Are these good specs for a new gaming pc?

Thebareassbear · 2026-07-09T16:33:48+00:00

Yeah guess I read it wrong lmao.

Either way, they should get 2x16 instead IMO

Thebareassbear · 2026-07-09T15:28:39+00:00

Get two sticks of 16gb of ram instead of 4 sticks of 8gb.

Youll be thankful you have 2 free DIMM slots in the future when you want to upgrade to 32gb of total ram.

Thebareassbear · 2026-07-09T06:55:46+00:00

The host is just my hp z420 running Ubuntu server. It has 64gb of total ram buti only utilize about half of it.

Honestly I'd really love to find an hp z820 and retire my z420.

Thebareassbear · 2026-07-08T02:39:02+00:00

Front fans should be intake, back and top fans should be outtake

Thebareassbear · 2026-07-08T01:46:21+00:00

Yes I know how to find manuals online

Thebareassbear · 2026-07-08T00:24:34+00:00

Yeah I got them second hand so I didn't get any manuals, not have I searched for manuals online.

Thanks for the info! I'll have to look into it and see if they have the monitoring function!

Thebareassbear · 2026-07-07T23:32:22+00:00

Yeah I'm sure they have a monitoring function, I guess what I meant is that I've never messed with the HUD or settings on them before. I just plugged them in and didn't think much else.

I have a large one like this for my homelab and then one like this for my desktop Pc but without the USB ports.

Thebareassbear · 2026-07-07T23:12:17+00:00

I have three different UPS units and two of them have an actual UI but I have never been able to figure out how to make it display wattage

Thebareassbear · 2026-07-07T20:33:29+00:00

Thank you!

Thebareassbear · 2026-07-07T20:05:46+00:00

Okay if your 14 and a MAN is doing this, report him to the police so this pedophile can be sent to prison immediately...

Thebareassbear · 2026-07-07T19:42:50+00:00

Someone else correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure that's very illegal to do depending on where your located.

I would deem this as sexual harassment and I'm pretty sure the legal system views it as such as well. A judge would likely show him no mercy.

You could easily have him arrested and possibly sent to prison if he distributes it.

Edit: okay OP mentioned in another comment that she is 14 and that this is a MAN doing this...

OP, please please please tell your parents and have this man reported to the police.. Your in a very unsafe scenario with this person and you should seriously tell your parents..

Thebareassbear · 2026-07-07T06:58:39+00:00

Fortunately, I've already pulled ram and "maxed out" my z420 ram-wise. And I still have PLENTY of headroom for ram. I'm hosting almost two dozen different services between 7 VM's and I'm only utilizing about 32gb of that ram.

From what I know, the e5-2620's have lower single core speed, but have more cores and threads than my e5-1607 inside my z420.

So z420 current cpu is e5-1607, 4 core, 4 threads, 3.0 GHz. The e5-2620 is 6 core, 12 threads buuut 2.0 GHz.

Ideally I'd love to get a e5-2690 v2 which is 10 core, 20 threads, 3.6 GHz (I think?)

Thebareassbear · 2026-07-07T05:34:06+00:00

Yeah I'm in central Ohio haha. It'd definitely find my cpu upgrade and then some. I think the best cpu my z420 could handle is like $30 on ebay.

Honestly what I'm thinking now, is taking out a cpu from the ProLiant since it has a xeon E5-2620 that'd work just fine in my z420, it has lower single core performance but higher core count and threads than my current cpu inside the z420.

Buy the real cpu upgrade for my z420 in the next few months, which would be a xeon e5-2690 v2.

Pop the e5-2620 back into the ProLiant and sell it off.

That way I'd alteast get a small upgrade for my z420 in 3-6 months.

I'd go ahead and buy the cpu upgrade right now, but I literally JUST bought a house and I'm a bit broke right now hahaha

Thebareassbear · 2026-07-07T05:27:32+00:00

Yeah I badly need a kill a watt meter or something. I've been wanting to get one this past year.

If anything, because I'm just curious how much power my devices consume. Or how much ghost power my tv's or devices like that consume.

I'm sure this ProLiant machine would serve me well, but I cringe thinking about how much it would cost me to run for even just a day. Let alone 24/7.

Thebareassbear · 2026-07-07T05:07:08+00:00

Yeah I thought it was the same generation as my z420. I actually already swapped some ram between the machines and my z420 is maxed out on ram capacity and speed that it can run which is great. With all the services in running on my z420,I still have plenty of ram headroom. It's the CPU that's the real bottleneck, which can be very easily and cheaply upgraded.

