Home Server Setup

Hudson1984 · 8 Apr 2024 at 15:11

Hi all,

so i'm really green to servers in general so this is a daunting process at the best but bare with me.

I work from home, and store most of my documentation on my PC in the office. Nothing is really sensitive but that's where it is.
I also 3d print, all of those files (which are large) are also on that PC
I play the odd game - wouldn't say i'm much of a gamer as all the stuff I play is pretty old, but I do that on that PC too.

Wife works in our other home office
She likes to play games on the laptop whilst sitting in the lounge

I also like to sort 3d prints from my laptop when i'm in the lounge rather than always having to go into the office.
It would be nice to play some 2 player games with the wife.

I was thinking about....

bringing the desktop into the lounge, perhaps upgrading the GPU a touch and adding wireless HDMI monitor, so we've not trailing leads and she can play on that.
I will replace it for myself with a gaming laptop that I will have a dock in the office for, so when I want to play with her I can bring it in the lounge, and when I want to print etc I can use the laptop.

I would then like to setup a central server for all my files so I don't have to have everything stored on a laptop hard drive, I can have it on the server and access it where I want when I want the info

will this work? or am I better off putting a larger hard drive in the desktop, and give access to it across the network (if that's possible)

don't really know what i'm doing but hopefully you can help

SpellowHouse · 8 Apr 2024 at 15:24

Everyone finds a different solution. The one that suits them best.

I built a low power PC. A MATX PC, using a 12400T CPU. It runs with it's internal GPU so no costly cards. Added a 12TB HDD and hey presto - file server plus media PC all in one (its connected to my TV). I don't use anything complicated with it, just Windows and normal file sharing and so on. It also has 2.5G LAN, although I am not using that at full speed yet.

I use a little utility called Aquila WakeOnLan to wake it up remotely whenever I need it.

People will make suggestions here, and it's up to you which you think is best suited to your needs.

Quartz · 8 Apr 2024 at 15:26

How much storage do you want? How important are size and noise? (I pretty much guarantee that your wife will object to having your desktop in the lounge.) If you have the budget there are a number of dedicated m.2 NAS systems from Asustor and QNAP.

Demon · 9 Apr 2024 at 09:41

Hudson1984 said:
Hi all,

so i'm really green to servers in general so this is a daunting process at the best but bare with me.

I work from home, and store most of my documentation on my PC in the office. Nothing is really sensitive but that's where it is.
I also 3d print, all of those files (which are large) are also on that PC
I play the odd game - wouldn't say i'm much of a gamer as all the stuff I play is pretty old, but I do that on that PC too.

Wife works in our other home office
She likes to play games on the laptop whilst sitting in the lounge

I also like to sort 3d prints from my laptop when i'm in the lounge rather than always having to go into the office.
It would be nice to play some 2 player games with the wife.

I was thinking about....

bringing the desktop into the lounge, perhaps upgrading the GPU a touch and adding wireless HDMI monitor, so we've not trailing leads and she can play on that.
I will replace it for myself with a gaming laptop that I will have a dock in the office for, so when I want to play with her I can bring it in the lounge, and when I want to print etc I can use the laptop.

I would then like to setup a central server for all my files so I don't have to have everything stored on a laptop hard drive, I can have it on the server and access it where I want when I want the info

will this work? or am I better off putting a larger hard drive in the desktop, and give access to it across the network (if that's possible)

don't really know what i'm doing but hopefully you can help

Sounds like a simple file sharing NAS solution would be the best bet..

QNAP/Synology do plenty of entry level NAS that work for file sharing, QNAP just announced their TS-216G (https://www.qnap.com/en-uk/product/ts-216g) which isn't available yet, but hopefully not too far away, that is 4w with the HDD in idle, so something you can leave on 24/7 without stressing over energy costs (£8 a year) and only 14W when the HDDs are spun up and you are accessing them..

The entry level synology is the DS223j, around £150-£180 + Hdds but that is a bit light on RAM, although would work fine for just basic file sharing and is again 4w on idle, so you aren't going to worry about just leaving it on!