Well I have been using an old gaming PC as NAS after it’s GPU died, and even though it has served me greatly, it’s a power hog. Also CPU is pretty old to do any transcoding or AI stuff. I have scored a mini PC with Intel N5105 for free, and its quite power efficient. Also it doesn’t have SATA, but two nvme m2 slots, one of which can work with these m2 Sata adapters (asm1166 chip with 6 SATA ports). Now minipc obviously can’t power up the 5 hardrives, all 3.5" SATA, so I need an external power supply. minipc got it’s own adapter brick, so is there a similar adapter that can work for drives, or I have to get a PSU. But then again, If I am getting a PSU, I wonder if I could power the MiniPC off it as well.
I did came across this , and was wondering if this could be that would work for me.
The almost free method is use the PSU from the old PC, and grab a 5V relay with flyback diode to trigger the PS_ON pin and run that off a USB port on the mini PC. That way the PSU powers up automatically with the rest.
Not a bad idea, but I was thinking of giving my PC to a younger sibling with a cheaper GPU, so get them into PC gaming so they stop bothering me for switch 2.
The only reason I am tempted by the above is because of their smaller brick size.