Have my gen8 on order!
Going to be using it for Plex, fileshares and a backup solution for the family serving a Raspberry Pi, 2 Android phones, an Android tablet, Windows tablet and Windows laptop.
Current plan is to cram in as many hard drives of acceptable size that I can find until I can afford a new set of decent drives and boot off the ODD data connector (provided I can get it to work).
I've got this RAM,
Kingston HyperX RED Limited Edition 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3B1RK28GX), sat in my retired desktop machine. Would anyone know if this would work in the server? I don't expect the server to be working that hard, only 2 people using it over 6 devices (so max of 2 at any one time!) and Plex will likely be streaming direct play for most things, so it's not really worth shelling out for extra RAM given the current prices (that 8GB kit cost me £35 several years ago, an equivalent kit today is closer to £60!).
Finally, what OS would people recommend? What benefit would I get running a server OS over desktop? My boss is running Ubuntu desktop on his gen7, but would windows 10 be a sensible option (thinking native windows filesharing and RDP for remote would be really useful). Essentially I want the OS to be nice and lightweight, but also something I can easily configure and whilst I'm learning Linux (nearly 5 years of tinkering with raspberry Pis!) I still have to look up most of the things I want to do and am completely stuck if they don't work.
Yay for questions \o/