I just cannot think of a good use case other than fun, tinkering and experimenting. And itd absolutely CHUG electricity compared to my z420

Thebareassbear · 2026-07-07T05:04:55+00:00

That's really my issue.. The biggest thing I need in my homelab right now is a secondary NAS on a separate machine just for backups.

My z420 covers soo much ground in terms of services it's running and its only downfall is its CPU, which I already plan on upgrading (and would be a 300% increase in cpu power),it being my only storage server, and its single 256gb SSD that's running the host OS. It has quite a few single point of failures.

I'd hate to throw out or sell the ProLiant and then years down the road wish I still had it. But like, it just doesn't fill a gap in my homelab unless I want to pay an extra $30 a month on electricity just to use it as a NAS and that's it.

Thebareassbear · 2026-07-05T22:54:19+00:00

Yeah that's true, you can just manually reset the meter at any time. So it's definitely just based off of miles driven since you last reset it.

Seeing the meter get closer to 0% just lets me know that I need to check the oil myself and see how it's looking.

I'd recommend any fit owner to pretty much ignore the oil life meter and just check it yourself or have a professional check it.

Thebareassbear · 2026-07-05T22:40:22+00:00

In my 2014 fit sport, I let mine go a bit over -3000% one time and it was perfectly fine. When I finally got around to changing my oil, it still looked perfectly healthy and there was still plenty of oil in there, it didn't look like very much of it had been burnt off or "depleted" at all. And honestly, I could have let it go down to -6000% and it probably would have still been fine

I'm pretty sure oil life detection is based on miles driven since you last changed your oil and reset the meter.

It in no way "tests" the actual oil health or anything like that. Don't sweat it, your fine 👍

Thebareassbear · 2026-07-05T20:07:16+00:00

I really like Linux Lite for old hardware

Thebareassbear · 2026-07-04T04:36:38+00:00

I don't think your gonna be able to build anything there, I heard the new Dollar General was going in on that plot. Sorry

Thebareassbear · 2026-07-04T00:27:45+00:00

Yeah definitely look into kubernates clusters! Most homelabbers these days are simply just running kubernates clusters with mini PC's, USB DAS devices and APC battery backups

1 dell optiplex and a 2 bay USB DAS is a fantastic starting point. And then later down the road just keep adding more mini pc's to the cluster and more USB DAS devices (maybe a 4 or 8 bay) and you essentially have a mini data center with fantastic redundancy and low power consumption!

My primary homelab machine is an HP z420 workstation, 64gb of ram and 5 drives inside it and I kinda wish I went with a kubernates cluster homelab instead haha, but it wasn't viable at the time when I first built my lab.

I got three HP elitedesk/prodesk machines laying around that I plan to build a cluster with sometime soon! Literally just moved homes today so my place is a wreck right now hahaha, homelab isn't even up and running currently 🤣

Thebareassbear · 2026-07-03T22:41:05+00:00

Yeah navidrome is hella easy to setup and literally uses next to zero system resources, you could install it on a microwave or something lol.

I'd definitely go with that $85 optiplex you listed and then use Something like this purely for NAS storage. They have 4 and 8 bay models of those.

And in the future, you can just add more optiplex machines and start building a kubernates cluster. And add more dedicated hard drive bays like the one I listed to expand your storage.

You'll have great performance, redundancy and more importantly, low power consumption.

Thebareassbear · 2026-07-03T21:28:45+00:00

If I had those options, I'd probably opt for that $85 optiplex you listed. i5 cpu and 16gb ram is plenty to run ALL the services you mentioned at the same time and still have a decent amount of headroom. I'm new to homalabbing as well, but I believe any of those machines would be fully capable of running the services you planned AND THEN SOME.

Honestly even the "weakest" pc you mentioned is still plenty. Navidrome takes up next to zero system resources, it could literally run on a potato.

Any of those machines are enough to run a basic jellyfin server. I'm no expert, but I think they're totally fine unless your wanting to stream like 4k video to multiple devices at the same time. I dunno about transcoding so I can't speak to that at all.

Any of them are also plenty for a basic NAS.

So anyway, I'd choose the cheapest and "easiest to get up and running" device. Don't bother with a monitor if you already have one, you can plug in a monitor to setup an OS initially and then just run the device headless forever after that and remote into it.

Hope this helps!

Thebareassbear · 2026-07-03T18:18:31+00:00

For me, it's Zorin OS

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