[Dougie Fresh]

Fractal Design Node 304 or Lian-Li PC-Q25, Q08, (or similar)
ASUS P8H77-I motherboard
Intel Celeron G1610 CPU
4GB RAM
SeaSonic SS-300ET 300W 80+ Bronze PSU
Seagate NAS or WD Red HDDs
Separate O/S SSD or USB thumb drive (depends on your O/S choice)

[htpcnas]

Thanks very much Dougie. The Celeron G1610 is 55W cpu...isn't that a bit too much for a NAS?

Also, although the Fractal and Lian cases you recommended are great, they are a bit too dear for me What do you think of the Cooler Master Elite 120 Advanced Black Case?

[nickr]

Without trying to sound rude htpcnas you really need to do some of the research yourself. You keep asking for prices, but I don't think you have even told us where you live. Tech prices vary widely around the world. If you live in the US it is extremely easy to look up prices on newegg.com.

How much power consumption is too much is entirely a matter for you. A NAS is just a server. You can build it any old how you can. If you are on a budget buy a second hande tower computer and bung a whole lot of hard drives in it.

Also if the four ports in your "superhub" are insufficient, then a 5 or 8 port switch is pretty cheap, and you can piggyback it off the "superhub".

By the way the diagram in your earlier post doesn't show up for me.

[htpcnas]

Without trying to sound rude htpcnas you really need to do some of the research yourself. You keep asking for prices, but I don't think you have even told us where you live. Tech prices vary widely around the world. If you live in the US it is extremely easy to look up rpices on newegg.com.

How much power consumption is too much is entirely a matter for you. A NAS is just a server. You can build it any old how you can. If you are on a budget buy a second hande tower computer and bung a whole lot of hard drives in it.

Also if the four ports in your "superhub" are insufficient, then a 5 or 8 port switch is pretty cheap, and you can piggyback it off the "superhub".

By the way the diagram in your earlier post doesn't show up for me.

I really do apologise as i dont want to be seen as not trying to look into this myself. The problem is that everyone has different needs, hence require different types of specs. For me it's about budget and power consumption, so long as it can do the streaming of two 1080p movies

Like you said, I can buy second hand, but i don't know what 2nd hand hardware spec would give me the low power consumption, yet give me enough to stream 2 hd movies.

The superhub has enough ethernet ports for my needs, but someone had asked me if had usb port, which i told them it didn't

[nickr]

I misunderstood your comment about the router. Anyway most of those routers that have a USB port to connect an external drive to, and which then act as a NAS are so low powered that they probably wouldn't reliably stream two high bitrate movies anyway, so I wouldn't recommend trying even if you could.

Older hardware does tend to use more power, so if that is a priority for you then you will have to trade off the higher cost of new or relatively new gear.

If you really want lowest possible power, haswell (ie the new intel line of chips) is not far away, but again will likely to fetch a premium price when first released.

[htpcnas]

Right thank you for explaining. I assume by Haswell, you mean the i3, i5 and i7 models? IMHO, i5 and i7 would be way out of my price range, but if I did go for the i3 processor, can you recommend a certain model that could do what I'm looking for? If it's still too expensive or in your opinion an overkill, then I'll stick with the celeron.

Also although I do have a gigabit network, how can I make it even more faster? I've heard you can get two nics and somehow combine them to get much faster data transfers on the network...any ideas?

[nickr]

I thought there was a haswell celeron coming out. If so it will be amply sufficient to run a server. In fact your only objection to running the Intel Celeron G1610 CPU was power consumption.

[htpcnas]

Yes, it's supposed to come out this month and it's only 15W, although not sure if it could handle simultaneous movie stream as it's only 1.4GHz dual-core:-

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Celeron...23622.html

I still need to build a pc for the kids, so I'm therefore I just want to clarify somethings:-

1. Other than power consumption, what's the difference between G1610 and G1610T?

2. The celeron G1610 is only £33, but it''s bigger brother, the G1620 is only an extra £5, i.e. for £37 and still 55 TDP. I've checked their ranking and it looks like there is quite a difference in speeds, so should I go for the G1610 or the G1620?

3. Also although I do have a gigabit network, how can I make it even more faster? I've heard you can get two nics and somehow combine them to get much faster data transfers on the network...any ideas?

[buzzqw]

just for comparison

my hp microserver (1.5ghz dual core) use 1% of cpu while streaming movie fullhd using nfs...

and has no problem streaming 2 fullhd movies (over gigabit ethernet) (movie on different hard drive)

BHH

[htpcnas]

buzzqw - thank you.

how well does it run, streaming 2 full hd movies at the same time? ...also how do you ff/rew movies whilst they are streaming? Because mine start freezing or take ages to jump to the point I want them to.

[buzzqw]

streaming isnt' cpu intensive task, at all. Never get over 5% (using SMB, less efficent then NFS) streaming 2 files (one vs NUC, one vs Acer Nettop 330/ION).

I can seek /ffw without problem, but remenber.. to use different hard disks (i have 1 disk for Kid, one for Film, one for Series, one for...) or a fast raid

BHH

[Dougie Fresh]

I don't know what else to say to convince anyone you don't need a powerful CPU in a NAS. If you're transcoding on-the-fly to different devices, that's different. If you're just sharing files on your network, CPU has nothing to do with it at all. I wish the ASUS C60M1-I were still widely and cheaply available like it was just a few months ago. In a tower case you have more options for motherboards. Just find a 4-6 SATA port motherboard with good quality and reviews and stick the cheapest Intel processor in it you can find (usually the G1610). I put forward the P8H77-I because for mini-ITX it's a great board with 6 x SATA ports -- something not as easy to find these days in mini-ITX like it was only six months ago.

G1610 is going to use maybe 20W in a NAS. An array of HDDs will consume more power.

No need to take the word of a system builder though .

Tough crowd on the interwebs today .

BTW, HP MicroServer is definitely worth looking at if you don't want to DIY.

[cwide]

Dougie is spot on.

Streaming multiple high bitrate files takes no CPU power at all. Just network/client ability. You said you have Gig network.... unless you plan on streaming 10+ 3D movies at the same time you will be ok.

Transcoding multiple high bitrate files takes a lot of CPU power.

People have already given you suggestions for both.

Just streaming? Get something cheap and low power with many SATA connections.
Transcoding? Celeron G1610 or higher.

Not too difficult a decision.

[htpcnas]

I really do apologise as I wasn't clear in why I asked about the CPUs. The reason I was asking is because I'm going to build a nas and a PC for kids, so I just wanted to know if it's worth it to pay an extra £5 to go for the G1620 for the PC for some extra horsepower, but same wattage. I did mention this in Post #3 and #23:-

So Really, I'm looking to purchase/build:-

1. A NAS for central storage/movie streamer which will be on 24/7
2. A basic cheap pc that has at least the same power as my previous htpc.
3. A portable media player, such as WDTV Live or Raspberry Pi


Sorry for any confusion ...it's the old age guys!

[Christer K]

Regarding your lack of networkspeed something is very wrong with either the router or your cables,hence the tip in buying a switch.

The 5 quid, it´s yours to spend or save The remarkable thing is that you´ve got a whole bunch of excellent answers that you blatantly ignores old age or not, that´s rude.

Over and out.