Using an older PC as a NAS

willhub · 18 Jul 2018 at 20:18

Looking to see if anyone has a NAS in the MM, but I'm mulling the idea also if maybe using my old PC, but not sure if it'd be a bit power hungry.

It's an Xeon X3350 with 8GB DDR2 and a 520W PSU, could this be a good system to turn into a NAS or a bit power hungry?

MagicBoy · 18 Jul 2018 at 20:32

It's not going to be great. You're looking in the vicinity of 80-90W+ at idle, plus 5-8W per HDD you add.

I'm running an old HP MicroServer which uses an AMD Turion Laptop chip, and that's under 40W with 4x HDDs in it.

Pocah · 20 Jul 2018 at 18:40

I do this. I have an old PC that I just use as a backup PC.., NAS if you will. It doesn't have any special software on it, just Windows with various file sharing and backup software on various other PC's. The backup PC uses about 90W total when in use but no reason why you can't configure power options to use less. Also I find using a PC like this a lot less buggy than a cheap NAS, and a lot more flexible. For example you can put other software on it to perform long winded stuff like downloads.

bledd · 21 Jul 2018 at 17:38

If you already have it, cheaper than spending £350 on a new NAS.

willhub · 21 Jul 2018 at 21:44

If I spend 350 on the NAS how long would it be untill I spent the extra 350 on electric on the PC compared to the NAS?

jellybeard999 · 22 Jul 2018 at 07:56

Last time i looked, 1w was roughly £1 per year.

I run Windows on an old pc acting as a server as it's more flexible than a NAS. eg I also have it acting as a TV server with some tuner cards.

BigT · 22 Jul 2018 at 08:00

Putting a difference of about 100W into the calculator here : https://www.ukpower.co.uk/tools/running_costs_electricity suggests about £10 a month so you’ll be in ‘credit’ after three years.

Zefan · 22 Jul 2018 at 08:08

Don't forget that 100w of heat will actually save you money in winter if you have functioning TRVs where the PC is going to be.

MagicBoy · 22 Jul 2018 at 11:46

Not sure if the HP Microservers are still around. I got mine for under £100 after cashback, so it's paid for itself in electricity savings compared to an old PC over 2 years ago...

blueacid · 22 Aug 2018 at 11:28

MagicBoy said:
Not sure if the HP Microservers are still around. I got mine for under £100 after cashback, so it's paid for itself in electricity savings compared to an old PC over 2 years ago...

Super slow reply I know, but they turn up secondhand in quite a few places. They're still decent little computers, especially to just sit there and be a file server or simple download box.
They don't have the grunt to transcode HD video in real-time, so it's too much to expect Plex to stream to your phone from one, but just to be a NAS? Go for it!

Avalon · 29 Aug 2018 at 10:28

blueacid said:
Super slow reply I know, but they turn up secondhand in quite a few places. They're still decent little computers, especially to just sit there and be a file server or simple download box.
They don't have the grunt to transcode HD video in real-time, so it's too much to expect Plex to stream to your phone from one, but just to be a NAS? Go for it!

Don’t forget that if you add a supported (NVIDIA) GPU they support hardware accelerated encoding via Nvenc for two streams. The problem is that in current generation, that’s 1050 upwards. However, Turing based hardware is due to launch next month, while unlikely at launch it’s possible we’ll see support filter down to a more SFF friendly form factor/power & heat load, which would be a game changer for older hardware like the N36-N54L.