Hey all. So basically I am about to (a week or less I would say) take my "old" rig apart and strip out the mobo, RAM and GPU. I will be leaving my old spinning drives behind as well as the PSU as I am going all SSD/newer PSU for the new build. OK so here is what I got. One of these. I was going to bin it, but apparently the top PCIE socket is buggered but the rest work OK. So I bought a Celeron 1610 (two cores 2.4ghz or so) and I have 2gb DDR3 lying around in the way of two 1gb sticks. I decided that it would be a good idea to use it temp until my rig was finished, as it will save me having to use Android. However then I got to thinking "Why not turn my old PC into a NAS/server as well". So would the spec be good enough to do that? and what would be the best method? server or NAS? and reccs on the proggys to use please. I can also use this, if it will make any difference between the onboard.. FX1800, so think 8600GT.
I certainly wouldn't go down the server route with those specs, particularly the RAM. FreeNAS even needs a minimum of 8GB RAM, so you're going to struggle to run that too - and FreeNAS is pretty lite on the hardware.
I run a NAS on an N40L which is a low spec turion and has 2gb of RAM, I'm using Openmediavault and it is fine, I have even run a Linux VM on it when mt test machine was down and wanted to use some Linux software, whether you need power or RAM will really depend on what you want the NAS to do, if it is simple file sharing, what you have is fine, if it is transcoding, you need something else.
I disagree: my main server is two cores - a Turion N54L, which Passmark says is half the performance of the Celeron G1610 - with 4GB, and it works a treat. In fact, I'm currently using... Code: $ free -h total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 3.8G 3.4G 466M 212K 50M 2.3G -/+ buffers/cache: 1.0G 2.8G Swap: 11G 53M 11G That's 2.3GB of my 4GB used for file cache, while my programs are only actually using about 1GB. Bags o' room!
I use my existing NAS (a very old 10mb thing) for serving up music and the odd film. And it works beautifully and I have no complaints. I'm really not thinking about anything extreme. I mean serious my NAS is one of the first that were made. I only paid like £10 for it (empty 'course).
It depends on the use case. Yes, you CAN run a server on a 2-core but for what purpose? As highlighted above, transcoding would be next to useless whereas a file/backup or mail server would chug along nicely. Without VT defining what the server would be serving, it's a bit of a finger in the air job... and lets not forget, you've got 4GB of RAM in there... his initial scope was 2GB which isn't enough at all. If he upped the RAM, then yeah, I agree with you but as it is? Not something I'd recommend.
VT said nowt about transcoding. As for how useless a dual-core server can be, my server is: primary file server, SSH server, SSH bridge, VPN server, DLNA server, backup server, encrypted file synchronisation server, ad-blocking server, DDNS server, download server, and DHCP server. For a few months it was a Tor bridge, too, but only so I could earn a free T-shirt. It's never given the slightest hiccough in the years I've been running it. Read the full message: I've got 4GB of RAM, but I'm only actually using 1GB. 2GB would be plenty for what I'm doing (and it was: the server came with 2GB, and it was only after a few months I upgraded to 4GB just 'cos I found a good deal on the Marketplace for another 2GB stick of ECC.)
I just want to be able to access my music and the odd film across the network. That's it, really. The music is the most important part. I would also like to be able to access music elsewhere (like from my mother's house). Is that possible? if so what should I use? But yes, it's mainly for backups and music. For example both my Xbone and Amazon fire stick can stream from it (ed doh, my NAS ). Which is aces.
Sounds like Nextcloud might be an option. The system requirements confirm it'll run on 128MB upwards, though 512MB is recommended, so you'd have no problem sticking with 2GB.
You would need to be running some sort of Dynamic IP service to redirect to your IP so you easily find your own cloud should you be on a home BB connection which can have random IPs assigned, very easy to setup, just mentioning it.
Thanks guys. I am totally clueless on networking and etc. I did, however, manage to set up a web server with an old G3 mac once, so I know I can work it out if I study it hard enough
Possible? yes. Secure? Unless you know exactly what you are doing you will be creating a security nightmare.
As someone who runs FreeNas on 2 core Athlon (storage + couple VM's), cpu is not really a problem. Unless you want to transcode video ofcourse, but you could just set up VPN and "stream" movies/music in their original quality (or I am the only one who stream full BR rips to my phone?).
A dual core and 2GB RAM is more than enough for OpenMediaVault for DNLA & file sharing. As others have mentioned, if you want to transcode (convert media files into other formats on the fly whilst streamign them), you will need a stronger CPU. You have 6 SATA ports on that m/b which is more than enough. You don't need to use a discrete GPU, the onboard is all you need to install OpenMediaVault, once it is up and running you access it via a webpage anyway so no reason not to run it headless. www.openmediavault.org www.omv-extras.org
Wicked. Well, that ought to give me plenty to play with once the main build is done. I may take the drives out of the NAS and consolidate all 5tb or so I have into the server. The 1200w PSU can stay put then.
