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CHAPTERS
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0:00 Intro
0:51 Servers = Computers
2:33 Shocking reveal
3:30 Starting fresh
4:30 Software
5:15 Network Share
6:46 What's next?
8:17 DVD's are dead
9:45 RAID: Shadow Copy
9:59 Storage Spaces
"This old machine isn't worthless. Even with its 9 year old CPU..." _looks over at his 9 year old main pc_ Why must you hurt me, Anthony?
I have a 10 yr old one
How about a 20 year old pentium 4?
Same lol
My old FX chip is crying inside..... at least the tears keep it cooler!!
fx8350 crew represent
More videos like this would be great, I love the high end pc videos but it's really nice to see stuff aimed towards everyday budget projects
True
Anything for the budget of a pentium 4 PC? 🤩
Yes, I particularly would like a video about shucking external drives for use on budget home servers
Agreed
I agree with you, this content is golden. Thie is actually how I first started my first server.
This video single handedly launched my home server side hobby. Thanks Anthony
It did the exact same thing with me lol
Is that the guys name - I always like his videos a lot he's very very good at communicating.
@@leoleo-sp1db Yes, the presenter's name is Anthony. He's awesome.
I've been in the self-hosted land for a while now (it's one of my earliest passions), and yet I still come here to get some inspiration and see what is new. Anthony's videos are awesome! If you ever wanna discuss stuff, I'd be happy
Anything new I should know in Feb 2023 or can I still use Pulseway to start my home server system? I may want to render videos on a secondary Pc so maybe a network card connecting the two could help
He's just born to explain tech in a way that not many others can do. Linus is lucky he got you.
I've noticed that its very rare anyone other than Linus hosts LTT anymore and it makes me sad because we miss out on stuff like this
Do not dead name
@123leop this was before it was announced bro
@@123leop still a dude
@@123leophe still a dude lmao
I'm taking this as a sign that I should go buy myself a new PC for Christmas so I can have an "old" one to use as a server.
Good luck
Yea buying a new pc …
best time for a prebuilt TBH, there's "sales" but also it's not like you can buy parts ATM LOL
lol same
Or if you can get hold of a Raspberry Pi 4B there’s a cheaper home server for you.
Don't forget Microsoft allows you to run a Trial version of any version of Windows Server for up to 3 years. Trials are only 180 days, but you can rearm that timer 6 times.
Why windows servers though?
@@aq6304 and more complicated, but of course we're not mentioning that, right?
@@leogiri2863 it's really not tho.
@@raphaelcardoso7927 Because a tonne of businesses small and large use it. So having a windows server just to learn on let alone to utilise it for services is great. I personally use Proxmox now and run a bunch of Linux containers for most of my stuff, but Windows is at the core of pretty much everything so having knowledge on it is very much needed.
@@leogiri2863 there's a lot of tutorials how to do anything on linux so how are they more complicated? also its easier to get most server software working on linux than windows so
Did this at my job with an old PC they had. We needed a way for tablets in the shop to access blueprints on a Windows network share. It had to be a simple easy one app solution for the tablet side. So I turned the old PC into a web server that would access the network share, list all jobs and blueprints, then when a blueprint was chosen it would fetch the blueprint pdf and using some nodejs magic displays the blueprint right in the Android web browser. Everything is done in the browser on the tablet side. I'm quite proud of it considering I'm just a shop guy myself and not an IT guy by trade. I just know how to do stuff.
I hope you got a raise for that
Anthony is my safeplace, when he said "love you guys" I took it personally
"Remember that old PC stuffed in the closet?" Yes, it draws 120W in idle.
sell it get an rpi problem solved ✅
This PC draws 25W at idle. -CW
My PC draws 200W at idle
My PC heats the room at idle.... 🙃
lower than the R720 with two E5-2630 v2 at idle running truenas
Anthony sneezes then says, "I'm allergic to Dell's bullsh*t." That had me literally laughing out loud.
I died. Haven’t laughed that well in while. So good
He is obese.
@@jinpingthebear110 But funny
That made me laugh pretty good as well.
@Talking Turkey Hopefully his Doctor.
I saw this and was so glad somebody with a large audience made it. I have used my old computers for servers and firewalls. Most people don’t think there is any reason to keep these guys.
You could also use them for older operating systems for older games
Having watched you guys for years, it's amazing how well you still do the simple style of videos. Nice work guys (and gals)
Im all for more videos like this. We need "Linux with Anthony" because thats a really solid next step
"Linux with Anthony" should totally be a series on it's own.
We need a Linux Tech Tips (etc) channel with Anthony!
