GB ram + 8x16TB drives [LSI LOGIC SAS9211-8I] [raidz2/82.62 TiB usable]) for storage with a private 10G direct link between the two (Intel X550T2BLK).
I used to have a 5700G system that I had to switch out to a 14600k system due to quciksync pass through.
I got my 14600K down to 55w from 75w with everything else being equal. Insane how efficient some setups can be.
My 16tb Pi sips at 13w max or 8w idle. But no encoding or enough storage for normal work. So it's warm storage
I've made a decent NAS out of a Raspberry Pi 4. It used USB to SATA converters and old hard drives.
My setup has one 3Tb drive and two 1.5Tb drives. The 1.5Tb drives form a 3Tb drive using RAID and then combines with the 3Tb drive to make redundant storage.
Yes it's inefficient AF but it's good enough for full HD streaming so good enough for me.
I'm too stingy to buy better drives.
nah i tried to use my old pc for a nas, but it has almost no SATA ports. (it was a prebuilt)
Is there a trustworthy brand making these? I'd be afraid to buy a no-name and run into some bizarre firmware bug that just eats all my data one day
Something like this tends to be pretty strongly recommended https://www.ebay.ca/itm/155132091204
I think startech makes similar
Highly doubt it's worth it in the long run due to electricity costs alone
Depends.
Toss the GPU/wifi, disable audio, throttle the processor a ton, and set the OS to power saving, and old PCs can be shockingly efficient.
You can slow the RAM down too. You don't need XMP enabled if you're just using the PC as a NAS. It can be quite power hungry.
Eh, older RAM doesn't use much. If it runs close to stock voltage, maybe just set it at stock voltage and bump the speed down a notch, then you get a nice task energy gain from the performance boost.
So I did this, using a Ryzen 3600, with some light tweaking the base system burns about 40-50W idle. The drives add a lot, 5-10W each, but they would go into any NAS system, so that's irrelevant. I had to add a GPU because the MB I had wouldn't POST without one, so that increases the power draw a little, but it's also necessary for proper Jellyfin transcoding. I recently swapped the GPU for an Intel ARC A310.
By comparison, the previous system I used for this had a low-power, fanless intel celeron, with a single drive and two SSDs it drew about 30W.
Literally did this migration this weekend. Still need to install the A310 drivers and I don't run Jellyfin (streaming handled client side with minidlna or SMB) but how do you find it?
OK. Science time. Somewhat arbitrary values used, the point is there is a amortization calculation, you'll need to calculate your own with accurate input values.
A PC drawing 100W 24/7 uses 877 kWh@0.15 $131.49 per year.
A NAS drawing 25W 24/7 uses 219 kWh@0.15 $32.87 per year
So, in this hypothetical case you "save" about $100/year on power costs running the NAS.
Assuming a capacity equivalent NAS might cost $1200 then you're better off using the PC you have rather than buying a NAS for 12 years.
This ignores that the heat generated by the devices is desirable in winter so the higher heat output option has additional utility.
In the fall/winter in northern areas it's free! (Money that would already be spent on heating).
Summer is a negative though, as air conditioning needs to keep up. But the additional cost is ~1/3rd the heat output for most ACs (100w of heat require < 30w of refrigeration losses to move)
Assuming a capacity equivalent NAS might cost $1200
Either you already have drives and could use them in a new NAS or you would have to buy them regardless and shouldn’t include them in the NAS price.
If your PC has 32gb of RAM or more throw it away (in my trash bin) immediately.
And as usual everyone is saying NAS, but talking about servers with a built in NAS.
I'm not saying you can't run your services on the same machine as your NAS, I'm just confused why every time there's a conversation about NASs it's always about what software it can run.
I started my media server in 2020 with an e-wasted i7 3770 dell tower I snagged out of the ewaste pile. Ran jellyfin, audiobookbay, navidrome, calibre-web and an arr stack with about a dozen users like a champ. Old hardware rules if you don't use windows
