Freenas intel atom or hp proliant microserver?

[weebroonieuk]

been messing with freenas for a while on my old htpc , but now i want to build it properly and move everything onto it and want a nice low powered system that will run freenas or some other decent nas software if i decide to experiment , plus atleast 4 sata ports

any good suggestions on something thats better value than the hp machine , although it seems better than anything else in that price and power range

[badass]

The proliant microserver is both cheaper and more powerful than any NAS system that can take more than 2 drives. However it comes without an OS and the testing that goes with that, hence the cheapness.
I'd consider openfiler and Nexentastor, however if you use Nexentastor, you'll really benefit from more than the 1GB RAM the microserver comes with.

[weebroonieuk]

i dont mind paying for more ram , whatever helps me get the most transfer speed out of the chosen setup

although im also considering finding the lowest power cpu that will fit in the am2/3 mobo i have an using that and then upgrading my media centers board , but that probably wont come near the efficency of a atom with a decent chipset

[badass]

My proliant microserver running server 2008 R2 with the 160GB HDD and using the less efficient PSU used only 22 watts at idle. I believe that few Atom based systems go that low.

[weebroonieuk]

hmm that is pretty low , i take it windows server provides better file transfer speeds than linux or freenas on the same hardware

im now thinking of making something under ubuntu server