QNAP NAS or a Family 8202+01 IBM Power 720 Express Server?

[Hotrod369]

I was planning to upgrade to a QNAP TS-451D2-4G 4 Bay 4K Hardware transcoding NAS with Intel® Celeron® J4025 CPU but a friend who lives several states away has the IBM server in the title that he'll give me if I cover shipping. This is going to be used as a Plex Media server. Should I take the IBM from him or stay with my original plan and get the QNAP NAS? From the info I've found so far on the IBM, it should be able to transcode several streams at once. I've got zero experience with server hardware and don't want to make a bad choice trying to save a couple of bucks.

 

[DVDR_Dog]

A NAS is just that, nothing more, nothing less. I have one at the heart of my entertainment system and it feeds a bunch of hardware audio and video throughout my home. It never asks for much, takes very good care of itself on it's own. I check in with it once and a while and it's always well.
Now a server? You can do all kinds of stuff with it. I take it it's a rack mount, do you have a home for it? It's also going to suck up a lot more juice than the NAS if that's a concern. The fans are going to be noisy if that's a concern.
So there's the pro and cons as I see them. Are these both bare offerings? Drive costs can easily exceed the initial hardware costs.
Personally I have a WD PR4100 4x 8GB Red Plus HDs in RAID 5 array. I do some archiving on the NAS as well. I have a 3 i7 micro systems 2-Dell, 1 HP and 1 Lenovo that perform video conversions, downloading etc. They are fairly quick on conversions, but who cares? I can leave them alone to do the task at hand. My big project at the moment is increasing inter-network transfer speeds. They are fairly quick right now, but big many GB transfers still take 10 minutes to complete, I'd like to trim that down.
Let us know about your progress. From what I know of you, pending on the IBM's specs, you would be happier to have the server to mess around with.

 

[Hotrod369]

I take it it's a rack mount, do you have a home for it? It's also going to suck up a lot more juice than the NAS if that's a concern. The fans are going to be noisy if that's a concern.
Are these both bare offerings? Drive costs can easily exceed the initial hardware costs.
My big project at the moment is increasing inter-network transfer speeds. They are fairly quick right now, but big many GB transfers still take 10 minutes to complete, I'd like to trim that down.
Let us know about your progress. From what I know of you, pending on the IBM's specs, you would be happier to have the server to mess around with.

No, it's not Rack mounted. But I do have a room for it where the noise shouldn't be a problem. I'm going to also be building a crypto mining rig that will possibly have 2 1500-watt HP server power supplies. Those things sound like miniature jet engines. lol, A friend of mine has a family health records business and has retired this server and was talking about scraping it. I was like Noooo don't do that I think I might just have a use for it. I'm attaching a link to the NAS and a pic of the server. I share my plex with around 20 friends and family but don't remember ever having more than may 5 streaming at once. My poor PC is struggling to do everything I'm asking it to do. It's mining crypto with 4 GPUs and running a full Kaspa coin Node and my Plex server all running 24/7 365. It does do surprisingly well but I spent a lot of time carefully tunning it. I'll leave a screenshot of speccy too.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08JQZS1MZ/?th=1

 

[Hotrod369]

The Friend told me this evening that he thinks this server might be locked. I know very little about servers but have no problems unlocking a sys-keyed laptop. He's saying that it hasn't been powered up in more than a year but was working when he turned it off. He's telling me that IBM locks machines that are no longer in use. My thinking is if the IBM tech hasn't touched it and it hasn't been connected to the net it should still be unlocked. If IBM does lock old servers how would I unlock it or if it's not already locked prevent it from being locked the first time it connects to the internet?

 

[DVDR_Dog]

Honestly I have never come across a locked IBM server. The only feedback I can give you if you have 5 users logged into that NAS trying to view HD programming on it, that dual core CPU is going to be swamped. The higher resolution video is just going to magnify it. 1 or 2 users should be OK but my PR4100 can have a time with a 4K high bitrate video. My PR4100 has a quad core Pentium clocking around 2.5Ghz when pushed and I added RAM (cause I had it) to 16GB, so it's no slouch. That's why my vote is for the server. You and I know that IBM server is built like a tank and may outlast you. Just my thoughts. Unfortunately that possible lock out may be a game changer.

 

[Hotrod369]

I may end up just getting more storage for my current machine. I've only got 6 drives on it. 2 M.2 SSDs and 4 HDDs. Seems like Windows can handle up to 11 or 13 drives. Or maybe I'm thinking of GPUs. Getting multiple GPUs to get along can be a bit tricky.

 

[DVDR_Dog]

Other than the fact I have the NAS, I have a couple of systems that are confined to downloading and video recoding. They have a lot of USB hard drives attached by various means. I bought one of these enclosures just to be fancy and look impressive when the guests go down into the basement.

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I didn't bother with RAID because I never know what drives I am going to throw in it. Honestly USB 3.0 or not it's not lightening fast data transmission speed, but it works, it's cheap and those little mini-comps I have can only fit one laptop drive and a M2 SSD. I always use mag drives for video work and downloading. The clock is always ticking on a SSD so I save those for the O/S and page files, buffers, etc because they are fast. So my setup agrees with yours. It's redundant as all get out, quiet takes up a little space and gets the job done. The NAS is a nice touch but it is a luxury, not saying I don't like it, just the opposite. It's just my life would not end if I no longer had it. The way it's constructed it may outlive me though.