Old Hardware, is it worth the effort/cost?

[Cagarner]

Hi Everyone, new here.

 

I currently have an old i7-920 (Bloomfield), a GA-EX58-UD4P Mobo, 6GB DDR3 RAM, 320GB HDD and a Nvidia 560ti. I also have a single 3TB WD NAS drive inside a D-link DNS 320-L, but im planning to use this for the unRaid NAS. 

 

I want to use the unRaid to;

 

• Hold a backup of my files from 2 Windows PCs
• Store Movies, TV Shows etc.
• Run a Plex Server for said media files.
• Run a Windows VM for me to RDP to from an old laptop

 

As I only have a budget of £150 and I need to get a CPU cooler and PSU within that budget. I would love to have 5 3TB NAS drives, a cache ssd etc but I cant afford it all.

 

The processor supports Vd-x but not Vd-d and I cant find out Virtualisation information for the mobo.

 

If I could run some old games through the VM (CIV 5, Company of Heroes etc) and hold my steam library that would be great but not essential. I'm mainly planning on browsing with lots of tabs up and using MS Word and Excel.

 

Basically i'm asking; Is it worth me going for the effort and expense with my limited resources to create this Frankenstein unRaid system or should I not waste my time on this?

 

Thanks in advance for any feedback.

[METDeath]

Well, as far as Plex goes, that CPU should be okay for 2-3 transcoded streams.

 

Without more than one drive you won't see all the benefits of unRAID (parity protection)

 

Without VT-d you won't get GPU passthrough which is what is really needed for good gaming performance.

 

So this should probably just be a normal desktop build instead of unRAID.