Steam Streaming & File Share Server Idea

IrishMetalhead

Have to say goodbye to my old Atom NAS, it's finally given the ghost after 8 or 9 years of service.
While I was going through Amazon picking up components to build a new one I had a bit of an idea, originally I was going just pick up a ITX motherboard with a Basewell Celeron, some DDR3 and throw it the old case install FreeNAS again and call it a day but then I got to thinking adding a GPU so I can run Steam on it so I can stream games to my GPD Win. I figured a Basewell CPU will be enough for 720p gaming along with a decent GPU.
Obviously I would have to install Windows as the OS rather than FreeNAS and I would need to add a extra storage drive for Windows, Steam and the games to run off of so I may pick up a 250GB or 500GB SSD as well.
The reason I would prefer to stream from the NAS rather than my main machine is that the NAS is on 24/7 and I don't like leaving my PC on all the time when I'm not using it.
Was thinking of using a RX 460 as the GPU since is low power, cheap and more than enough to run any game at 720p (The GPD Win's native resolution) but I'm thinking maybe that might be overkill so any advice there would be appreciative.
Also the NAS won't be connected to a monitor I'm going to have it in cabinet by my router, instead I'm going to install TeamViewer to access it in case I need to change any settings or make sure everything is okay, will the cause any issues with Steam's streaming?
Also is this idea even at all feasible?

AlmightyCushion

Would the celeron hold up for gaming in the long run? It might be okay now (I stress might because I don't actually know) but what about 2/3 years from now?

IrishMetalhead

That's one of my initial concerns with this project so I'm not 100% sure if I will be using that processor for sure but I would like to keep the power draw as low as possible however a quad-core Celeron may not be enough considering it will need to be able to send/receive files or stream video while potentially steam games simultaneously as a worse case scenario so 4 threads might not be enough anyway and I've yet to see a low cost/low power hex core cpu unfortunately

IrishMetalhead

After doing a bit more research I found out Steam does require a monitor to stream so it looks like I'll have to order a HDMI monitor emulator as well, which I'm okay with since they seem very cheap:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/CompuLab-fit-Headless-x/dp/B00FLZXGJ6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1488149519&sr=8-1&keywords=headless+hdmi

ED E

On the NAS side are you going for storage spaces then?

Getting a board with onboard graphics and doing an Unraid setup like Linus did might be a better option? Pipe the discrete card out to a windows VM thats purely a games host and let Unraid manage the disks. You can then also set resource allocations so games dont suck but the SMB/whatever shares arent starved.

IrishMetalhead

Yes, the NAS side is purely storage using 2 4TB hard drives in a Raid1 configuration to store and play music, videos and pictures as well as some work documentation, the most intensive use for the file storage would be streaming 1080p videos at the very most.
I remember that Unraid video from his 8 gamers one CPU video and was fairly impressed but don't you have to pay for Unraid?

Serephucus

You do, but it's less than Windows, especially if you're only going to be using a couple of disks.

I'd vote for unRAID as well with this. Seems like it would make more sense. The only thing you need to make sure of is that the CPU you're buying supports VT-d (not just VT-x) so as to allow you to pass the GPU through to the VM properly.

IrishMetalhead

That's true but I already have a VLC for Windows 10 Pro so Windows won't be costing me anything anyway.
Was thinking about thanking the CPU to a Kabylake hyper-threaded Pentium, going to be 60w instead of 6w but the higher clock speed should make up for the lack of threads, plus it supports unRAID so if just having 1 single Windows install doesn't work then I can revisit the unRAID idea

Serephucus

Well you'd still need the Windows key for the VM. The unRAID cost would be extra. There's a free 1 month trial (and possible to get an extension, AFAIK) so you could always have a play around with it first.

IrishMetalhead

I can always switch to a unRAID setup later down the line if I get a Kabylake based build, rather not complicate things more then they need be so going to experiment with a single Windows install first and if I experience any bandwidth allocation issues, pretty sure you can set the max bandwidth use when you set up streaming on Steam so it might not be an issue.
Anyway have a budget of €200 (not including the GPU and SSD they'll be added later down the line) for the NAS itself.
So I'll need a CPU, RAM, Motherboard (with RAID 1 and 10 support), case and powersupply.
Figure I'll need a new case and psu since the ITX case I used with my last NAS used a 90W external PSU which won't be enough to power a decent CPU plus potentially 4 hard drives, SSD and GPU.
Been trying to configure a Kabylake Pentium build but can't get it within budget due to how much H270 boards cost so it looks like I might be looking at older hardware so unRAID might not even be a possibility anymore.