(still a newb.) Building PC for file storage only ( offline )

frldyz

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I'm slowly piecing together parts for my 2nd PC build.

We take 10'000's of pictures each year and lots of video. Currently I am storing these on multiple ext. HD's and a 4tb HD connected to my current PC ( online ).

The intent of this 2nd PC build is a PC to store these files on a seperate PC ( offline ) No risk of virus and malware etc...
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*I do not intend to do crazy editing etc... Maybe just photoshop.

Is there anything particular I want to look for in a CPU or APU to maximize my file transfering etc..
Basically we will connect our phones, camcorder ( rarely used ) and ext. HDD to the PC to stransfer files.

I understand USB 3.0 is the way to go. And windows 7 does not support USB 3.0 ( unless I add or download the right software ). In this situation would I want to install win 10 or win 7 and the correct software?

Anything particular I want to look for in a mobo to maximize the intent of this PC?
Suggest RAM size? ( I do not intend to run multiple programs at a time )
Suggested CPU / APU?

Thank you everyone.

** I am leaning towards AMD as my other PC is an intel and just want to try something new.


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Currently I have. AMD A6 7400k and Gigabyte F2A68HM-M mobo. I got these @ microcenter this past winter for $50 combo!!!!!
 
If it's just storage, then there are not a lot of limitations when it comes to CPU and RAM. If you are looking at a storage computer, you'll need a fast drive above all things. Yes, the CPU and RAM are important, but the biggest bottleneck is in the storage drive itself.

And if you are serious about viruses, you may want to try a Linux based OS. I would say BSD too, but those are not as user friendly as Debian based OSes, like Mint and Ubuntu, those two being the best option for beginners in my opinion.

If you have the money, you can invest in a USB 3.1 capable motherboard.
 
1.
If it's just storage, then there are not a lot of limitations when it comes to CPU and RAM. If you are looking at a storage computer, you'll need a fast drive above all things. Yes, the CPU and RAM are important, but the biggest bottleneck is in the storage drive itself.

And if you are serious about viruses, you may want to try a Linux based OS. I would say BSD too, but those are not as user friendly as Debian based OSes, like Mint and Ubuntu, those two being the best option for beginners in my opinion.

If you have the money, you can invest in a USB 3.1 capable motherboard.

1. What do you mean limitations?
-When I say storage it's just a PC that will be turned on when I need transfer photos. Which is maybe couple times a month. It will not be left on.
- I did purchase an Icy Dock dual bay RAID enclosure. I will keep my 2 large HDD's in there. The Icy Dock RAID enclosure will be connected to the MOBO via USB 3.0 cable. And like above it will only be connected and turned on when I need to transfer files.

2. I am interested in Linux but plan to do another build ( :p ) just for that. I'll play around with that until I'm comfortable to use it more.

Excuse me for not understanding what you mean by "limitations". My intent is a basic no frills PC with minimal running programs. It's pretty much only going to be turned on when I need to take photos/videos off my phone to store in a folder.

It's not going to be a NAS.
 
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My post got deleted, so I'll keep it short.

CPU and RAM don't affect as much as Drive write and read speeds and the interface data transfer rate (USB 3.0 in this case).

If I were you I'd get a cheap Celeron, 4Gb of memory and a USB 3.0 capable board, or an expansion card for an older one. If you want you can get a Kaby Lake microprocessor but it's not a big deal. New ones are in the 50-70$ ranges. You can always buy older used stuff, but USB 3.0 support may be harder to come by, although, as I said you can always use an expansion card.

About the OS, don't let Linux and the mighty terminal scare you. New distros are very user friendly and do not need terminal knowledge to work. You can always switch to Windows later if you want, but I don't think you will.

If you want I can put together a build for you and you tell me what you think. It would be helpful to know everything you already own, to make it simpler. Also, a budget.
 
My post got deleted, so I'll keep it short.

CPU and RAM don't affect as much as Drive write and read speeds and the interface data transfer rate (USB 3.0 in this case).

If I were you I'd get a cheap Celeron, 4Gb of memory and a USB 3.0 capable board, or an expansion card for an older one. If you want you can get a Kaby Lake microprocessor but it's not a big deal. New ones are in the 50-70$ ranges. You can always buy older used stuff, but USB 3.0 support may be harder to come by, although, as I said you can always use an expansion card.

About the OS, don't let Linux and the mighty terminal scare you. New distros are very user friendly and do not need terminal knowledge to work. You can always switch to Windows later if you want, but I don't think you will.

If you want I can put together a build for you and you tell me what you think. It would be helpful to know everything you already own, to make it simpler. Also, a budget.

1. So the CPU/APU I get does not matter in my situation? Is there anything as far as specs go that can with the CPU/APU help with boot time, shirt down time and transferring files? Would quad core be over kill? How about clock speed? Wouldn't a higher clock speed theoretically speed up my times?

* I will be booting off an SSD


2. Same as above but with mobo.

3. Linux doesn't intimidate me (....much). I am very interested however for this build I'm gonna go with familiarity ( Windows 10 albeit although I'm still a newb to 10 which has USB 3.0 compatibly)

****I do intend to do a Linux build here as well sometime soon. But that will be built and played with for a while until I get comfortable with it.
I like challenges and would like to do my Linux build for under $100. So get those parts altogether for the build for under $100 sounds like a fun challenge.