@@22oreos the reason I mentioned "Linux with Anthony" as aposed to ATT (Anthony Tech Tips) is because LTT already has a huge community that are somewhat interesting in computing. It would expose less people to Linux if it was on a separate channel.
@@afallingtree9114 They could do it like Mac Address?
@@22oreos eh, perhaps. its better than nothing
I would love to see a series of increasing difficulty levels for servers. Something like turning an old rig into a TrueNAS server and then progressing into a full blown homelab rack setup.
As someone that has stumbled through making a freeNAS box as a quarantine project, I'd love to see how to make a homelab rack setup like Linus has.
I recommend openmediavault bc the hardware requirements of it are very low, so it is possible to repurpose old machines with it, I found truenas/freenas a bit hardware consuming
Yes! Level it up through a series of videos! I love it!
agreed
Yes!
Hey man, I found the way you speak, tone/pace/cadence etc is fantastic. Nothing sounded scripted and your clear/concise way of speaking was great for learning. Thank you!
I'm glad I saw this video because it pointed me in the right direction for building my own Plex server and backup server for way less than an off the shelf NAS.
Petition to for LTT to make a complete Home Assistant setup, from lights to fans, to temp. to curtains with motion sensor, luminosity sensor, humidity/temp sensor, etc powered by similar server as this (an old pc) and everything automated/controlled from one single app.
That would be awesome
Yes to this
The opportunity has presented itself, at the new humble abode Linus bought.
I guess that series is called linus's New House
Yes!! I'd love this!
Additional steps I’d recommend are: - enabling power on on power loss - using Windows autologin feature - setting up a program such as AnyDesk (task scheduler is your friend)
Be careful with the "enabling power on on power loss" function, especially when not owning an UPS. I've had a server going trough unholy shutdowns, rebooting continuously for more than three hours during reoccurring power-outages after a lightning strike.
or, followme in this one.... use Linux
@@iChimbo yes, a server edition
Edit. Sorry didn't realize anydesk was remote. 2 more things. Add a remote connection so you can log into the server and tell windows you don't want to sign up for a Microsoft account. I use tightVNC but we use UltraVNC at work. Also I told windows to reboot once a week. FYI. I am moving from a windows server to a Open Media Vault OMV (currently running 2 servers). The primary reason I picked OMV was there are pi versions so I assume it's super light weight and low power consumption, also it just runs. Added bonus it has room to grow with Docker support (more advanced, but lots of YT vids). I am currently running the OMV OS from a USB stick but plan on making it permanent as it has been super solid. One other thing they make a 5.25" to 2.5" adapter that can hold 6 laptop sized disks. (Make sure you have power and SATA cables).
@@ElectronicPleasure RDP requires a professional license
I had a machine that size once. I grabbed a low-profile GT 610 (which was reasonably recent at the time), and a PSU to support it which was too big to fit the case. It was thankfully modular, so I just threaded it in from the outside. So I had a clunky Frankenstein'd cash register with a huge GPU hanging off of it, which could handle Skyrim reasonably well. It was a fun project.
Thanks for this video, high-end tech is neat but I love to see more messing around with older machines and such.
This is GREAT. As a "old parts = home server" enthusiast who uses Linux, would love to see Anthony deep dive into that world. Either way... dope stuff!!!!!!!!!
Yet they decided to bloat it with totally mismatched sponsorship. It's the clash I would not expect from Ant. Dislike.
In general old hardware as server usage is a good idea, but it depends on how much you value security. Especially intel hardware tends to have many exploited holes, which ironically serve as backdoors now ... or maybe even served intentionally as backdoors?!? It would be no surprise since snowden and co at least. The list of hardware exploits is long and reaches implementations like Intel's ime, secure boot, uefi, tpm and even in the cpu and x86 isa itself, deep down to the micro code. Spectre and meltdown, you name it, no matter which former hardware security device you take, they have been exploited. In my opinion, security hardware is one of the most stupid and nebulous things to do, when it comes to it security. In consequence you just can throw the hardware away. In case somebody does not believe or underestimates the daily attacks on servers, just set up a ssh server, connect it to the internet and record the log in attempts to your machine for just a couple of minutes.
if you do a deep dive, you ending with a home datacenter, or close to this, i swear you. i made a nas, now im on unraid with hba and all this funy things, curently runing 56 TB and climbing.....
@@thescandalchannel and what for? spending money just for server lolz?
As someone who is basically already doing what's in the video, I'd like to see a Linux version of this and more.
Definitely would love to see more content on DIY storage / servers.
@@lpniranjankumar what
Love it, I just upgraded my PC and was left with most parts to setup a server of sorts. This helped guide me through the decision process as I plan to turn it into a media server or something for minecraft xD
Definitely saving this as I've just started getting the remaining parts together to convert my old rig to a server. Sweet!
