Can I use any of this stuff to build a new FreeNAS?

[TweakerG]

My current freenas setup is old and slow. Core2duo 8gb of ram and 8tb of storage, but it has a decent chassis, hard drives, and psu. I recently got a server from work that has dual xeon e5540's and 48gb of ecc ddr3 ram in 4gb sticks. I could just use this but seems like a power hog and those processors are old. Also if I understand correctly I can't run vm's with that processor.

I want to upgrade but there seem to be a lot of different options and I want to go as cheap as I can but still work well for what I want. I mainly use it for Plex (3 or 4 users transcoding up to 1080p), sabnzbd, sonarr, radarr, and storage for pictures and stuff. I also want to be able to run a vm so I can run unifi video on it.

Can I utilize some of that ddr3 ram and only have to buy a mobo processor combo? If so what would be the best bang for my buck with what I want to do?

 

[HoneyBadger]

What brand/model is the server, or is it a "whitebox" custom build? Motherboard model if it is.

Depending on the board and the RAM slots available, my suggestion would be to pull one of the processors, possibly replace it with something from the 5600-series of Xeons assuming there's support (although your E5540s will run VMs just fine - where are you reading they won't?) - the E5645 is a cheap hex-core that will give you tons of processing power for VMs if you go that route.

 

[TweakerG]

I've had problems getting vms to start so I came across a few posts about 5540s not doing virtualization. Here's one
https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...-support-vms-in-freenas-freenas-corral.59097/

I'm pretty sure the server is a rebranded Advantech fwa6500.

So you think just replace the 5540s with 5645s and I'll be rocking?