Building a HOME SERVER on a BUDGET

[@Holdeenio]

It's always refreshing when people demonstrate that you can play and learn this tech on a pocket money budget. That's how I got into tech when I was a teenager anyway.

[@natk5569]

That's what I did too. Kindof snowballed now but that's life!

[@vapinpenguin]

actually debating making my own rust server with the stuff i just bought

[@A77ick]

This was essentially the start of my home Server Rabbit hole. Other tip, check with your company. They I managed to get about 7 fully functional Delll Optiplex i5 systems free just by asking my IT department what they were doing with the old systems they just switched out. This was at a sporting good store. Many places don't want to pay to get rid of these systems.

[@epp9122]

Did the same, yeah costs more to get rid of than they are worth

[@Hawkeye4040]

I appreciate you saying essentially rather than literally

[@mikkun_]

Man, I wish I could have free optiplexes, haha

[@allthejars5664]

Finally, broken down so I can digest it. Everyone else explains it like you've had five years experience. Thank you.

[@tushargkwd]

I had my wife's old Dell laptop biting the dust and it had Windows 7 SP1 on it. Added a 2TB SATA SSD and upgraded it to Windows 10. Then installed Ubuntu on it and installed Docker. Power consumption during idle is around 8-10W. Peak usage goes close to 35W as it's an Intel Sandy Bridge i5 processor and got QuickSync. Plenty fast and one device saved from the bin and performs really well with downloads and streaming!

[@ufukpolat4691]

Why install Windows if you’re going to install Ubuntu anyway?

[@krisc1684]

​@@ufukpolat4691 I assumed it was because his wife used the laptop for a bit before getting a new one and then it was his to play with

[@userperson5259]

Love this video. These old PCs are like horses anymore.. they used to run the world but now are just sitting around with nothing to do. Personally, I think it's virtuous to find a job for an obsolete but yet amazingly powerful and high tech machine and put it to practical everyday use.

[@arnorobinwerkman]

I bought a rt5 8510 hp pos server, 16 gb ram and a i5 4th gen, its my primary pc now, since my main rig got destroyed by lightning strike in my fuse box. That thing still rund great with linux and kde plasma installed. It has also a media server instance running in the background so i can stream videos from my phone. That thing is f**** heavy and build like a tank. About 7 kg

[@MrAcethesecond]

Network Chuck: Currently unboxing and building one of the largest “home” servers of all time. RAID Owl: Pfft, watch this.

[@NightHawkATL]

Another great video! nailed it on the budget as parts are getting cheaper for older off-lease workstations that you can always use for something to scratch that HomeLab itch. I would have done the 2TB drives to add a little extra later for other parts or more memory.

[@RaidOwl]

Yeahhhh next step…$50 server lol

[@stephenanthony5923]

This is a great starter homelab for just building out a home cloud for remote office apps, self hosted email client or media streaming. Cool video

[@BeanDaMonkey]

4:28 loved the bald sign

[@eliasalcazar6554]

I have the older variant of this machine. My job was upgrading hardware and my manager let me have the i5 4570 model with 16GB of RAM. Well, I got a taste for self-hosting and now it's been upgraded to an i7 4790, 32GB of RAM, Intel ARC A380, 2.5Gb NIC, PCIe 4-Port SATA Controller, and 2 16TB WD RED Pro drives for my TrueNAS vm and a 500GB SSD for boot and other vm's. It's been amazing and has really opened my eyes to how Windows can bog down this hardware that is otherwise fantastic! The funniest part of it all is that the wife's biggest enjoyment comes from not having ads on her mobile games since I'm running AdGuard Home.

[@tnetroP]

Great video. You can learn so much from self hosting. I have an old an HP N40L Microserver running Unraid for my NAS. I prefer to keep my NAS separate from everything else. I also have a Dell Wyse 5070 Extended with upgraded RAM and SSD as my real "home server". It runs Proxmox virtualisation and various containers including Nextcloud for self hosted cloud storage. Using ex-corporate SFF systems like the Wyse is a really good way of getting a cheap system which also has a low power consumption. I leave the N40L powered off unless I need to use it but the Wyse consumes less than 10w so I leave that powered on all the time.

[@akurenda1985]

Sir, I'm going to need a P.O box to send a lawsuit to, since I snorted my drink out of my nose and proceeded to have a wheezing attack trying to control my laughter when you said "Go.. mow the world's smallest plot of grass". Seriously, where did that even come from?