We need more videos like this please. I'm tired of talking about PCs and having games be the only talking point for some people!
Especially at this time of short supply and the right to repair conversations going on .
Right?... I use pc's for everything BUT games.
I love that they are going out of their way to show people how to create their own servers, and this will definitely be enough for the average user. To also answer the question in the video, it would be awesome to see a follow-up video explaining more advanced methods, Linux and the like.
the only thing is they talked about replacing Google Drive but only downloaded Plex, I was thinking they were going to talk about NextCloud or a similar cloud service.
Thanks for this. Would love to see you create a media server full with recommended software and hardware (remote control etc) to compete with a streaming box such as the Nvidia Sheild TV preferbly using smaller PC's.
I don't know why I played the link beginning over a couple times 😂 I loved it. Love the video and Anthony is definitely my favorite tech guy on KZhead 👍 I wouldn't mind making an everquest server just to run around and do some old quests
Please, make that dude become the chief-speaker! He is by far the best, speaks clearly and doesn't put any fake excitement or outrage in his voice. He doesn't perform a show, he teaches. Love, love, love it!
Yeah this dudes the king, other fella is a nightmare
@@M.Godfrey Linus?😂
@@M.Godfrey I think you just might be gay for him I don't think there's a single comment from you that doesn't talk about him
@@Yikeo we’re baritone brothers
@@Yikeo I do it to piss other guy, ANTHONY IS THE GOAT
I’d love to see the next level, installing on Linux with an older machine like this using TrueNAS, as suggested by Anthony. Calling it “Level 2” or something might even help tailor the audience. Some useful info in the video might be convincing the server to communicate with windows locally (on LAN) or remotely (family elsewhere). A family photo server project sounds awesome.
I'd like to see them show the pitfalls of using windows software RAID first, Then showing moving to real hardware RAID with a cheap card from ebay.
@@t0m5k1 hardware raid doesn't really add much these days and is significantly less flexible than software like ZFS.
I agree completely! Would love to see this! I think it's maybe spooky to some people to change OS but I got a lot of benefit by running very light Linux distros like Ubuntu Server and Lubuntu on my old hardware. My current Lubuntu machine I had actually tried to upgrade to Windows 11 just to see if it would do it and it basically told me no.
He never even addressed the _other_ reason why using Linux is ideal: A nine year old computer is more than serviceable, but not on Windows. It's going to chug on any current version of windows, regardless of how much you cut it back. Linux, on the other hand, will have no troubles, even with a "bloated" desktop environment like Gnome.
I could also see something like handling power safety to have the device connected to a battery and auto-save and shutdown when main power is lost then auto-restart when it gets back but that's maybe a bit more advanced. I could also see something on how to configure auto-backups to the server which could be cool.
This video is amazing! Its clear, well made, well produced, well explained and funny. Thanks a lot for explaining well and clear
I recently bought a new mobo/cpu/ram and have been thinking of turning the old stuff into a server but have zero server experience. this video answered a lot of questions i had! thanks!
Echoing many other comments here - I would love to see more like this! The most I've ever dabbled in home server stuff is a private Minecraft server but this format definitely makes me want to find out more possibilities for my old rig.
@@brandonhoover2120 you'll find minecraft real easy, don't get too hyped bout that
I would love if they could provide a continuation on the Linux part of the video. I have my own home server with many applications being served, but it is using an operating system modified specifically for ease of access rather than having my own special control panel and installing applications by hand. While it is still Linux, and you can pretty much do whatever you want on it as it is Debian with some fancy scripts in the big picture, I would be curious to see them dabble with setting it all up on your own and having a custom control panel displaying all the applications that you have and their status. I am especially curious about how they would set up e-mail and nginx with a domain you own without using a system that does everything for you about the setup, because I find it hard to move to the manual side of things due to that exact reason. You are no longer dependent on app updates for your specific platform, but rather can update everything yourself without any need to depend on someone else (however, you have to set it all up yourself and troubleshoot it yourself as well).
It's amazing how many people got into running and configuring their first servers because of Minecraft. That's how I started!
That's so cool, I want to learn how to my old computer into a gaming server
A part 2 or a continuation in general would be great. Showing more of the amazing things you can do with your own server, remote access and all that good stuff.
yeah this just the surface, need more depth for better settings.
Agreed!
the video hasn’t even started yet and these comments have me hitting subscribe. thumbnail truly got the whole vibe across. thank you.
Excited for this as a series for how to do home servers and or labs
Would love to see a sequel to this dealing with solutions for intermediate users. Maybe something that works also as a hub for a smart house.
