Hi Guys, I've been looking into building an unraid server and I was wondering whether I could simply use an old Dell DImension 3100 pc I have lying around.

 

Its specs are

Pentium 4

512 MB ram

 

Apparently it has the capability to run 2 sata drives. Would unraid work on this system and what would I have to do to make this work? I would like to be able to stream videos to an xbox if possible and run a squeezebox server.

 

Thanks for your time.

Honestly you could possibly use it, but I used to have the same machine and it was simply a space heater with no guts. I never used it for a unRAID server, but it sure did heat my office pretty well.

 

The biggest improvement I've ever made on it was adding 512 more ram which made a huge difference in running windows.

Honestly you could possibly use it, but I used to have the same machine and it was simply a space heater with no guts. I never used it for a unRAID server, but it sure did heat my office pretty well.

 

The biggest improvement I've ever made on it was adding 512 more ram which made a huge difference in running windows.

 

and if you OC your RAM you can boost it(the PC) BTU by factor of 2  ;D ;D

 

 

if you have it, you can try it.

 

I personally dont think that it will have the horsepower to re-encode video on the fly.

P4's tend to consume more electricity then they produce in computing power.. as mentioned.. space heaters.

 

the ram is probably not enough, and not worth investing in more for that box.

 

@vl1969..

the point of a server is ultimate stability. overclocking a server is a horrid idea.

@vl1969..

the point of a server is ultimate stability. overclocking a server is a horrid idea.

 

Pretty sure it was a joke (and a good one in my opinion).  BTU = British thermal units, a measurement of heat

you are right Rajahal it was a joke :-)

 

 

Johnm, it was a shot at "kizer" comment about this PC being a space heater.

 

I meant to say that if you over clock it, it will heat up more (hence the increase BTU factor) as BTU is used to rate output of AC and heating equipment (at least in US)

thus it will be a better Space Heater

 

How much power does an unraid server realistically need? Why does it need to re encode video on the fly? Is that so it will be in a format the xbox can play? You'll have to excuse my ignorance I haven't done a lot of research on this matter.

How much power does an unraid server realistically need? Why does it need to re encode video on the fly? Is that so it will be in a format the xbox can play? You'll have to excuse my ignorance I haven't done a lot of research on this matter.

 

if you are just serving files, it will probably work if it can boot from a usb flash drive.

I think the issue may be maximum drives that can be used in the case.

 

512MB is the minimum that will support unraid. If you have an extra 512mb I would suggest using it, but I would not buy any more ram unless you get it super cheap.

 

For a beta test machine, this would work, but for longer term use, I would choose a more energy efficient platform.