3. This past winter I stopped at micro center and got an AMD A6 7400k ( or 7600k ) with a gigabyte mobo that has USB 3.0. For under $50!!! I bought a case off newegg one day when they had a crazy daily deal on it. I beilive it's full size ATX ( or close to it ) it also has USB 3.0 ports in front and back and has a SDcard slot on top.




##### I'll send you a pm with everything I got


4. Does ram size or speed matter at all in this build. I'm assuming since there will be offline, have maybe 2 or 3 programs installed ( photoshop elements 14 ). I'm guessing 8gb of ram will never be utilized and 4gb of ram as well. Unless Win is ram hungry...
 
1. So the CPU/APU I get does not matter in my situation? Is there anything as far as specs go that can with the CPU/APU help with boot time, shirt down time and transferring files? Would quad core be over kill? How about clock speed? Wouldn't a higher clock speed theoretically speed up my times?

* I will be booting off an SSD


2. Same as above but with mobo.

3. Linux doesn't intimidate me (....much). I am very interested however for this build I'm gonna go with familiarity ( Windows 10 albeit although I'm still a newb to 10 which has USB 3.0 compatibly)

****I do intend to do a Linux build here as well sometime soon. But that will be built and played with for a while until I get comfortable with it.
I like challenges and would like to do my Linux build for under $100. So get those parts altogether for the build for under $100 sounds like a fun challenge.


3. This past winter I stopped at micro center and got an AMD A6 7400k ( or 7600k ) with a gigabyte mobo that has USB 3.0. For under $50!!! I bought a case off newegg one day when they had a crazy daily deal on it. I beilive it's full size ATX ( or close to it ) it also has USB 3.0 ports in front and back and has a SDcard slot on top.




##### I'll send you a pm with everything I got


4. Does ram size or speed matter at all in this build. I'm assuming since there will be offline, have maybe 2 or 3 programs installed ( photoshop elements 14 ). I'm guessing 8gb of ram will never be utilized and 4gb of ram as well. Unless Win is ram hungry...
You never judge a processor only by specs. Clock speeds and number of cores are meaningless if you don't know it's IPC value, and even so, using it would not be accurate. You need to look at benchmarks.

The setup you got will be just fine. RAM is a relatively important factor when transferring files. But the secondary memory (storage drives and such) are usually the biggest bottleneck. So if your drives are slow, getting incredibly fast RAM will be pointless, and since you are using standard HDDs (I'm just guessing), you probably don't need that.
The amount is important though. You don't want to run out or you are in trouble. I think 6Gb will be fine, less if you are using a 32bit OS (which is what I'd recommend). If so, then 4Gb should be fine.
 
I personally would go with a case with a plug n' play HDD docking for a new data transfer computer.

It's more user friendly than USB and less annoying to run once installed correctly.

It will connect the HDD's directly to SATA3 which is more than enough to avoid bottlenicking HDD's (SATA3 can handle up to 600MB/s) and all that's left is finding the fastest internal standard HDD's with as much cache memory as possible and a safe storage for those HDD's.

Fastest single un-RAIDed HDD's in the world (at least affordable ones) don't even come close to half that 600MB/s speed.

In your case size is more important than speed when it comes to HDD's (not the connection) so SSD's are out of the question.

I own both a case with HDD docking and a USB 3.0 docking. Both run as fast with my HDD's but the USB docking gets annoying at times in practice. I'm using this same model of the case but an Nvidia edition color scheme:
006.jpg

and it never once disappointed me. It does take SSD's too, for the info.
 
I personally would go with a case with a plug n' play HDD docking for a new data transfer computer.

It's more user friendly than USB and less annoying to run once installed correctly.

It will connect the HDD's directly to SATA3 which is more than enough to avoid bottlenicking HDD's (SATA3 can handle up to 600MB/s) and all that's left is finding the fastest internal standard HDD's with as much cache memory as possible and a safe storage for those HDD's.

Fastest single un-RAIDed HDD's in the world (at least affordable ones) don't even come close to half that 600MB/s speed.

In your case size is more important than speed when it comes to HDD's (not the connection) so SSD's are out of the question.

I own both a case with HDD docking and a USB 3.0 docking. Both run as fast with my HDD's but the USB docking gets annoying at times in practice. I'm using this same model of the case but an Nvidia edition color scheme:
006.jpg

and it never once disappointed me. It does take SSD's too, for the info.


I never thought of a docking station. That's interesting. Right now I purchased an ICY RAID dock enclosure. So I will have my 2 HDD's in there in RAID 1. And when I need to transfer files I will just connect the USB 3.0 to the computer and transfer directly to the ICY DOCK which will have 2 4TB HDDs in RAID 1.
 
I guess since the portable solution is already there and a RAID setup is in mind, I guess the docking tower won't be that helpful unless it is a backup solution. Using the provided USB cable would be more practical then than having to detach one of them and use it on the docking (and still that won't work with all RAID setups). Well maybe if detaching one (depending on the RAID setup) is faster than connecting the USB and dealing it's drawbacks (like cables and response times if any). Hopefully USB 3 gets the full potential of your HDD's speed with you.

I guess that's all I can help with then. Sorry about that.
 
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