Make this a series. Moving up in difficulty. One every month would be awesome. So we have something to do and figure out.
I would love to see an unraid build, just started using and found it a lot easier than expected, for me the largest issue was terminology. I know they have a bunch of unraid videos, but thats using it at the extreme, not as the 'average' home user would. Another thing that would be handy, is tips on where to get cases that support a large number of 3.5" drives. I was unable to find any old servers locally and searching online for affordable 'nas' cases was nightmare. no online stores that I could find allowed you to filter by number of drive bays. then when you find a case that lists a bunch, its very hard to tell if you will even be able to use them all. I ended up paying way to much for an ancient 4U 'media pc' case that was missing parts.
Exactly what I'm thinking
Yes this. Tired of linus tech advertisement network.
@@myopinion69420 Newegg let’s you search based on number of drive bays for both desktop and server cases. For desktop cases, as just one example, the Node 804 can hold nine 3.5” drives and two 2.5” drives. Various models of Fractal Design’s Define R series can hold 8+ 3.5” drives, with the newer models holding more drives, along with a couple of 2.5” drives. There are a fair number of options from other companies but I can understand the difficulty of finding them. It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack unless you can search by the number of drive bays.
This was a really well explained video. I am looking into setting up my own standalone media server that I can connect all of my media capable devices to wirelessly to via WiFi. I think I'll give this a shot with a laptop and some of my old hard drives and see where I get.
I was thinking about it where if you had your second PC help process stuff with the other they could become one and become the ultimate processing beast.
I really like Anthony, hes got such a pleasant and fun energy. Also good job writer and editor, awesome video idea! :)
Agreed. It's like soul food, except tech videos. Also he broke me when he installed that HDD expansion tray upside down.
I second what you wrote.
Even when he runs into u planned things and have to address it, it feels like part of the video and doesn't feel rambly or long winded like a lot of other youtubers
Anthony is awesome. He is so extremely knowledgeable, yet down to earth and relatable. His videos are some of the best.
I see anthony, I click
Been homelabbing for many years. I am not the target audience for this video, but would LOVE to see more like it. More high production quality "ops/homelab for beginners" pls
It's a good start I guess...I remember that Windows box I used as a server, then experimented with Debian VMs in HyperV for Home Assistant, then Docker, then ditchEd Windows and went full Debian, and now have 40+ containers for all bunch of stuff the whole family uses daily! It's a journey that takes years :)
Glad I'm not the only one that's doing this. Hell, back in the very early 00's, I ran a group of 486 boxes as firewalls sitting in front of a cluster. Well configured software on a box that has little else to do can make these old (or refurbished) boxes great servers. I now run a name server, firewall, and mysql server in the house from old stuff.
These videos are the best. I turned my old PC into Linux media server with network SMB drive and Torrent client with web ui.
You guys haven't actually done a whole lot on "low level" home servers. I've recetly set up an old PC as a Plex server with unraid but I would love to see more videos like this for ideas on what else I can use it for.
r/homelab r/selfhosted welcome
I recently bought a laptop with a broken screen to work as my plex server. $60, only 15w TDP, and 7th gen Intel CPU means it can hardware transcode like a boss. No regerts at all.
@@pilotdog68 what processor does it have? currently looking for a similar setup.
@@DJmaschine1 i3-7100u. Just be sure you get something with USB 3.0 ports for connecting storage, and Gigabit Ethernet. Those ports are rare on laptops these days.
@@pilotdog68 thank you for that. Do you know how many transcodes the cpu would be able to handle simultaneously?
I spent 2 days checking how to use an old PC to create my own server. You guys nailed it, I'm starting on this tech world and you guys make things look really easy. Thank you for doing this.
Did you do it?
@@madern7 I did! Now I am using my old cpu as a Home server
@@javierreyesruiz8018 would love to actually do this
@@javierreyesruiz8018 how did you get past the use a business email thing?
oh I'm starting out with hardware too, good luck friend
Bro this is the best resource out there regarding this topic. very friendly beginner and thorough. Thank you!
Really enjoyed this video. I have about 2 or 3 towers just sitting around, about 5 or 6 laptops. This gives me ideas on what i could to with them..
"You remember your old PC you left in your closet." As a poor person: "No... Why would you leave a PC in your closet?"
exactly even if I did have a spare pc I would just sell it immediately
His old PC is 9 years old. My main PC is 12 years old 😅
@kiwikemist sudo apt-get money
this ^ however, laptops do get thrown out because of battery or display issues and you can rescue them for a free home server pretty easily.
