theFazZproject

The only downside I see is that they can't hold many drives, and that might be a bit of a waste since smartly using multiple drives is one of the big advantages of TrueNAS/HexOS.
Those machines might be good to use as a proxmox cluster, and then maybe have another machine (maybe one of those in a different case?) with more drives that runs HexOS. Or possibly run HexOS as a VM on proxmox... How many did you get?

Whatever you do, I'm sure you'll have fun!

Thanks Mawson and all good points 😸

I have about eight of them (possible more in the coming months) but have been messing with them for a couple of weeks, pushing them probably a lot more than they were ever designed for... such as cutting and re-cabling the PSU from 6pin to 24pin to use a standard ATX PSU 🤓

I got a riser for a GPU on two of them, shoved a 3060 and 4060 on each and which managed to run GTA: V (on and offline) set to high (no max) without issues at 1440 HDR 60fps. At 2160 it was more between 50-60fps.

I had a couple M.2 to adapters that allow for 4-5 SATA's and these Optiplex 3050's have 2x M.2's, so currently booting off one and using the adapter on the other. I forget which (might share later if i remember and if anyone is interested) but i think those machine don't like the JMB585 chipset (TBC) but the other i had (TBA) worked fine 😜

I have a Synology DS920+ with 4x 18TB, but was looking to upgrade them to 24TB's, but of course... cost is a little high for me right now 😭

I was not sure if should replace them too and just add another NAS. I looked at other brands naturally, but I'm in limbo with it all, but very low on storage space, so need to figure it out soon... unless crypto jumps another 100% then... no issues with costs then 😆

Meanwhile, i will see if i can get HexOS to manage another part of storage, purely as a test and see how that goes. This all is not my area of expertise, as I'm just a freelance film and audio editor, a bit of game dev, freelance creative teacher (most film and photography) and games tester... so all this is is far above me and my tiny brain 🙃

It's fun either way and happy to experiment with it, if it also means a more flexible and cost effective future when it comes to storage, as i stopped using Googley for storage a few years ago and most online cloud services not long after. I do keep an off-site back, but that's done manually at present. I'm hoping i can setup a simple remote backup with the above (HexOS etc) and allow access/backup for my partner (as she takes a lot of photos) and allow access to my personal media to all family via the above in some form (desktop or mobile) too 🤓

...in general and how i have lived for the past 20-ish years (of my almost 50 years on our beloved planet), if it's not fun, it's not worth doing 😽

Happy gaming one and all 🕹️

So you went full chop shop on them. Got it! LOL

More power to you mate!