[rubenmiranda]

Newbie here, I have someone that wants to build a new server for a small office.
Not sure exactly what I need for the central server that will be storing all the videos or exactly how it all works.
Right now the workstations us UPNP streaming.
If I build a new server would a six core i7 and 10k RPM drives do the trick? or do I also need a fast video card in the server?
Also, is 4gb of ram enough?

I tried googling but it seems most answers have to do with a single computer.
thanks

[nokdim]

If it is just a server you do not need a fast video card as the clients will be doing all the video processing.

I have 4 clients at home and 1 central server which is an old Dell Optiplex 620 with 2 Gig of Ram and a dual core processor that is no i series.

since all you will be doing is streaming from the server it does not ened much RAM or CPU but I would suggest a 1Gig Ethernet connection.
Build an unraid NAS and you dont really need 10K drives either 7200 will work just fine.

I can stream from all 4 clients at the same time with no lag or jitter.

[rubenmiranda]

Thanks for replying. So, I don't even need a server? Just a NAS and my clients? or does the server work with the NAS?

[nokdim]

Nope you do not need a server you can purchase an appliance NAS like:

http://www.buffalotech.com/products/network-storage
or
http://www.synology.com/dsm/index.php?lang=us

They make all sort of appliances depending on how much storage you want/need and performance and of course how much you want to spend.

Or what I did was take an old PC and install unRAID

http://lime-technology.com/download/cat_...aid-server

Which turned an old PC into a NAS.

It really depends on your needs your $ and skill level but I built my NAS with old parts laying around and only had to purchase 3 2T drives which cost me $89 a piece so I built a 4T RAID NAS for under $300.

There are other solutions besides unRAID like http://www.freenas.org/ and http://www.flexraid.com/ but I chose unRAID myself which was free for 3 disks or less which is all I needed.

[Ned Scott]

What does this have to do with XBMC?

[nokdim]

Not sure exactly what I need for the central server that will be storing all the videos or exactly how it all works.
Right now the workstations us UPNP streaming.

My thought was he was trying to build some media server which will have XBMC clients connecting to it but I could be wrong.