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I built a PC about 10 years ago based on TR's System Guide and it's still working great. I'd like to re-purpose it into something, but I'm not sure what is best.
Basic specs:
Abit IP35 Pro
Q6600
2x2gb of DDR2 800 (non ecc)
random gpu. (I have a spare GTX275 available)
CX430 psu (I have a spare corsair HX650 psu)
WD caviar black 640 HDD

Should I convert into a NAS, File Server, Media Server, or all of these? Do I go headless?

We're a family of 2 parents and 4 kids that all have iphones and pc's. We don't have much of a movie collection to speak of. Maybe 40-50 movies worth watching again. Everyone has pictures on their phone, but most is saved on iCloud or OneDrive.

Any thoughts on FreeNAS? Amahi?
Any suggestions? Don't want to dump a bunch a money into it either. less than $100
Thanks

Media server is a good route. Depending on the age of the kids you could also use it as an unnetworked secured backup box for holding onto all of their photos and homework in case they want to recover those in a decade from now. The only issue you are dealing with running an old machine this way is that the operating cost of leaving the machine on all the time vs a PC with new hardware with much lower tdp cpu and gpu. Not to mention operating noise and temps.

Anovoca wrote:

Media server is a good route. Depending on the age of the kids you could also use it as an unnetworked secured backup box for holding onto all of their photos and homework in case they want to recover those in a decade from now. The only issue you are dealing with running an old machine this way is that the operating cost of leaving the machine on all the time vs a PC with new hardware with much lower tdp cpu and gpu. Not to mention operating noise and temps.

Kids are 12, 12, 13, and 15.

I'm able to put this in a closet underneath the stairs. This is where all my media stuff is already. Surround sound receiver, Direct TV box, and there's ethernet hook up in there too. Is there anyway the pc can "Sleep" or "hibernate" while not in use?

FreeNAS would work fine on this PC. Is is also relatively easy to install and set up.

I'm guessing it has a 100mb nic, which might be painfully slow for a NAS when doing backups or transferring many large files. This would be your limiting component. It would make sense to get a 1G add-in card and a large HDD with that $100. Your other components are generally overkill.

You could then use it to store backups, photos, etc. I have been using FreeNAS for many years (more than I can remember), and the current version is quite stable. The only time I reboot is to do OS updates (which is not often).

Yeah, backup/media server is probably a good choice. If you're interested in networking you could get a cheap ethernet card and turn it into a router. CPU-wise it'd probably do fine as an HTPC also, but you might want to get a cheap GPU for it if you decide to go that route.

That setup screams "media/backup" server to me too. Get some larger drives for it and you should be all set.

FreeNAS has some plug-ins like PLEX, so you could serve media files to a smart TV directly.

Since you mention Direct TV, are you paying for DVR service? If so you could use this machine to record your shows instead of paying for DVR

Redocbew wrote:

Yeah, backup/media server is probably a good choice. If you're interested in networking you could get a cheap ethernet card and turn it into a router. CPU-wise it'd probably do fine as an HTPC also, but you might want to get a cheap GPU for it if you decide to go that route.

Along with the GTX275, I also have a spare GT620 available.

Anovoca wrote:

Since you mention Direct TV, are you paying for DVR service? If so you could use this machine to record your shows instead of paying for DVR

Really? How does that work?

To make it worth the power consumption, it should do as many jobs as possible so all of them. NAS/File Server, Media Server, backup server can sleep with some wakeup latency (with wake up on LAN activity) but a router is always-on.

That board has two onboard Realtek RTL8110SC gigabit ports on the PCI bus, which do not support IPv6 TCP or UDP offload and for router use a multiport PCIe card would be recommended. Instead of using the PCIe lanes for ethernet Abit chose to use them for x4 and x1 slots, plus an x1 for the JMicron JMB363 controller

RickyTick wrote:

Anovoca wrote:

Since you mention Direct TV, are you paying for DVR service? If so you could use this machine to record your shows instead of paying for DVR

Really? How does that work?