[@TribbleBot]

Okay, I guess the 'no local deals' disqualifies me, but last month I won an auction for a computer from our local university with a $15.50 bid, which came out to 19 bucks after buyer's fees and tax. What I came home with was an HP Elitedesk 800 G1 SFF with no storage and a single stick of 4 GB DDR3 RAM. However, it had an i7-4770, a Blu-ray slimline drive, and a 23" flat-panel monitor, along with keyboard, mouse, and all necessary cables. I spent $47 for a Crucial 1 TB SSD and around $20 for two 8 GB sticks of DDR3. I'm still less than a hundred bucks into this machine and so far it's been running Proxmox without issue.

[@LiLBitsDK]

that's a pretty neat deal, could probably sell the bluray drive and recoup the money lol... but I would use that to rip my discs for plex :D

[@yoelb13]

Man, I appreciate your videos, simple fact that you are not meticulous makes the video enjoyable and educational while in a relaxing enviornment, even if I am not building a server---really just learning. Anyways, thanks for going slightly over the 100$. Great Video.

[@Eggrole85]

My server has been running now for about 4 years, built from pritty much the same as you did here! 3770K, 32Gb DDR3, 120SSD and 3x16TB discs

[@jong2359]

5:01 - there are actually 4 spare drive screws that are screwed into the front of your liftable drive tray, pictured on the far-side shot of the timestamp.

[@sendohikari3436]

First time watching your video and you answered my every questions. Instant sub.

[@try-that]

That's what I started homelabing on, with OMV 😁 Worked really well. Now use it as my daily driver, more than powerful enough as I don't do games

[@RaidOwl]

Heck yeah gotta start somewhere!

[@JeffGeerling]

Not doing games opens up a whole world of possibility! I could do most anything code wise on an older machine like this.

[@balloonpark]

I have a similar setup. Mini PC with same specs, running unraid, for the drives I got an external USB enclosure with 4 disks. Mainly use it as a NAS Backup and Jellyfin server. It struggles at times but I'm pretty happy overall.

[@lifefromscratch2818]

I picked up an Elitedesk 800 G3 SFF with an i5-6600, 16GB DDR4 and no HDD for $58 shipped. Definitely a nice chassis for a SSF build and has surprisingly good upgradeability as long as you're ok with just two 3.5" and one 2.5" drive to go with your sick CD drive.

[@GrackAlaciN]

If I remember correctly, there are 3 SATA ports in those for HDDs/SSDs, and one for the optical drive. If so, you can get a caddy to replace the optical drive, and slap another 2.5" drive in it.

[@Nonya_Concern]

Nice!! i got the exact same build with same specs for about $60 shipped. I just threw in a 128gb ssd (for the boot drive) and 2 x 4tb HDDs I had lying around from a previous pc build. Im currently using it to fun a badass FiveM multi-player server for GTA V on PC and it handles it like a champ even with multiple other players

[@Erreul]

“With my ‘talents’” Song plays. Actually laughed. Subbed.

[@Sevunteen]

00:56 I know that music. it definitely caught my attention. 😃😄

[@hadi123xv8]

🤨🤨

[@raztaxunga]

23$ for a 3 tb HD... what a place to live! here you got to pay 90€ for one of those🤦‍♀🤦‍♀

[@bertnijhof5413]

I did build a $0.00 home server, to be honest more a backup server. It consists of the motherboard, CPU and memory of a 2003 HP d530. I had to re-erect it, because since 2 - 3 months ago I had contact problems with the IDE disks. I bought some contact spray and Monday and Tuesday I got it working again. The HW is a Pentium 4 HT (3.0GHz); 2x 512MB DDR (400MHz); 2x IDE HDDs 3.5" (250+320GB) and 2x SATA HDDs 2.5" (320+320GB). The 20 years old server runs the latest FreeBSD 14.0 on OpenZFS 2.2.0, released Nov 2023. It runs from the two striped 2.5" HDDs (zroot) and many of my VMs are backed up there too, the remainder is on the striped IDE HDDs (apool). At a >95% CPU load on one thread the Pentium is capable of reaching a transfer speed from 28 to 30MB/s for the "send | ssh receive". For the initial backup it took a day, also because of some power fails, that required some re-sends from e.g a 220GB dataset. Samba is working also, I only have to change the permissions of some of my ZFS datasets on zroot. Looking at the storage with one snapshot I have 30% free space on the datapool zroot and just 14% on apool, so I'm limited to 2 maybe 3 snapshots. The apool contains VMs and data that does no really change anymore (MB not GB), like VMs past receiving updates and my data like wma copies of my LPs and CDs, I don't buy LPs anymore :)

[@sehajpreetsingh4177]

I like your sense of humor. Subscribed!

