Currently using unraid on a cheapo i3 and a heavily discounted motherboard from good ol' MicroCenter.
i3 and a gigabyte Z170X-UD3. I couldn't pass it up, the board turned out costing $4 after bundle deal. 
After my trek, I found that the i3 is plenty good for regular video playback, but it can't transcode for anything,
and it kinda stinks as a vm host. (skylake non-k i3.)
My predicament:
Should i pony up and get a used r710 or similar on ebay?(please correct me with better suggestions if that's the case)
Or just recycle my (aging) gaming rig as a replacement and rebuild a new gaming rig?
Never dealt with real server hardware, but i'm really interested in learning as much as i can about it.
I'm a little concerned about power consumption as it'll be running 24/7. I run my gaming rig 24/7, but i'm not familiar enough with server hardware to comprehend the actual consumption over just an overclocked gaming rig. I don't live in California, so power isn't SUPER expensive but a burden I don't want to double if that's the case.
Current gaming rig specs:
[email protected]
x79 deluxe
32g pny 1866
gtx 1080
I've got a bunch of refurb 2tb drives that i've scrounged up at microcenter, they're all Sata 3.5" drives. All of them in the unraid nas in parity.
TLDR;
Recycle 6core gaming rig into unraid nas for transcoding or buy a used server on ebay?
Use: Transcoding & vm's.
If server; suggestions?
If recycle; reason?
Thanks folks 
I think the gaming rig would serve you well. How much transcoding and what type of vms we looking at?
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A bunch, 4 people attempting to stream simultaneously at random times.
As far as vm's go, I have a bunch lined up all for different things. I like to have multiple instances of ubuntu/other distos, each for it's own use. Along with a version of win 7,8,10. Mainly just learning/compatibility.
I used to do it all on the gaming rig, but it's nice to have those away from my personal files, games and other data in case i really mess something up
I'd also like to re-encode my media library in x265 at some point (~3tb), where more than a handful of cores would certainly help. But i'm the noob here I don't have the wealth of knowledge to make an informed decision.
If you need to transcode and your gaming rig is on 24/7 anyway just use the spare time that you're not using that machine to transcode everything.
Also, if power is really expensive in Cali, take out your calculator and do some math on how much would cost to run your current machine and a new one 24/7 and think about using a cloud service for all of those things.
The i3 system would be nice to have to stream media with your preferred platform or to experiment with OSs and various software configurations.
P.S. I think that your gaming machine is more than capable and you don't need a new one. If you're satisfied with the performance don't bother asking if you need to make a new system or not