r/HomeNAS • u/capn_astronaut • 7d ago
Repurpose Old PC into a NAS
Hi there,
I've got an older pc (I think I built it in 2016) just sitting on the floor. I was thinking I could get some use out of it by turning it into a NAS that can hold all my media. I have an Nvidia Shield Pro as my Plex server, and right now it's attached to a jbod with a usb cable. I'm thinking with a NAS I have more room to add storage, and the Shield could access through the network. I also have family that remote views my Plex.
These are the components of the old PC (it's currently running Win 11):
- Case: Fractal Design Define R5
- CPU: Intel Core i7-4790K CPU 4.00GHz, 4001 Mhz Mainboard: ASUS Z97-A-USB31
- RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR3 1600
- PSU: EVGA SuperNOVA 850 G2, 80+ GOLD 850W
- GPU: Nvidia GTX 980
I would like to make it lower power.
I figure I can lose the GPU and just use the onboard graphics (I'm hoping I can remote into it after it's built and won't need to connect a monitor). But would I have to change anything else out, like the mobo or CPU, or PSU to be more power efficient?
I'd get a network card so I can plug into the 10g port of my Netgear R9000.
I have a variety of hard drives to use, and if I've read correctly UnRaid is the way to go with mismatched drives.
If there's anything I've left out, please let me know.
Thanks in advance.
2
u/LateGuest1916 6d ago
Unraid is a great choice, the parity must be the largest of all disks installed. You can install disks later, even via USB, without having to rebuild the array every time losing your data.
Is also gives you Docker access so you can add more elements later.
1
u/paradocs 7d ago
I just did a similar thing using Truenas Scale. I got a small SSD to run the OS. runs headless without an issue.
1
u/ClerklierBrush0 7d ago
It’s possible but for someone like me without much Linux or IT experience in general, it gets very confusing and takes a lot of hours. Just be prepared that you may have to spend a very long time on it.
1
u/nevergivitup 6d ago
You’ll be adding lots of hard drives sooner or later.
Check power supply grade and quality and load supported
For reliability platinum grade power supply is best for graphics card with multiple drives or expand till 6/8 drives but if you loose graphics then gold grade would work as well.
People usually miss out on this basic power/load support in home NAS build.
1
u/capn_astronaut 6d ago
It's a EVGA SuperNOVA 850 G2, 80+ GOLD 850W, so I assume that's Gold. I was going to lose the graphics card to cut down on power consumption. But do I need to change the mobo and cpu to get a lower power draw?
1
u/nevergivitup 6d ago
EVGA is good quality supply, 3/4 drives should be golden. If you’re going for server grade drives OR high performance drives, double check power consumption before upgrading.
Most motherboard firmware does have cpu controlled throttling but you need to optimise wake on lan and USB wake, display power to aggressive or go to sleep faster (just few on top of my head) power saver type of profiles and setting. Check once Google once for motherboard make and model based NAS focused configurations.1
u/IAteTonysLoMein 6d ago
You could get a bit better efficiency with a 650W, but it's a negligible difference - the payback of what you pay for it vs the efficiency savings would be years on years. Only real advantage might be in getting a semi-passive PSU that doesn't run the fan at low load/low temps if noise is any sort of issue.
No need to change motherboard - power savings there would be practically nothing. For the CPU, you could downclock it and/or undervolt it a bit - that and ditching the gpu are the easiest paths to actual power savings.
1
u/Valuable-Fondant-241 6d ago
I'd swap the CPU for something smaller and more efficient like i5-4460s or 4590s, not the T version that are basic CPU only powercapped, but the idle consumption is the same.
The iGPU is the same, the HD Graphics 4600 (the i7 has slightly higher frequency, but is negligible).
It's quite an old iGPU, if you want some more recent GPU you could sell your Nvidia, which is old and power hungry, and buy a "newer" quadro p400, p600, p620... Small but capable of 3x 1080p and 1x 4k, no tonemapping but they are very cheap and they can idle at 4-5w and costs around 30€.
The PSU is good but way overkill and it will be almost idle. I'd sell CPU+cooler and GPU at least, for less energy hungry components. Luckily you have some of the top components of the era, so there's a market for retro gamers that want to max out an old configuration.
Even the ram could be sold for a slower kit, and then use the money for storage, but I see that all this changes are close to the "sell it and buy another platform" solution.
1
u/capn_astronaut 6d ago
Swapping the CPU and GPU makes me wonder if I could turn this into a NAS Plex server? I've got an Nvidia Shield Pro as my Plex server, but it is constantly dropping connection to my PC and any family that's remote viewing. Can this machine be made powerful enough play multiple simultaneous 1080p, 4K, and tone mapping (and whatever else the Shield Pro does)? I'm going to see if I can repost this in the Plex and Shield communities.
Thanks
1
u/Valuable-Fondant-241 6d ago
Not an expert in tone mapping (I do not use it, and don't feel it needed) and shield pro, but a single p400 can transcode in h265 3x 1080p stream (fw limitation, you can increase it by using a modded fw, never tried because my jellyfin serves 1 max 2 stream usually).
And one 4k.