[@JamieStuff]

My first "dedicated server" was a similar setup. A Dell SFF unit with an i5-4500 CPU (4c/4t) that came with one 8GB stick of RAM. I dropped in a second 8GB stick, and ran it as an Unraid server for a few years. Plex with the 'arr's, a few other Docker apps, two Linux VMs (Debian and Arch), and a Windows 10 VM. Bumping it up to 16GB made all the difference. Since I have Plex Pass, I enabled hardware transcoding on the iGPU. That at least allowed two simultaneous transcodes.

[@dj4monie]

You shouldn't have to transcode anything in 2023. 99% of the devices people use on a regular basis support MPEG-2 playback or H.264/265 natively, especially if you use M Player or VLC for playback. For years people kept talking about transcoding buzz word. Before Intel and AMD SoC's and ARM SoC's matured this was a problem especially streaming with Netflix/KZbin but even that isn't a problem anymore. The only reason I would see the use of a GPU is for remote game play but even then your ability to play the latest and greatest AAA games on hardware this old will be nearly impossible but emulation all the way up to PS2/Dreamcast/GameCube no problem at all. Anyway thanks Owl for the budget build.

[@over-engineered]

I’ve used a few second hand HP proDesk and eliteDesk PCs as servers, running windows server 2016/2019 and running 24/7 for years, amazing value.

[@memphisartguy2]

Don't mind the CLI, ProxMox with out VM does make a good storage solution. Samba and CIFS, and then everything can talk to it and it super lite os.

[@Striker9]

I appreciate the no local deal thing. I live in a small town where i can search for months and never find any electronics.

[@tomdillan]

I would go with a hp's z230 sff, grab a xeon, ecc ddr3, 2x120 ssd's, 5.×2.5 to sdd/3.5 adapter, used quadro p400 (for h265 encodingg) 3x 3.5 inch hard drives, m.2 to pcie adapter, cheap nvme for cache, and 2.5 gbe down the road.

[@darthkielbasa]

I have a hp z240 running unraid as a backup server. Similar specs as the box in the video. Fantastic machine.

[@HomeBudgetComputing]

I love doing home servers on a budget. I've been meaning to make some videos about things like this myself, but keep putting it off. I need to stop putting it off, lol.

[@pringl3s]

Thank you for this video! Always fun to see projects like this!

[@CodyShell]

My unraid server is running on an HP Z4 G4 workstation. picked it up for around $400 and it was a steal, then I picked up a 3 drive bay that sits in the two 5.25 drive bays on the front, for a total of five 3.5 drive bays. Pretty fun using a normal workstation as a server, and I'll probably do that again in the future.

[@jakelong8660]

I always love these videos. New project that I will start but then abandon. 🤣

[@mspencerl87]

I just bought an HP elite desk generation 3 for like $145 Going to use it as a backup NAS I7 7700 16 gigs of RAM with a brand new 500 gig NVMe drive pretty sweet deal

[@danieldougan269]

Great build, although the Unraid license seems a bit out of place on a budget build when there are so many great free options out there like TrueNAS. I personally landed on Debian and Webmin for my old Buffalo Terastation that I bought from a university surplus, and I run it from a thumb drive. Then again, your cheap build might allow for extra budget for an Unraid license. If anyone wants a prebuilt PC like this that can hold a few more drives, I have seen some Acer Veriton towers that can hold four drives. I feel like four drives is a sweet spot, and I have a fifth on my 8-bay Terastation as a hot spare in case something goes awry. Better yet, if you're going this route with hardware, buy two PCs so you can use one as a backup.

[@AGL_AerialsTampa]

Did you ever do the follow up for Unraid? I don't see it anywhere and would definitely love a follow up. Would also love to know your thoughts on how they changed the pricing structure. Love the videos!

[@be4ns06]

Actually managed to do the initial server for cheaper with a 7500t! Buying an oem case-mobo combo can be cheaper if you can find good deals on the cpu/ram

[@robbybankston4238]

I love the idea of using old hardware in non-critical roles to help keep them out of the landfill. e-waste is terrible.

