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What about PCIe? Yes, since you kept your GPU and NIC out of the PCIe slots, the blue 16x one can now be leveraged for storage, which is where your server actually has a chance to shine. I recommend getting yourself a Dell PERC H310 that's been pre-flashed to IT Mode. What that means is that the H310, which is a cheap, crappy RAID controller, has been turned into a Host Bus Adapter (HBA). HBAs pass their drives directly through to the operating system instead of managing them as a RAID array, and this is exactly what you want if you're going to take advantage of Unraid or ZFS in Proxmox. The little black 1x PCIe slot is perfect for a USB 3 add-in card, which will run you between $12 and $30, depending on how many and what kind of ports you want on it. And Speaking of Storage... Fill it full of hard drives (or SSDs, If you can get them). Your case looks like it will take at least four more, maybe more if you buy or 3D print some adapters to mount hard drives in your 5.25" bays. 2TB 3.5" SAS drives are going for around $30 on eBay now. SAS drives are faster and more reliable than SATA drives, and when you're buying used, they also tend to be cheaper. You'll need SAS SFF-8087 to 4x SFF-8482 Breakout Cables to connect SAS or SATA drives to your PERC H310. You can use up to two cables to connect up to 8 drives, assuming you can find places to mount them all. For that, there are clever solutions, such as adapter brackets that allow you to cram two or three 2.5" drives into a single 3.5" bay. Check Thingiverse.com and Printables.com for models and see if a friend or your local library has a 3D printer you can use. Running a Modern Operating System on this Thing Your PC already has one hard drive, but it probably isn't large, and probably is both slow and worn out. The specs of your system suggest that the drive probably has Windows XP installed on it. I'd wager a copy of Cyberpunk 2077 on that, by the way- mostly because if I'm wrong and it's Vista, you'd deserve some kind of consolation prize. In any case, you'll want to replace that drive if you can, or at least wipe it. Then install either Unraid or Proxmox (with ZFS). With either, you'll be able to use their "software RAID" features to pool all the drives in the system with built-in reundancy. Or if you want, you could instead load your preferred distro of Linux and run ZFS and Docker. But I wouldn't recommend that, as I don't know how comfortable you are with CLIs and using a desktop on this system will NOT be pleasant. There, I did it. Et viola. For $460-$500 in mostly used parts, you can make that PC the best it can be: a multipurpose homelab server, albeit an old and weak one. Still, it should have enough muscle to run a couple containers. Here are some useful ones to consider trying out: -Copyparty (a very fast file server) -HomeAssistant (a popular smart home controller) -Plex or Jellyfin (popular media servers) -Guacamole (an excellent hub for remote access to other devices in your lab) Just remember- for about half of that price, you could get this Lenovo ThinkCentre M720Q miniPC. It's a much better deal. Half the price gets you the same number of cores, same number of threads, quadrouple the RAM, and 10x the network speed, not to mention the benefits of newer CPU instruction sets, DDR4 memory, integrated graphics, Intel Quicksync, NVME storage, and PCI Gen 3 speeds. It's far newer, faster, and more capable; it would generate a fraction of the heat and noise while consuming a fraction of the power, and it also can even take a full-size x16 PCIe gen3 card, allowing you to connect a DAS or disk shelf full of hard drives. Or hell, if you want to spend the full $500 anyway, you could buy two of those M720Qs and build a Proxmox cluster!