Full guide here for Linux Mint. But the easy version is:

1. Download iso

2. Create bootable USB drive

3. Boot to that USB drive

4. Press next a bunch in the Mint installer

If you have two computers, highly recommend dipping your toes in with Linux on the secondary one. That way any stress related to the unknown is much reduced.

My suggestion: Raspberry Pi (or any other computer) connected via an HDMI port. Use any photo program of your choosing. Many, many available for linux.

Fucking around with TV OSes is a PITA and is best to just be avoided.

For the money angle, something like a Digital Ocean droplet would be appropriate here. They are $4/mo and you don’t even need to run the thing all the time, just when you need an app version approved.

You don’t need to give them a premier experience, you aren’t trying to sell them on the features of your app. It just needs to function.

Load in those 20 royalty free songs and let the algorithm suck at picking the next of the 20.

Yes, iOS app approval is a pain in the ass (this is one of the reasons there is so much fuss about app store policies and anti-competitive practices). They do test the app and if it has to connect to a server, they will ask you to provide such for them to test against.

Setup a virtual host that you only turn on when they need to approve a new version. Give it some royalty free music to serve.

For DIY, just about any setup would work fine as long as you put it in a case with lots of bays. Throw 2 or 3 of these in there* and you now have however many ports are on the motherboard (probably 2 or 4) plus 8-12 more ports available via the cards.

*I’m not recommending that specific card, just something that gives you SATA ports on a PCI-E card. Just pay attention to bandwidth bottlenecks on the cards. Here is a table of PCI-E speeds.

Since you are looking to build up to 12 bays, what you can do is buy that 4x 12TB drive set now, transfer everything over to the new system, then add the old 12TB drives into the array one-by-one expanding it to an 8x 12TB array. This ensures no data loss, nor wasted drives.

Edit: Also with 8 drives, consider using RAID 6 instead of RAID 5. It’s almost the same thing, it just has two redundancy drives instead of one. Depending on how full your current RAID is, you may or may not need to start the new array with 5x 12TB drives instead of 4 due to the lower capacity when using RAID 6.

It’s a very old 1080p Sharp TV. I know it does have WiFi which I have not setup, but that certainly doesn’t mean the WiFi is off.

I’ll have to see if there is some way to disable the WiFi completely and re-measure it.

The UPS should have a USB plug in the back. Plug that into your computer and it will read the battery status as if it was a laptop. Then in your OS, set the standard shutdown options when low on battery.

A note on the fans specifically, you can buy quiet fans. In general, the larger the fan, the lower the speed you can run it and the quieter it is. You can also setup fan curves so they are only doing anything of note when the computer is pumping out heat (given your statements, that would be basically never).

The electricity usage is a pretty notable thing. Though, if you take the graphics card out of a desktop (use integrated graphics, a dedicated graphics card in a server is just wasted electricity) and set the OS to power saver (this mostly means it won’t boost the CPU to higher clocks), it really won’t use much power. Compared to buying dedicated NAS hardware, you may never recoup the energy costs between the hardware you have and the lower-power hardware you need to buy.

If you don’t already own one, a Kill-A-Watt is a great tool to have. Tells you how much energy a device is using. Biggest thing I found was my TV had a vampire draw of 15W. Literally draws 15W while off. This got the TV put on a power strip I turn off when I’m not using it.

Now, with all that said, sometimes you just want what you want. And there is nothing wrong with that. My goal here is to make sure you don’t feel you have to pick one option over the other.

If you have a desktop, throw a hard drive or two in it and you have a NAS. Software (like you mentioned Plex or Jellyfin) does the rest. Even if you only have a laptop, a hard drive in a standard USB enclosure will perform this role just fine.

What are you intending to run on this server?

• If it is just PiHole, you can basically get the weakest computer you can find.

• If you want lots of storage space, you will need to make sure you have a case and motherboard that will accommodate the drives.

• If you are running encryption on those drives as well, you will need a CPU more powerful than what comes in a Pi, but nothing crazy.

• If you are running lots and lots of VMs, you will want lots of RAM. A linux VM will use maybe a few GB each depending on what software each is running internally, a windows vm will use a bit more.

• If you are doing AI workloads, you will need a graphics card.

Ah, only the dozenth time this has happened and been fixed…

I’m sure Microsoft doesn’t do it on purpose all the time!

Your bank almost certainly has a way to mail checks on a schedule.

Autopay is the way.

Growing up impoverished certainly teaches one poor lessons for how to get out of poverty; however people have the ability to learn and modify their behavior. Helping one modify their behavior in positive ways must be encouraged as it is one of the ways out of the cycle.

Those are both solid pieces of hardware. However, I would suggest getting a Ryzen 5600 for a notable per-core CPU buff over the 3600x, which should help quite a bit with games like Civ’s AI turn time. And since that CPU, Motherboard socket isn’t latest-gen either, you can buy used for cheap still.

Ryzen 3600x vs Ryzen 5600.

On a slightly different note: The 7k series Ryzen CPUs get you on the latest slot, AM5. This will get you future upgradability if you want it, but it will also come with higher costs as AM5 is the newest socket, so people aren’t unloading them onto the used market in quantity. Such cost considerations are best determined by you. Both are a solid choice though.

For the GPU, I think the Radeon 6600 is a good choice. Radeon stuff works better in linux and that particular one is plenty strong for what you listed.

I highly, highly recommend PassMark’s benchmarks for comparing hardware. They are the first place I look to get relative numbers. And from there I determine what I need/want.

Single-thread CPU chart

GPU Chart

Reseat the button cell for the bios?

This is a good one too! And if you have a volt-meter, see if it’s low (or just replace it if you have a spare).

Since it is something with the computer itself and not the OS, some things to try:

• Check for any motherboard status lights.
• Reseat your RAM.
• Run a memtest. Let it do a full pass, takes ~3 hours. If you see anything more than a single error, it’s the RAM.
• Reset your BIOS to factory settings.
• Update your BIOS.
• Reset your CMOS.
• As redxef said, unplug from the wall, hit the power button a few times to fully drain the system, then plug back in.
• Unplug everything you possibly can. Leave just a single monitor, a single stick of RAM, the cpu, and the power cable plugged in. Literally nothing else, not even a keyboard. (You will need to keep your graphics card plugged in as the 2700x doesn’t have onboard graphics)
• Swap to a different single stick of RAM and put it in a different slot.
• Visually inspect for any exploded or bulging capacitors.
• If you have gotten to here, swap in any spare parts you have from the prior list. Different graphics card, different ram stick, different monitor, different cpu or mobo if you have one.
• Unplug/replug your internal power cables, and unplug any unnecessary internal cables (fans, rgb, etc) (Is it this? Probably not, but we are getting to the desperate part of the list.)
• Reseat your CPU (don’t forget to clean off and re-apply thermal paste)
• Cry a little

The goal is to narrow down which piece of hardware is failing.

The Framework 12 has a touchscreen, which the OP wants. I have the 13 and can vouch for it’s quality and upgradibility.

Though, OP also only wants to spend 300€ max used, so, both of our posts are out of the running.