[@timsandman]

Thank you very much. As always, really like the vids.

[@TheChaos01]

There are some screws in the fold up hard drive Caddy to put the second hard drive in. I had the same issue a few days ago and was surprised to find them there.

[@HyenaEmpyema]

I did something similar with the same pc but 2 used 14Tb retired video surveillance drives for a movie server for my family. Freebsd+ jellyfin is rock solid. Only caveat is edit rc.conf to set fsck to run automatically after power outage. I think it was fsck_y="YES" but check to be sure. I installed the os on the spinning rust which is less common today but it really makes no difference for a headless appliance. Another pro tip: zfs raid the 2 drives abd temporarily install a 2 or 10gb nic to copy the files faster, then pull it when the tank is full.

[@rendev2401]

You look like Nicholas Cage. Great video btw. Really helpful

[@wilfredoriveramorales8205]

Thanks I got a MSI of 2018 good for this, but I need to go profesional. What you think about this?

[@Ram5nTv]

It's a great video! Sir how connect this server from outside (or remote like as cloud) if you completely build all with Unraid? Second question but Unraid is paid and is there Unraid completely free version?

[@TheYazukaa]

great vid, only other thing i would have said is 3tb drives also have the highest failure rate of all hdds so 2x2 plus the ability to get a small ssd and a nice nic is where i would have differed

[@xxxxneoxxxx]

Hey that's great! Thank you! I will go and get one!

[@damightyshabba439]

Thats all great - I have a fairly up to date system running 70+TB.... what I'm struggling with is how you broadcast the files over local Wifi, and lock it down? I used to use old systems like this as local "access points", but.... that was a wired network, which I am much more comfortable with! Going wifi and making the signal strong enough (my ISP locks the router, I cant change anything inside - I think - THINK - I can add an external router and boost from there?!?!?) ANyway - advice on that is welcome.

[@electronicstv5884]

What do you mean with "lock it down"?

[@megarollxrgmbroadcasting91]

i’m ngl i’m kind of a cynical asshole but this video already made me laugh like 3 times in the first 20 seconds. A+

[@pedoublenizzle]

I got the same computer, but it had 16GB of ram and an SSD. I added a 2TB HDD from an Apple Airport and turned it into a proxmox server. It was in the trash pile, and the guy was going to take it to computer recycling, so he gave it to me.

[@David_Quinn1995]

You can mix and match drives both in age and size with freeNAS as well you will just be limited to the slowest drives speed and the smallest drives capacity I have some 320gb 3200RPM HDDs in my NAS with some 500gb WD green drives.

[@vinnys8328]

When you said talents and that sound played it sent me lmfaoo😂😂😂

[@ajaysinghrandhawa2159]

Love the vid! I was thinking to myself for a video idea, do an upgrade video and use the same system and upgrade it with like an additonal $100 or something

[@JasonWitmerYT]

Gotta love budget servers

[@gr0wnup5]

If this guy had a podcast, I'd listen to it all day...just sayin 👂

[@KngSovereign]

Any hardware + Alpine Linux + NFSutils Or Any hardware + Ubuntu + Samba Those setups run on 2G of RAM flawlessly! 👌🏿

[@CurrentlyVince]

Nice presentation. I recognize this HP box. It was nothing special, just an office desktop workhorse. So expect to see a lot of hardware of this caliber hitting the market as corporate layoffs go brrrrrrrr. . . .

[@pr1nce_r]

I got a $25 Mini Pc I got from my college. I made it a server and I was shocked on the thing it can do. (The $25 mini pc was a steal idk why my college is selling it for cheap. I checked the inside's and everything was in perfect condition. The mini pc is a Dell CFC5C OptiPlex 3050)

[@oxygenvps]

I run a dell optiplex with an Intel i7 3770s, 16GB of ram and a quadro p620. And for the price, the system is unbeatable, I've run minecraft servers with 200+ mods and multiple players and I run a vm (proxmox) with GPU passthrough for gaming which runs really well. The i7 3770 still holds up really well and can run multiple vms which is mind-blowing.

[@mrwashur1991]

I was considering getting an optiplex for my truenas. While their cases can be cool, they usually only hold 2-3 drives max. I ended up just snagging a used supermicro board with 64GB of ecc ram and a 10 core Xeon cpu. Definitely not the most efficient for what I need but it’s definitely more fun and more badass. I’m excited to learn about the motherboard and and all the little jumpers. Also I’ll be learning a bunch on truenas scale. Once I saw the optiplex workstation prices, even on the used market I opted to just build with used components and have more fun.