@@KingBowserLP yup. I still have 2 netbooks and an old dell in working order that I got for free from relatives and friends. Also have another old laptop with a broken screen. They could all be decent servers. I just don't really have a need for one right now. I just sometimes use them as travel computers or dumb terminals in places they might get damaged or stolen.
Me finding my 10-year-old PC in the closet: *You're as beautiful as the day I lost you.*
Me looking at the 20 year old pentium 4 Pc: oh so you're not useless after all..
First time seeing you do a video and absolutely love your humor and easy to follow explanation
This is a seriously good tutorial for making your first little server!
I remember when I used my old dual core desktop PC as a Minecraft server. Good times, until I got my electricity bill...
This. The 24/7 power is killing. 1W 24/7 costs about 2 euro in EU (20ct/kWh), even more now electricity is double priced (more like 4eur/W/yr right now). My old ivy bridge system consumes ~50W idle. My new 5600G server about 12W. At current electricity rates, the cost of new hardware has paid itself back in about 2 years. And then imagine that Intel 9th gen + Fujitsu D3643-H, or NUCs are even more energy efficient.
@@nlhans1990 Feel like solar would be the way to go...im sure there are options
Couldn't have been that high. I've got 6 pc running 247 plus my huge ass house and it's still not that much. Lmao
@@kizl666 try living in Australia then. Expensive asf.
You should mine and use it as a server, otherwise gdrive is cheaper 🤣
This is content that is very close to my heart, reporopusing old PCs into servers turned into a hobby for me! If you have an old shuttle PC with an i3 this is even better ! Pity you didn't show off Freenas's capabilities but I guess it's for another video :)
it hit really close as this is exactly how I started off! I started with the family computer just learning stuff, then adding/buying old/cheap hardware just to learn a few things about general computers and networks. watching that gay dude from NCIX, demo some really cool hardware that I wish I could afford some day, then started watching LTT. Even though I don't really have any real use for most of their videos anymore, it's really a joy to watch good quality content that I know is made by people that understand how it is to not be a 1337 haxor that does everything through CLI on the first try.
I remember years ago repurposing my old IBM that I got for almost free to be the router in my house before home routers were good. Ran a Linux distro from a floppy disk call BBI (Broadband Internet) Agent. It was great, web based GUI and all. I ran that for years until I bought a new at that time Linksys WRT-54G. And eventually that got DD-WRT on it.
@@svampebob007 bruh, hes not the "gay dude from NCIX" SHE is that lesbian woman from NCIX that somehow grew a beard
@@mathdantastav2496 😂
I have an older pc with 4 core pentium how good is that as server use?
Thanks for this video! You really do explain things in terms a layperson can understand! As a layperson, I greatly appreciate this. I guess I know what I'm doing this weekend!
Yes more like this. Great video, great idea, budget friendly. Can't beat that!
You guys should start a budget friendly home lab series!
Yes! That would be amazing
That backfired with the massive new lab 😂 opposite of budget
"I'm allergic to Dell's bullsh*t." LMAO best comment in the entire video. Great non-script statement.
I saved an SFF intel based machine from metal recycling about 3 years ago, I chucked a generic SDD and second disk for bulk storage. Bought a Server 2019 key and to be honest, for my low-demand, very occasional needs, it's awesome. I can spin it up and shut it down remotely with DDNS and physical hardware control. It's fine for my projects, one of my best saves from the scrapheap for mileage of fun and learning!
I needed this video, I could tell my schools principal to use they're computers for servers. I also wondered how I can make servers
I managed to build my new "daily driver" over the last 1.5 years and had been wondering if I could do exactly this with my old one. Thank you, and I hope to see more of these types of things to come :)
I loved how you introduced a 5.25" to 3.5" bay adapter as some piece of miracle technology hahaha.
Well it's not that common anymore so there might be people in the audience that have never heard of one.
Your video was great. I'm an AV guy but I really enjoyed your comical yet simple and to the point video. Thanks .
Well. Time to start. I do want to see more of this. I'm pumped
I'd like a beginner NAS setup with TrueNAS, specifically with setting up redundancy, and probably mismatched drives. (Because we all know the drives we add to our pool wouldn't be new using old parts) As much as I'd love to have about 8k for a bunch of mass storage drives, I'd like to be able to use older and less reliable drives with redundancy and replace drives as they die.
TRUENAS or unraid would be great
If performance and uptime isn't a concern, you can totally do this. You can mismatch vdevs in a zpool, however it will have it's drawbacks, obviously. Especially with a setup like the one you're planning however, PLEASE, for the love of god, have backups. Always. You won't be in for a good time elseways.
TrueNAS is easy to set up, so far I have had my boot drive fail, should not have used 10 years old drive for the boot. Also had a 1TB drive fail about a month ago. I should have never put that drive in the NAS. But other than that TrueNAS has been easy to use now I want to upgrade my network speeds. That is what happens when you use OLD HDs for storage.
