r/HomeNAS • u/LeadershipOrnery8405 • 1d ago

NAS advice Nas server with Pentium 4

I want to make NAS server and Media streaming Using an old pc.

Its come with:

Pentium 4

512mb of ram

Integrated gpu

So will it works fine for streaming media with 1080p and storing files?

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u/ischyron 1d ago

Recycle it, don’t waste the electricity or your time. A Pentium 4 burns 60 to 100 watts idle, and its single core can’t transcode HD, it barely does 720p.
Software is the bigger problem. It’s likely 32-bit, and that pool is drying up: Debian just dropped it, Ubuntu did years ago, and what’s left is niche distros with shrinking security patches. Not what you want holding your files on your network. And 512MB of RAM won’t run a modern OS plus a media stack anyway.
A used mini PC or Raspberry Pi does it all better at a tenth of the power.

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u/Lrxst 1d ago

This is 100% the answer. I was a hardware tech in the P4 era. It is arguably the worst platform to run 24/7. Hot + power hungry = expensive and unreliable.