[@arnorobinwerkman]

The sad thing over here is that buying 2nd hand is not worth it, because what the sellers ask, put a 100 or 200 dollars more and you get a brand new more modern model.

[@regish759]

You DO NOT want to run anything ZFS-based on a system that doesn't pack ECC RAM (like, NEVER EVER !) unless it's meant to store data that you can lose without any regrets... It's just a bad idea altogether. The used Supermicro board+ Xeon is a much more solid way to go IMO. Because a.) ZFS needs all the RAM you can throw at it to cache most-accessed files and b.) data corruptions are supposed to be handled by ZFS without issues, which is true, but ONLY if it runs on ECC RAM ! If not, the damage is likely to be worse (as its can be "snowballed", kinda) ! If you're dead set on using regular RAM, you'll be much safer choosing any solution that uses the good old ext4 FS.

[@jonjohnson2844]

You need to passthrough the iGPU to Plex - you can then transcode several streams with barely any impact on CPU usage....I have a 35watt i5 4590 in my Unraid box and even that feels overkill at times.

[@RaidOwl]

Ooo good point

[@TazzSmk]

there's no HEVC acceleration, only H.264 though, right?

[@VelocityBlasters]

@@TazzSmk The 6500 in the server in this video can do HEVC encoding/decoding.

[@AgentMoler]

I wouldn’t call it overkill because while I’m sure everything runs, upgrading the cpu will greatly help with transcoding and loading 4K media. I’ve also noticed that Dolby true hd glitches I was getting when watching on my shield were fixed when I upgraded my cpu from an 8th gen Intel to a 12th gen.

[@VelocityBlasters]

@@AgentMoler with QuickSync using the iGPU it handles 4K without load at all on the CPU cores, and that includes transcoding.

[@helloash]

😂 4:28 ---> bald , that’s hilarious

[@MrMunkyMeat]

That was swell guy. This lowers the bar for entry for a lot of people. I have been thinking about doing something similar but with a budget of $250 to build a simple 2 user/4 device home server. I have seen some stripped out models with the I7 6700 for under $75 with no ram or drives.

[@indianyuri5263]

I have a similar setup at home. I got a free hp sff with i3 4310. Added 16gb ram for 50 eur and 2x10tb hdd for total of around 350 eur. I run the hdds without parity but I have replaceable data on there only. Two plex streams locally work just fine.

[@pvsfair]

I was not prepared for the "bald" note on his head. HAHAHA

[@Hopgop1]

I'd like to see another take on this with say a $300 budget? I know this definitely doesn't satisfy the power budget, but I bought 2 cheap E5 v4 Xeons on Aliexpress and one of those cheap dual X99 boards (less than $100 total), tons of CPU horsepower. Personally I bought a cheap case locally and used an old PSU (1 EPS connector worked fine), cheap DDR4 ECC RAM and chucked my old GPU in, but you could do the same for $300 easily, at least in the UK. Planning on messing around with proxmox on it, but I'd love to see your take on a slightly higher budget home server, I think it will allow for a much more powerful, more DIY approach.

[@Matt_Zinck]

My "100$" server is an upcycled HP prodesk from work that came with an i7 4770, 8tb of ram, and 1tb hdd. A 15$ 120gb prime day SSD, a dual NIC for 15$,upgraded to 32gb fan for 40$ and 2x 2tb drives left over from the hardware raid taken from my old gaming PC (prices CAD)

[@bubblybhai7647]

I turned my 15 years old core 2 quad cpu into a home server with nas os and 4 tb nas drive. Works pretty well.

[@BradSpazz]

Lubuntu is light enough. essentially ubuntu but for lower end pcs. it has all the features of ubuntu if wanted. so you can modify what you need in the os.

[@actng]

i run my homelab on 5x i5-3470 16GB 1TB SSD HP 6300 Pro SFF desktops i swiped from work when we upgraded ppl to laptops. i use one for HTPC with a 2GB GPU on Win10... the other one i do light gaming on with another 2GB GPU also on Win10. Another 2 i have Windows Server 2022 running Hyper V for my VMs. Two ubuntu VMs for pihole. One ubuntu VM for nextcloud. Messing around with some crypto magnitude calculator on one and then a camera surveillance VM as well running Zoneminder. the 5th desktop i just have Windows 11 running on it for about 3 weeks now, seems to work ok despite not being supported on win11.