If you want to mismatch drives, i would strongly recormend getting unraid instead. Unraid is built for exactly what you are describing (throwing whatever you have at it, and fixing it in software). Truenas on the other hand is using ZFS and generally take a lot of inspiration from enterprise setups. Mixing drive sizes in Truenas is a bad idea even if you make it work, because ZFS is built with identical drives in mind, so using mixed sized drives could easily compromise on data integrity and might even depending on the exact setup give you worse performance than unraid given the way unraid distributes data compared to zfs/truenas
I have had enough of those shareware NAS products and buying a QNAP and a SYNOLOGY were just far more time saving, easy to use and maybe reliable? idk for older unreliable drives windows storage spaces has worked well.
"Remember that old PC you stuffed in the closet?" Oh man, the nostalgia of running a single core server from under the stairs.. My mom hated the idea thinking it'd eat our electrical bill, but I assured her the AMD Sempron +3000 would only cost as much as a lightbulb.
dude check online for a replacement processor like athlon or something and that would run better. sempron is soo bad.
if you happen to live in an area that requires household heating in the winter, think of it as saving money on your heating bill! that's what I do with mining on my PC, heats my room, can turn off the heating, and make some cash
Yeah i remember when I had my old Sempron with 1,5gb of RAM running XP and a Bukkit server. It worked fine for me and a couple of friends. Good old times! Edit: Now I have an old 40w Xeon with 12gb of RAM running win10 as an HTPC and a xpenology VM for NAS stuff
uh, I still do this, 8 TB on an Athlon Hammer from 2002 or so. What more do I need for a file server?
Y'all have closets?!
Very elucidating. I appreciate the down-to-earth approach. Advising people that want to set up their own servers to make it with redundancy is a very good thing.
thank you Anthony, i love these in depth tech stuff
Yep, did this to my old PC when I upgraded. It now lives a relatively quiet life as a backup/media server and sometimes stream encoding rig, and it works like a charm.
Hey, I'm new to all this, can u tell what do u mean by a stream encoding rig?
@@sadafdavre1147 Simple - I stream on Twitch sometimes, and whatever data is sent to Twitch has to be encoded, that is it has to be "translated" to something Twitch will accept. This is usually done in one of two ways: The first is to use a signle PC and let it handle everything - Playing games, recording, encoding and things like custom overlays (basically stream bling), alerts, music and whatnot. This is the simplest and least expensive way of doing things, but require a fairly powerful PC to make everything run smoothly. There are also a handful of games that appear to be notoriously difficult to get to run well on a single PC setup, so there's that. The second way is to run games on one PC, and have a second PC that records what you're doing on the first PC. The second PC will then handle the encoding and whatever else you need it to do, which frees up resources on the first PC as it no longer has to do _everything_. It can make for a smoother stream, since you can dedicate each PC to a specific task, and it also offers some degree of redundancy in case one PC goes down. The drawback is that it's more complex, require more setup and you have two PCs that can potentially bork and go down. As for me I'll admit I did it mostly for the challenge and experience. My main PC is powerful enough to run all my games and handle the streaming side of things on its own if necessary, but since my old PC is still in working order I thought "Eh, wny not?". So I guess it's less "my old PC is a server now" and more of a general "hey, I repurposed my old PC instead of dumping it in the e-waste" thing.
I did the same to my old AMD A10-7890K when I upgraded
How did you set up the streaming platform. I'm trying an NDI plugging with obs, but stream isn't as smooth as straeaming straight out of the gaming pc. I game, yes, there's a very good FPS boost. But server obs is not getting smooth video input. So actually made my twitch stream look worse. Again: how did you set it up?
@@BagheeraRaceGamer depends on the GFX card in the encoding PC and your LAN network. for best results for NDI it's recommended to have both Gaming PC and Stream PC connected via ethernet to the router so you get that full 1Gbps.
I love LTT's emphasis on accessible sustainability of tech and hardware! It really feels appropriate for the current market and future of the world.
yeah right, there is nothing sustainable about LTT. These idiots are quite literally the manifestation of consumerism.
@@someonewhocares...2513 Why?
@@someonewhocares...2513 so true. our world is completely fucked. at least they are "trying" lmfao
@@nathanielletourneau9952 they constantly talk about every new-cutting-edge-overpriced piece of hardware that comes up just for sponsor money, how many TVs and speakers has Linus installed in his home by now? We just saw a video of them spending almost 1k on a server for media consumption under the excuse of "repurposing an old PC", $400 on a drive just for redundancy yisus. Not to mention the thought of having an full core i5 PC just laying around your house. Do you have many of those? I sure as hell don't, and if I did, I'd give it to a family member who needs it or sell it because I actually don't have that much money to spend. This entire channel is "first world problems TV".
