Cannibalising old components
I have some components lying around I’d like to reuse. I would like to consider utilising some or all of the following components: a Rocketfish RF-FULLTWR Aluminum Full-Tower Case (huge, great reviews and mod-able), a barely used 700-watt OCZGXS700 PSU, and a new A8-7670k CPU I bought as an impulse buy four years ago (along with a motherboard I can no longer find).
Alternatively, I have a new Asrock 775Dual-Vista 775 MB mobo I could build a system around, but my first thought is to use the A8 CPU, case, and PSU for a server build. I also have an ASUS U3S6 PCIe4 x4 card that offers USB 3.0 ports.
I found a review from 2016 where the processor was purchased for a small home virtualisation server and was capable of handling Plex in conjunction with a repurposed Radeon gaming card, making it capable of handling simultaneous playback and transcoding to multiple devices in HD. It was also very quiet and capable of mild overclocking. It was described as an “awesome budget CPU” for utility/ workhorse purposes. Would that review still apply today, or can I use the case and PSU in an all-new build? Your thoughts would be appreciated.
Dean Johnson
TechLife responds: That’s quite an eclectic mix of components, Dean. Your first thought is a good one – ditch the Asrock mobo, which is too old, and look at pricing a system around the A8-7670k CPU instead. That is easily powerful enough for server and Plex duties, without needing a secondary graphics card, particularly if you optimise your media to minimise the need for transcoding.
You’ll need to source a compatible motherboard and RAM, it will need to be a Socket FM2+ and we recommend the A88X chipset. Asus’s A88XM-A/USB 3.1.
The board supports up to 64GB DDR3 RAM across four DIMMs, and a compatible 16GB kit (2x 8GB) can be found at www.crucial.com (use its memory finder to search for ‘A88XM-A/USB 3.1’ to pick out matched RAM). This should be ample for your server needs, and there are still two spare slots available to add more, should you need them later.
It also has six onboard SATA ports, which gives you plenty of scope for storage. Look to populate these with NAS-optimised drives, such as Western Digital’s Red range – consider a WD Red SSD boot drive for extra responsiveness.
There are six accessible USB ports (2x USB 3.1, 2x USB 3.0 and 2x USB 2.0) with scope to add further USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 via internal connectors. Your PCIe USB 3.0 card would fit the board but is likely to be redundant. However, it’s there if you are still short of rear USB ports.
Finally, in your email, you touched on FreeNAS as a possible server OS. Instead we recommend Ubuntu Server instead. This is more universally supported, can be configured to run headless via the web-based cockpit UI, and is perfect for your server needs.