[@guichardalex]

For the Plex transcoding your i5 has an Igpu so with Plex pass it should be able to transcode without any issue

[@zent555]

i laughed hard enough in the first opening statements you got a like and follow regardless of the content lol

[@Itsallfun3000]

When it was grinding when doing the vm thats just a simple ram upgrade, cheap fix. Skip the faster network.

[@matejkotnik9675]

Sounds like ultra budget NAS, 1G network is up to spec with HDDs, even Ironwolfs that brag 180MBs seem to top out at 130-140MB in my synology, the SSD goes 220MBs on dual 1G with smb Multichannel. You can try that as 2.5G switches arent budget yet they go out of budget spec.

[@davidwright9166]

I attached m.2 no problem. Two 7200 hard drives is a problem. Two sata connectors ,one for dvd. No other connector for second drive. Lose the dvd connection?

[@MrPir84free]

I guess if I want to be fair, I won't take one of those few 128G ram, dual CPU 36 core per cpu servers that we're going to send to the recycle pile from work. After all, those poorly configured machines only have 40 TB of disk space. But those do draw a bit more than 50 watts. ( In 6 months, I should have the ability to grab a few machines that have 512g of ram in each. )

[@System0Error0Message]

hi in terms of power consumption, CPU doesnt really matter much. You can stick a 20 core CPU and it wont use much either as that depends on your workload. The highest power consumer are fans and HDDs. just 6 HDDs can make the system use more than 100W idle. i run a proxmox cluster but keep power consumption by having other options on network storage and not running my file servers always. Also minimal linux runs fast on HDDs, but if you have to use the HDD for your large AI models since ram is an issue it can be very slow. many used 10Gb/s NICs also use a lot of power too so i run everything without extra NICS except the file servers i dont turn on till needed. Did you enable all the virtualisation features in bios? i've used far slower CPUs for VMs and runs fast. Mini PCs can expand PCIe via thunderbolt.

[@DavidAshwell]

Were you not leverage the Intel GPU for transcoding? Anything H.264 and below should have transcoded with that gpu, so no processor wrecking.

[@UnknownProductions0]

i have one of these dell SFF pc's im using as a server. id like to get a external sas card and find/make some kind of external drive bay for like 4 more drives.

[@happytyler41892]

The guac joke got me 🤣

[@maxdiamond55]

great video. what about running rockstor ?

[@etchelion89]

I recomend to search some hp z240 sff. It cost my around 100$. It have e3-1245v5, 32gb ram, 256gb ssd.

[@ladyhaley]

This is the exact computer I used to make my VR gaming rig, and then my unpaid server after I upgraded my gaming rig

[@wolfman011000]

I set myself a limit of £200 and got a HPE microserver G10 with 16gb ram and a AMD Opteron X3216 for £168. 95 with delivery. I would say set a realistic budget for a good base unit you can add to as money allows. HPE microserver G8 units are good and where what i was after till i snagged the G10 version for what i consider a good price here in the UK, to a degree i regret buying the G10 as the cpu is soldered to the mobo, this is something i failed to remember at time of purchase. I still think i will get a Gen8 version upgrade the CPU and lust after a G10 plus as money and the missus allow. I bought 2 x 12tb seagate drives new for my first pool in raid 1 and plan on getting 2 more for a second raid1 pool later. Not decided on what to do with the 5th sata port for the dvd yet, no doubt it will be something daft overpriced and a waste of money, but as long as the missus does not find out it is all good. To backup the server i have a ORICO 5Bay Hard Drive Enclosure which i filled with older smaller drives 6TB-8TB, abit of a half arse solution but i already had everything and buggered if i will waste the hardware ATM. Again something i can upgrade the drive size later and rotate the old drives to single usb enclosures as i do if they are still good. This video looks like it will cost me as i am now looking at a HP 800 series SFF G4 for a new media server for the home mostly for the kids music [if you can call that SH1T music] there videos and the missus rom-com collection, god bless handbrake for shrinking that dribble down. This will allow me to really play with the HPE microserver without any whining and pi$$ing and moaning. thanks for the video i think, take care, God bless one and all.

[@highlander2319]

I picked up an Elitedesk for 50$, 2 3TB HDD's for 30$ each only, and found 16GB DDR4 Ram for 30$. It took some haggling and lots of driving, but I'm ready to go.