Pretty simple, you need to install a TV/Tuner card with PVR services like a Hauppauge. Point the recording directory to a large storage drive and set up a schedule. The downside is you have to control the recording from the PC software not from the set-top box, but free is free. Just make sure the hardware/software/video-codecs you use are compatible with direct-tv. Admittedly, I haven't tried recording content from dish before, but over the air recordings have worked great for me.

RickyTick wrote:

Along with the GTX275, I also have a spare GT620 available.

I'd probably still get a cheap GPU if you wanted to go the HTPC route. Of course, that also means stashing it somewhere out of sight probably isn't going to work.

Too power hungry for NAS. Plus, if you needed a NAS, you probably would've built one by now. You're just coming up with excuses for this machine to keep sucking on the electricity bill. See if you can pawn it off on craigslist or ebay.

Too power hungry for anything you could use it at home as a server. To be fair it is still a decent low-end PC for someone who does not have any and seeing that you would not get much for it in parts or put together I would suggest to donate it to someone who would appreciate to have a PC. They can use it as is or if they feel like upgrading they can source another 4GB of DDR2 for next to nothing and some better graphics card also for cheap (something from the GF 600 series or the Radeon 7800 series).

TravelMug wrote:

Too power hungry for anything you could use it at home as a server. To be fair it is still a decent low-end PC for someone who does not have any and seeing that you would not get much for it in parts or put together I would suggest to donate it to someone who would appreciate to have a PC. They can use it as is or if they feel like upgrading they can source another 4GB of DDR2 for next to nothing and some better graphics card also for cheap (something from the GF 600 series or the Radeon 7800 series).

I'm agreeing with TravelMug here. There are plenty of people who like to have a computer but can't afford them. That would be the best use of old computers that are still usable to some degree.

You could also put Linux on it for extra performance as well.

My brother in law is running almost that same config with a 5850 gpu and it does a pretty good job playing most older games at 1080P. I would ask if any of your kids might be interested in some PC gaming or get them interested in it. The boys and I have fun playing Team Fortress 2 which runs pretty well on just about anything. Throw a cheap 120GB ssd in there for $50 and whatever the most powerful GPU you have and see what you get. I would use it to backup your other PCs and use it as a media repository, but I probably wouldn't run it 24/7 due to power consumption. It won't be terrible, but it won't be great either. Use something like Crashplan or Syncback to backup critical files/pictures/etc. to give yourself "free" peace of mind. Or, alternatively, run it as an HTPC to be able to watch anything and everything from one place. Those would be my votes

frumper15 wrote:

My brother in law is running almost that same config with a 5850 gpu and it does a pretty good job playing most older games at 1080P. I would ask if any of your kids might be interested in some PC gaming or get them interested in it. The boys and I have fun playing Team Fortress 2 which runs pretty well on just about anything. Throw a cheap 120GB ssd in there for $50 and whatever the most powerful GPU you have and see what you get. I would use it to backup your other PCs and use it as a media repository, but I probably wouldn't run it 24/7 due to power consumption. It won't be terrible, but it won't be great either. Use something like Crashplan or Syncback to backup critical files/pictures/etc. to give yourself "free" peace of mind. Or, alternatively, run it as an HTPC to be able to watch anything and everything from one place. Those would be my votes

Funnuy, that's exactly what I did. I just built the system in my signature below and handed down my old pc to my oldest son to play Team Fortress 2 and Five Nights at Freddies. Its an i7 950 with a GTX670 and a shiny new SSD. Works great for his needs.

I still have an Abit IP35Pro with a Core2Duo CPU. It was released just prior to Abit going out of business and I kept it for nostalgia. Like others mentioned here I built it into a home media and backup server using Windows Server 2003. I don't use it as much now since I primarily do backup drive cloning for each PC. Every once in a while I'll fire it up and run backups on the home network.

Other old PC systems I've donated to extended family, schools, neighbors etc. if I could not reuse parts in newer builds due to CPU socket and DIMM changes.

Under clocking and under volting both the CPU and GPU will take a big bite out of power usage. Data shuffling is not a compute intensive workload. IIRC most NAS CPUs run around one GHz.

A cheap power meter may help you decide if it's worth running an older PC.