Hey all
Been playing around with plex and the *arr’s for a while on my main desktop.
Now looking to set up a server to run plex, downloads, pi hole and eventually some other backup’s.
Unfortunately the PC I had laying around is 32bit and it seems like most things are removing support for that architecture if they haven’t already. Now I’m faced with the problem/opportunity of getting something new (to me).
But I’m struggling with the absolute sea of options out there and also don’t want to spend on brand new gear.
There’s quite a bit of server grade hardware floating around (like a Dell Poweredge server T410, 32GB ram, Intel Xeon E5645 2.13GHz Quad-core for $100AUD) or even rackmount gear (probably overkill but a boy can dream).
Or should I just get a consumer case with the most drive bays I can find and build from there?
Lowish power consumption is a priority, planning on running ubuntu or similar.
Any and all tips welcome! Thanks.
I’d go for the consumer case with as much drive space as possible, but in the end it’s up to your taste. With rackmount full professional server stuff, you have to keep in mind, it’s not only quite large in terms of space, but also noisy. This is something for the basement or something. Another option would be a mini pc like a NUC combined with a NAS - here is the limit the upgradability of the hardware. Like you can usually upgrade the RAM a little and the system drive, but that’s it. Especially for media stuff (Plex, Emby, Jellyfin) it can be interesting to have a dedicated GPU, like an Intel card, to have more transcoding capabilities. I’m currently running most things from a SFF PC, but also have a Pi and an old laptop in use for various tasks (main reason is lazyness to move the services to the SFF lol)