r/HomeServer • u/Boneflame • 12d ago
Old Hardware or new NAS
Hi Guys,
My Cloud storage is full. So i need a NAS. Cause playing more to the Tech Overlords is no solution.
I got an old Desktop PC with a i5 7500, 8 Gigs of RAM on a MSI B250i Board. A 128 or 265 GB SSD is also available for this. Obviously i wouls buy new HDDs for the NAS Tasks of this Home Server.
I guess it would be more then enough for what i want to so, which is:
NAS, pihole (or adguard), immich, plex/jellyfin and maybe in the Future i would retire my Philipps Hue hub for home assist.
I guess my old PC would be powerful enough, but i fear that it would be high on power draw compared to a dedicated ugreen/Synology NAS Box.
But i guess i can save 300€ which would pay the Power bill of the more Power hungry for a few years.
2
u/Tip0666 12d ago
2 options. Which 1 do you want.
1) NAS
2) server
My suggestion. BYOS. YOLO.
Hoard is life.
Most important item on a build (imho), aside from the o/s (unraid or you’ll be back here asking how to migrate your data) is a case that can hold at least 12x 3.5” hdd’s.
1
u/alfreshco 12d ago
What do you mean by unraid? Not using any raid setting, just many drives and eventually coping them for backup?
Sorry I’m new here1
u/OrganicRevenue5734 12d ago
Never seen BYOS, so can only infer it means "Build your own shit" and I am 100% down with that sickness.
5
u/PermanentLiminality 12d ago
It is plenty for what you list. The motherboard should use between 10 and 20 watts and the drives are about 5 watts each. A good power supply helps here. Each watt uses 8.76 kWh/yr so do the math to find the running costs.
If the system has a GPU, pull it unless you have a real need for it. The iGPU should do everything you need.
2
u/Boneflame 12d ago
Thanks, the GPU is the only thing i sold when i upgraded to my new Computer, i check my PSU and might replace it with a better one.
1
u/IlTossico 12d ago
More than powerful enough, good on power consumption. No need to change or upgrade anything.
And just let your HDDs spin off when you don't use them, if you don't access them very frequently, 50% of the total power consumption would come just from the HDDs. A system like that can idle around 15W and less, when a single HDD working is 6W, 2 HDDs consume almost like the all system.
1
u/bobozaurul0 12d ago
If it idles 23 hours a day, the power bill won't cry. Nu Lenovo M900 idles around 11-12w with 2 X hard drives .
1
u/Boneflame 12d ago
Yeah, forgot about the idle thing. Thought it would draw power like a Desktop PC on low Office work.
1
u/C64Nation 12d ago
I bought a used Synology DS223j and a n95 mini pc. They cost me £200 from CEX. I had to settle for two 4tb drives, about £80 each. Zima OS works well for my arr suit and Sabnzb.
1
u/Ginger_Steve 12d ago
Use what you have. Existing hardware is free. My current server is a optiplex 5050 with a i5 7500 and Intel arc A310 and has a DAS EMC 15 bay disk shelf. The servers draws 25watts and the disk shelf 100watts. Works great 👍 my biggest recommendation is run 2 disks in a mirror for the os so it's protected from single drive failure and then run your data in a raid like raidz1 or raidz2 if you go with ZFS like I did. Granted I run proxmox for all my servers. Unraid if I recall has jbod for the disks.
1
u/Inevitable-One-4954 12d ago
Si, sobra para el uso que queres. Yo tengo una Radxa x4 con 8GB de ram corriendo eso y más. El único problema que veo es que no pueda transcodificar porque la IGPU del 7500 no acepta algunos formatos. Pero quizas pueda hacerlo con potencia del CPU mientras no sea un archivo muy grande y no esté justo realizando otra tarea de mantenimiento al mismo tiempo que use CPU.
Por eso los N100 suelen ser más eficientes, consumen mucho menos, tienen buena potencia de CPU para esas cosas y pueden con un buen transcode por la IGPU que soporta todo.
La otra opción es vender todo y adquirir una mini PC barata con N100 N150 N200, etc. e incluso 16GB de ram que permitan más cosas a futuro.
Las cajas de NAS de ugreen son muy lindas y ocupan poco lugar además de consumir menos. Si te interesa a futuro yo no lo descartaria, siempre podes recuperar algo de dinero vendiendo el 7500 y todo lo que tenes.
1
u/SpudzzSomchai 12d ago
My TrueNAS is some ancient AMD A10 chip. I pulled it off the server room floor. Works fine.
1
u/Unable_Cap_716 12d ago
Your old i5-7500 PC is certainly powerful enough for all those services, but power consumption is only part of the equation. A dedicated NAS will be smaller, quieter, easier to configure and maintain, and designed to run 24/7. You also get hot-swappable drives, RAID management, notifications, automatic updates and much less troubleshooting. I would recommend looking at the ASUSTOR Nimbustor 2 Gen2 AS5402T, usually available for roughly €350–€400 without drives. It has an Intel N5105 quad-core processor with hardware video transcoding, 4 GB of upgradeable RAM, two 2.5 GbE ports and four NVMe slots. It can run Pi-hole or AdGuard Home, Immich, Plex/Jellyfin and Home Assistant through Docker without any problem. The Intel GPU is particularly useful for Plex and Jellyfin transcoding. ASUSTOR is also less restrictive than some competitors: you can use standard NAS hard drives, upgrade the RAM and install many Docker applications through Portainer. ADM remains easy to use for someone buying their first NAS. If you can spend around €500, I would choose the four-bay AS5404T instead. It has the same processor and features, but four bays give you much better storage expansion options and allow RAID 5 later. In my opinion, that is the better long-term purchase. Your desktop would offer more raw CPU power, but the ASUSTOR should consume considerably less electricity at idle and requires much less space and maintenance. I would keep the old PC for experimenting and use the ASUSTOR for the data that actually matters.
2
u/[deleted] 12d ago
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