@@Guryguazu i think they talk about new tech because it's relevant, not for "sponsor money". I don't know, I just don't get being so angry about it, tech is inherently a very modern space, I don't see how ltt can avoid its modern characteristics, some of which are bad examples of consumerism. I don't mind watching him showcase expensive tech, just like I don't mind watching someone showcase a Tesla, or a race prepped motorcycle, or anything that's expensive but impressive and to a degree hard to attain. I mean I get it if it isn't your jam, but then, why are you here? Also, what's wrong with first world problems? Not everything always has to be about third world problems. Tho I would agree ignoring them completely is bad.
Love your videos Anthony I always learn a ton!
About a year further and i was thinking of old systems as a ryzen 3 1400 or a core i5 8400.... the speed of progression i guess
This is absolutely the gateway drug of having a home server. I started off with the tiny SFF dell optiplex with a 3770 in it. Threw in a 4tb drive, an ssd, and 2 1tb 2.5" mechanicals (double sided taped where the dvd drive used to be and connected to the usb header with usb to sata adapters) Finally upgraded to a 2u server with 11th gen hardware and 28tb of storage earlier this year.
Careful, your next step might be what mine was... a 42u rack, 24 drive DAS with SAS, full Cisco network, and over a half dozen Dell and HP rack mount servers 😂🤣😂🤣
Sheesh, do you even need the storage?
@@geezusotl4021 photographers and videographers:
What kernel do you use? Just curious and moving around between kernels. Found one to be particularly good in that it's super secure (and entirely OSS of course), but with security comes the slight inconvenience of extreme firewall issues, read-only root part, added complexity and need for reboot with every app install/update, etc. But once I got used to it, it's fairly nice and super well performing. Still got some kinks to work out with it though (like restarting services and issuing warnings before auto-reboots for security patches).
@@serpent77 haven't researched or even heard of DAS, some quick reading led me to see it as similar to SAN. Couldn't find many resources online, but is it just another term for SAN or a completely different technology? Oh and you don't happen to use Ceph as a SAN-like solution?
I can’t stress enough how much I’d love to see a follow-up video to this. Great stuff!
Yeah, and one where they actually use a server OS instead of using Windows. Windows is not the best server, to say the least...
I use my editing and gaming rig as a media server as well (the movies and TV shows residing on a JBOD cabinet external to the rig) running Plex. The advantage here is that my CPU (an i7-9700K) can easily handle the scaling, conversion and streaming etc. for a single user (me).
I think a video on using an old pc for virtualisation would be good. The day I learned I could run multiple computers in my computer was a really good day. Especially given Hyper-V is part of Windows 10 and up.
I was an IT tech at a local dried fruit company almost 5 years ago. I learned they ran a hypervisor setup which blew my mind. I knew about virtual machines already, but I didn't know about Hyper-V or ESXi. When I saw how they setup virtual machines I was amazed. I was so amazed that I bought myself an older HP Workstation from eBay for about $40 and spent another $40 in RAM and a CPU to upgrade it and started tinkering with ESXi at home. Way overkill for what I use it for, but a pretty good learning experience.
People always balk when you talk about 10 gigabit network adapters "because your ISP doesn't go over 1 gig." You can tell they're the ones that needed this video. Thank you for your service.
I love how calm Anthony is but then turns around to sneeze and goes into straight savage mode 😂
I absolutely loved that part
literally lol'd when Anthony said that
Give me more videos like this one! Super helpful! Very needed
This guy is a fantastic presenter, his pace and tonality are just right
She goes by Emily now, just fyi
This is the type of content i enjoy more, DIY Things, Projects etc Those ultimate game pc and whatever builds get old real fast
In our current world of throw everything in a dumpster and start over, I really really love it when you guys make content reusing or recycling any old hardware. This hits home with me as both an avid PC nerd but also as a environmentalist. Well done as always Anthony :-)
The consumerism is only half of that problem though. What would really go a long way are right to repair laws. The few repair shops around that deal in electronics often have to learn from trial and error because most companies do not release repair schematics. And repair shops frequently either have to rely on salvaged components from other units, or reproductions from dubious sources overseas. If companies released repair schematics and sold replacement parts either through good will (lol, never happen in a capitalist society) or more likely through legal mandate, then that would go a long way to people fixing their products instead of buying new ones every couple years. The simple fact is that this buy, use, throw away, society we have today isn't an accident. It's a result of years of pressure from our corporate overlords - the modern day oligarchs - actively cracking down on things that hurt their profits. Allowing consumers to repair their machines loses corporations money.
they're spending $400 on a drive just for redundancy
LOL my home file server is a 2002 Athlon Hammer with 2.5gb of RAM and 8 TB of RAID storage, two 100/1000 NIC cards. Doesn't have to be fancy, even recapped the board.
damn, awesome video, I loved the tutorials, very easy to follow! Thanks!
