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Would this be good for a Plex server?
(alien.top)
Dell Poweredge server T410, 32GB ram, Intel Xeon E5645 2.13GHz Quad-core No HDD SAS
Going for 50 AUD (32 USD)
Hard no.
That machine will cost you more in power than what you could have built a modern server for that will decimate that Dell relic in performance.
For $500 you can build a brand new, complete machine based around a i3 12100.
For comparison, a cheap 12100 has three times the compute power of that Xeon dinosaur, plus hardware transcoding. The 12100 will do 6+ 4K transcodes, that Xeon will do zero.
Yes, $50 up front is cheap. It will cost you far more in the long run while having garbage performance.
Do you have a spec list? Because I have no ability to take what you said and translate it into a working machine, but I do have the ability to order from Amazon or NewEgg and assemble.
I also have two R730s that I'm considering turning into NAS and Plex setups, but I keep reading that I'll be sorry. So...tell me what I want instead.
I agree that using old R730's for Plex or a home server is silly. Getting rid of my HPE DL380 G9 (the HPE equivalent of a Dell R730) was the best thing I ever did.
For low end budget? i3 12100, Gigabyte Gaming X Z690 DDR4 or Aorus Elite DDR4 motherboard, Unraid, 2x8gb DDR4 3600 (I've been using Corsaor LPX for the last dozen+ Unraid builds I've done). Fractal R5 case with a Thermaltake GX2 PSU.
That should land you just a smidge above $500, not inclusive of the Unraid license.
i5 13500 is an excellent upgrade if you are anticipating running compute heavy tasks. Definitely pick up a pair of 1TB NVME to run as wrote cache and storage for your containers (Plex and whatnot).
Sell the R730's. A single 13500 will likely be more powerful than both of them combined, not that you need the power in the first place. If you get lucky you can find some dolt that will pay a premium for them because they think Xeon's are so powerful and cool!
Profit. Literally. You'll make your money back in not paying to power a R730 (or worse, two of them).
I'm happy to sell the 730s. I don't know how to use them anyway.
But kinda I'm hanging on by my thumbs with your list.
This is the CPU, I'm pretty sure.
These are motherboards. Is one better than another?
I'll Google this. Disk management software?
Wait. I just bought 256GB of RAM for one of the 730s. How is this getting away with 16GB?
I have several computer cases from when full-size desktops were common. Should I just re-purpose one of them, or are new cases better?
Will a setup like this run several streams at once? There are probably four max in my house at any one time and two to three from outside the house. It's rare that all will go at once, but I'd like to be able to do it when they want.
Also my Plex instances will lag regularly on some shows--Bob's Burgers is a serial offender. I assume it's got something to do with the file quality or encoding, but that's the genesis of the 730s--if it's a hardware issue, I thought overkill was the way to go. I guess the point is I'm happy to sell those 730s and build a box to do the job...I just want to make sure I'm building the right box.
It's also going to be a NAS for pictures and important files, but mainly it's a media server for Plex. Or...I could use the existing NAS for that purpose. That'd be efficient.