[@dionmiller8547]

I've watched this video a couple of times and I think you should make a follow up video with it. If you came into another $100, what would you add to this server?

[@MayankJairaj]

nice fun project! Not going to local options was brave; but would've been severely limiting here as it's ez to find cheaper options locally I would suggest people going for this to atleast find a 7th or 8th gen i5 as it can handle transcoding (built in support for hevc too) I actually run a Lenovo P330 with i5 8500T and a Quadro p620 it's a tiny PC but the only one that has a PCIE riser slot for a GPU You should try building in one of those! ik u don't like the Tiny Mini Micro form factor but do check it out once Maybe a review or a scrapyard build like this 1 plz

[@user-lp5wb2rb3v]

I think sandybridge is a bit inefficient and anything older is basically dead, ivybridge is fine ie if you get an old thinkpad with a quadcore ivybridge mod, but the best is haswell 6-12cores, and 2400 ECC DDR4 ram is esentially £1-1.2/GB now

[@sslnight]

That opening…. GD! lol!

[@dmagik8]

Subscribed…I was under the belief…that there would be pickle tickling.

[@Tom-em3dv]

Very cool i will try this

[@masondamoose7520]

What are your talents?

[@obi1jim316]

This guy ain’t playing around with that intro 😅

[@tigeroats913]

Yoooo this is actually my setup. I have the same pc with 2 3tb hard drives running jellyfin. I want to upgrade tho

[@IamDoQtorNo]

Great video. This particular setup , would you recommend for a small 5-10 person office to act as a file server that only will run mysql or sql server. It would host an rdms for the most part for an app im building.

[@RaidOwl]

Yeah this would be perfectly fine.

[@TazzSmk]

what a funny coincidence you got such setup, I actually got HP 800 G1 SFF, it has i7-4770 (8 threads and igpu), 32GB ram and 500GB ssd, it's rock-solid, I'm running Proxmox with VMs there and thinking about upgrades, so I'd like to know your throughts on this: cheap 4-lane PCIe-NVME adapter costs like 9 bucks, and 2TB NVME SSD on budget like KC3000 around 120 bucks, - with old PC like that, boot from NVME isn't supported I guess, and I'd have to use primary x16 slot and speeds capped to 3.0, but still that would give significant boost over SATA SSD as VM storage location? or would you rather suggest throwing few SATA SSDs there for faster RAID, and upgrade to 10Gbe PCIe NIC instead? cheers

[@katmen24]

i wouldnt use ssds as raid discs , because of TBW limitations....

One issue with using Unraid with this exact rig is thar 60 gigs of cache is far from enough to use it as a cache drive, especially for the use case of running a media server. Even when dealing with HD content that would fill up in an instant. What's more, using a VM off of that cache drive leaves you even less space to spare for caching media.

[@RaidOwl]

Yeah it’s def not optimal but I had $4 left 😅

[@mttkl]

To be fair, if you're transferring big media files over a 1Gbit NIC, using the SSD as a write cache doesn't really makes sense, specially with an old and small SSD that's likely going to exhaust it's cache in a minute and run slower than an HDD on sequential writes. Edit: And if you're transferring small files then Unraid's FUSE on an old CPU is going to be your bottleneck first. 60GB is enough for running a good amount docker containers (provided any big files goes to the array, like transcoded media for example).

[@LucasSousaRosa]

@@mttkl What would be a correct solution? to have good performance with file storage and even create several VMs for dev/web applications

[@mttkl]

@@LucasSousaRosa What would "correct" mean in this case? If we're talking about a homelab, I think you'll have to manage with what you have available and grow from there if needed. In my experience, Unraid is really good in these kind of situations or for an all-in-one/do-it-all machine. There's also Proxmox if you want a more hypervisor-centered solution. Of course, if you are limited by hardware, you can't realistically expect an old/cheap computer to run a dozen VMs + serving TBs of files over the network without any issues or shortcomings.

[@LucasSousaRosa]

@@mttkl In this case, the question is about which software to use to better manage more vm quantities for specific uses, such as app developer, home assistant, 24-hour torrent, and so on....

[@justelisISkauno]

Cool vid can you make video where you making cluster proxmox server using 3 optiplex pc's?

[@KrakPoT13]

Dude! Where did you get that Docker whale thing in the background on your shelf? Do you have a link?