Built when Netflix first took away password sharing. Thanks for the heads up Netflix! Would not want to start this project now 😂
Edit: adding temp and specs
I9 11900k Z590I Vision D ITX mobo 64gb memory The 16x lane is bifurcated to run: Intel a310 & Lsi 9305 16e into a hp dl380
Drives are 10x 14 tb wdd in raidz1, 6 256gb sata ssds in a pair of 3 wide mirrors for special vdev metadata, a 512gb nvme for read cache, and a 64gb optane for slog
For anybody not doing generative AI with it and not running massive loads on it, if you’re going to use an old gaming PC as a home server, at least replace the graphics card with a cheap one with no fans or use the integrated graphics on your CPU (something I believe pretty much all consumer CPUs of the last two decades have) and underclock the CPU if you don’t need full processing power since even small reductions in clock speed can significantly reduce the maximum temperature.
I want to point out that for a media server, OP’s GPU is excellent.
Sparkle ARC cards are the way to go for sure. The fans are a pain in the ass on Linux, though. They like to start and stop a lot.
I actually have a Mini-PC with an N100 CPU and no dedicated GPU as media server and it uses very little CPU (less than 20%) whilst playing 1080p video even with a torrent server over a wireguard VPN running on the background.
You don’t really need much CPU or GPU for playing or streaming videos from compress video files as long as you have hardware decoding on either processing unit (just make sure it implements all the way up to the AV1 coded).
You only need lots of CPU or GPU power if the codec you’re decoding from or encoding to is not implemented in hardware since in that case it will use software decoding or encoding so it’s down to raw CPU or GPU power.
In fact if all you want is a media server that solution I have is probably one of the best ones, mainly because it uses very little power (tops at 25W, usually much less) and runs silent, which is why I can have it in my living room using it as a media player connected to my TV, and with a wireless remote people can’t really tell it’s a PC since it just looks and works like a store bought media player rather than one I put together myself.
However that option means buying new stuff, and I can see the value in using old hardware if you have it around, plus the old hardware will still likely be more powerful so you can also use it for more demanding stuff or just more stuff at the same time, which is why I didn’t suggest it and instead just suggested some tweaks to make that old hardware consume less and make less noise.
many ryzen CPUs don’t have integrated graphics. I think it might have become baseline from just ryzen 6000? but plenty of very still good chips were released before that. I wouldn’t trade them for an intel.
underclock and undervolt
I posted specs and temps if you were curious 😊
The CPU usage looks high, mines usually around 3% per core. 🤔
What app are you using to see that chart, looks like mobile?
Yea it’s mobile. Away from home for a bit 😅
What app though?
Oh! Just the stock webpage
It’s in the middle of rencoding my library, should finish at some point and return to low usage
That makes sense then. Thought it was avg usage
If I’m not mistake only hobbyist level motherboards let you control the voltages and if one knows enough to get one of those they probably don’t need the advice I gave.
Also it’s hard to end up with a non-working or unstable configuration with underclocking, whilst it’s pretty easy to do so with undervoltage.
That said, for those who know what they’re doing, your suggestion definitely delivers lowers temperatures than underclocking alone though at the risk of a less stable system (which can be ameliorated with proper stress testing).