This was very informative and made things clearer,thanks again
Thank you, LTT, for spreading this sacred knowledge. It's so painful watching so many people honestly believing that their 1-3-5 year old PCs are worthless and throwing them into trash, turning hexacore CPUs into keychains and the like. And I'm afraid that a lot of those people would be shocked to know what they just destroyed. Ignorance is off the charts sometimes. Someone close to me was about to throw out a 4-5 year old laptop because it had a broken screen, something that can be repaired for a tiny fraction of it's cost... And they don't even have a replacement. They assumed it's broken and they have to buy a new one... AAAH
I can't get enough of Anthony in my life. Great job into the simplicity and accessibility of all of this 👍
ok
I dont know how i ended up watching this video tonight, BUT! You mentioned free geek. Where it all began for me around late 2002. Ahhh, those were the days. Thanks for the memories.
The intro got me. That classic Zelda key item found fanfare! Amazing!
As someone who has been dabbling in this already for a few months, I would love to see a full series on this sort of home server. Benefits of different OSes, different uses and applications (beyond just file storage and plex - stuff like discord bot hosting, website hosting, etc), possibly how to use a hypervisor and VMs.
Maybe add power usage as well, because 24/7 on has some power bill effect.
Check out spaceinvaderone and his unraid videos
I second to this. I would like a video about more intermediate/advanced approach to these things
As an ancient PC tech, it was fun watching this and seeing good quality sensible advice delivered in simple bite-sized chunks for novices, nice job :)
It would be great to see an unRAID version of this video Anthony. Great video! Thank you.
Oddly enough I actually used to use my mom's old laptop as a server back in the day. Had the CLI version of CentOS installed on it and everything. Granted the only "server" I ran from it was a Minecraft server hosted by myself, but eventually I had to give it back to my mom once her newer laptop started dying
Holy shit!! I literally just started this project a day ago. The timing of this video is unbelievable. I literally thought... God I wish I knew Anthony or Wendell IRL because I need help! Haha what a great Christmas present!!🎄 🎁 Oh and please do a TrueNAS version!! Preferably, with a PCIE NvME Adapter Cache or Boot drive if possible!! Thank you guys, @LTT so much for this!!
Strangely good timing, as I was about to make a home server too...
Me too... just set up Unraid like two days ago on an old server xD But I'm still keeping an eye on TrueNAS🤔
I would love to see a run down on why you would choose unraid over truenas or whatever else. aWould be useful for us people about to take the dip into a custom server as an upgrade from a box system.
Seconded. LTT has used Unraid in the past, and from what I've read, it seems better for my use case, but I could definitely stand to learn more about both.
@@0Aberration Indeed I know LTT has used both and i know there's plenty of documentation out there covering their functionality, but call me a small brain I can't handle all of it and I've ended up flip flopping back and forth and putting of the upgrade.
Sponsor money
@@hex8387 na it's all good we aren't talking about phone skins
Exactly
Flippin' love you guys! Scouring KZhead to find instruction to do exactly this and overwhelmed by monotone, drawn out & difficult to understand content. Don't know why I didn't look to LTT first.... Lesson learned.
You guys should start a budget friendly home lab series!. This video single handedly launched my home server side hobby. Thanks Anthony.
lmao did you just combine 2 comments into one into a video that's a year old trying to get views? why
I'd love to see a more comprehensive episode about home server stuff, especially with freenas!
freenas is horrible, I have had many reliability issues and crashes and the people who are building it are assholes just use something else like truenas. just FYI freenas goal is to sell their product services to enterprise level customers, it is free for you but if you actually use it in a business and want support then they charge you.
I’ve been slapping Linux on my old pcs and making NAS servers for years. Especially old laptops are great for this because they have very low power consumption.
any good guides on doing this securely?
@@ETHANR26 make sure to keep all your networking ports open, and never have it run a VPN. if you have slowdowns you might also want to disable the firewall on your server.
Also the built in battery is a handy UPS.
I have my old 2009 laptop as a Minecraft server with arch no de and running on a cheap 120gb ssd
you talking like u buy ccomputers daily just for their storage
My home Linux server literally stays up for years and honestly only goes down when the power goes out.
Why isn’t there a “What is a Server?” LTT video…… that’s all I need