Home "server" from a laptop?

Question

laptops

Good afternoon. The question is banal, it is clear even from the title. :)
I want to put a typewriter at home for my modest needs:

• a cloud for files (for volumes larger than 5-15 GB, I transfer anything less with flash drives or mail/Yandex clouds),
  
• movies torrent downloader,
  
• video storage and/or media server for smart TV,
  
• vpn host for a couple of mobile phones,
  
• in the distant future, I may pick up 1-2 surveillance cameras - this is not a fact, therefore it does not really play a role,
  

There will be few users, literally 3-5 "home" people. From my point of view, the peak load is downloading torrents, since there are a lot of incoming connections (everything else is downloaded / given in 1 stream). By itself, this does not expose special requirements for iron. Unless you need more RAM so that you can do the whole thing on Windows (without delving into the console) and, maybe, spread it across different virtual machines (is it necessary?).
I am attracted by the opportunity to buy such a laptop for a couple of thousand (even without a screen) and get a very economical system unit with an integrated UPS. If, suddenly, there is a discrete video in the laptop, then it will be possible to turn on movies from it on TV (if not, then just as storage for smart TV).
I think any laptop for the last 10 years should be suitable, as long as the processor is at least core2duo and 4 GB of RAM. I'll pump the system and software onto a small ssd, put a regular hdd instead of a floppy drive under the file storage.
Question to the community - do I correctly imagine the required level of iron or do I need something more productive?
Thanks for participating. :-)

Answer 1

for a home server I use no beech ao521-12Dcc [1 core 1.7 GHz, 4 RAM], copes with:
works quietly and does not heat up, once a year prevention - cleaning from dust

Answer 2

Better buy a normal router, it can do all this (except for cameras).

Answer 3

if the media server intends to transcode video, then core2duo or some old turion will not suffice. Plus, there are problems with connecting several railways, if you want to raid, and so on. If such a device were useful to me, I would go along the beaten path, I would assemble a more or less full-fledged nas.

Answer 4

Taking into account the fact that people launch something like this on devices a little more powerful than an accounting calculator, everything will be fine except for video playback and recoding.

Answer 5

If it is done for the future, then it is better to look towards mini-itx or thin-itx motherboards, with a built-in or some kind of low-heating stone to stir up passive cooling.
On a laptop, in principle, it is also possible, but laptops are not very suitable for this, because:
1. A laptop has a maximum of 2 sata ports on board, i.e. you will not insert more than two hdds without resorting to usb-sata, pci-e-sata adapters. 2. Sata ports are more common than version 2.0, otherwise it happens that hdd-shny can be 3.0 and odd- shny
is almost 1.0, which reduces the speed of the disk subsystem
and flooded with keyboard, then this decides something
4. Cooling the power supply and laptop is not very designed to work 24/7/365
5. The laptop battery is not designed to work as a UPS
In general, if you want a server, then you need to assemble the server, and if you want Frankenstein, then assemble Frankenstein.
Yes, and why are you pinched behind the window, but if you were building a NAS based on a laptop mother, you would do this:
1. To both sata via hdd with movies / software / torrents, etc.
2. To a flash drive, rather sd, from 1g and then 512 would put something from FreeNAS
3. In usb / pci hdd-shki with photos, backups and other little-needed / low-load garbage
---
In addition, you can put a full-fledged rather than mobile video on itx and give it video transcoding or simultaneous generation of 3-4 streams for TVs, from which the laptop card will be bent even if it finds a sufficient number of connectors, well, it’s easier to assemble / sort out / expand