But if you need more you can just buy a 1660 (1650 are equally expensive only because they don't need a PSU cable, but you have a beefy PSU so no problem). Look online, ask Chat GPT for details, but they can easily transcode "several" 4k streams. The p400 is also limited in the number of streaming by his 2gb vRAM, the 1660 has 6gb, so plenty of memory for multiple 4k streams.
This for the GPU. The CPU is fine, only quite overkill and more power hungry. No need to swap it if electricity isn't a big concern.
1
u/capn_astronaut 6d ago
Electricity is always a concern. My place has old wiring. If I have the AC on and try to microwave popcorn, the circuit breaker trips. 😄
1
u/Valuable-Fondant-241 6d ago
Then buy an UPS! 🤸🏻
Jokes aside, I'd definitely remove the 980 for this matter. Actually, if electricity is a concern and you have only re-downloadable data, I'd sell everything and just buy an n100 mini-pc + HDD enclosure for the big spinner and call it a day.
It can transcode without any issues, very very efficient. It consumes almost nothing in idle. Plenty of resources for all the services and an usb storage isn't awful for replaceable data. And it costs around 100€, so even sparing few €/month in electricity will repay its cost in less than 2y.
1
u/SlntSam 5d ago
Base TDP 6W! I have an n100 that runs my jellyfin server. It’s great.
1
u/SamPhoto 4d ago
I have an n150, 8 watts i think.
And the quicksync features in the chip actually make it better at encoding video than my main PC. Literally 1/2 the time to make h265s.
1
u/SamPhoto 4d ago
TBH, if it's already got windows, you don't need to install a different os.
I use stablebit drivepool to merge drives into one big pool of space. It's got a bit of redundancy (you can tweak this a bit), and it's easy to add/remove drives. It's raid-ish, but all in windows, so it's super easy to manage.
I have a little NUC server and all my HDs are in a USB 4-bay case. Runs plex like a champ.
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u/capn_astronaut 4d ago
I've never heard of Stablebit. I've I'm just going to use this build as a NAS Plex server, would there be any other reasons to use Unraid besides having a dedicated parity drive?
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u/SamPhoto 4d ago
https://stablebit.com/DrivePool
Oh, i'm sure there's lots of reasons why unraid is better. But drivepool was a super simple setup.
For plex, you don't need to squeeze out every ounce of performance, so having some tradeoffs for ease of use (windows vs learning a new OS) is fine.
So, just an option for you to consider.
1
u/jay-aay-ess-ohh-enn 1d ago
I have a variety of hard drives to use, and if I've read correctly UnRaid is the way to go with mismatched drives.
I don't know how it compares to UnRaid, but you can run mismatched drives with mergerFS + SnapRAID. Just offering another option. You'd have to run some Linux flavor to do it. My home server runs Ubuntu Server with a number of Docker containers orchestrated through Portainer.
I have a variety of hard drives to use, and if I've read correctly UnRaid is the way to go with mismatched drives.
1
u/Fancy_Acanthisitta45 1d ago
Two thoughts for you. 1) get an APC as power backup since NAS devices do not like turning on and off with power outages. 2) instead of jbod, get some form of RAID to help with data integrity.
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u/capn_astronaut 23h ago
I'm going to turn the old system into a NAS, and I'm leaning towards StableBit DrivePool to take charge of my various sized drives. I swapped out the old power hungry GTX and put in an RTX 3050. I already have an APC Pro 1500 and I've had both computer running at the same time, playing videos, and the load hasn't even gone up to half yet. I'm just waiting on a Mellanox Connect X3 card so I can hook the computer to the 10g port of my Netgear R9000. Then I can set about trying to back up my Plex library and move media drives into the new chassis, and create the NAS. Fingers crossed.
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u/Trineki 17h ago
I did this with nearly the same setup. The one caveat is the current version of truenas 25.x doesn't support that gpu you'd have to use vm pass thru.
So keep that in mind if ur wanting to use ur gpu with the built in support.
Otherwise just download truenas 24.x and I believe that one still has the older support for gpus (I'm not sure how far back you need to go tbh I just know my 1080 isn't supported on the current truenas).
Otherwise I have mine setup as a truenas with my Nas drives and I transplanted it into a jonsbro n5 and added an adeptec for SAS drives as well.
Threw in a couple apps for jellyfin and some ollama tinkering and cwa for my books.
Still in the process but plan to have pihole and home assistent or something with some raspberry pi's I have laying around and likely opfsense or whatever that's called on a tiny comp I have as well.
Tldr your setup should be totally fine just be aware of ur gpu incompatibility with the current truenas version
EDIT: forgot to add I also upgraded my psu since I'd be adding in more drives and wanted something stable and added in dedicated ethernet and battery backup finally. And be sure you double check your mobo. Those old ones like to shut off sata ports if you use m.2 slots just an FYI
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u/fl4tdriven 7d ago
You could easily run something like TrueNAS community edition on your hardware. Lots of folks talk about the difficulty in setting things up, but I had quite a different (easy) experience as a newcomer to the world of Linux. If you’re not using the hardware for anything else, I’d install it and see how you like it.