Need advice re: NAS or DIY PC

[nasorpc]

The HP microserver uses approx 35-39 watts. A Nas will be on average will be 10-20 watt. For example the D-Link 320 uses only 15.9 watts when fully operational.

@ pp05 - yes I have a Sony Bravia EX503 which is DLNA compliant.

I'm thinking of going with biscuit's advice guys and building my own ultra-low power pc which of course a NAS too and then to buy a media player - Apple TV 2 or WDTV? Don't know for sure.

Anyway, just for fun, have a look at this:-

http://community.wdc.com/t5/WD-TV-Li...TVs/td-p/79126

and this:-
http://www.danielandrade.net/2011/08...tu-nas-server/

[badass]

I have a watt meter plugged into the wall. The Microserver and nothing else was plugged into that.
My HP microserver used 22 watts at the wall with the single 160 GB HDD running Windows Server 2008 R2 at idle.
That went up to 30 Watts running VMware ESXi 4.1.
Each HDD will not use more than 5 watts.

Make of that what you will.

[nasorpc]

whereas a NAS will use approx 5-10 watts idle and 15-25 watts operational.

[nasorpc]

Just been looking into the Apple TV 2 and the WD TV live players and not very happy with what i've read so far.

Apple TV 2 is great, but most files have to be converted, otherwise apple tv won't work...not sure if this is the case, if its jail broken as i've seen it playing xbmc:- http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?t=93094



WD TV Live is again brilliant, but people are saying there is a flaw - files stutter and jerk over a network:- http://community.wdc.com/t5/WD-TV-Li...ve/td-p/217774

Oh dear...its not looking good.

[Biscuit]

You're doing thr right thing by researching, so many people rush out and buy things expecting them to just work because they have the DLNA label on them. In my experience, DNLA makes things more confusing than straight forward SMB shares over a windows network!

[nasorpc]

Thanks mate...i was beginning to think i'm going a bit over the top with this research.

The worst thing is though, that i can't decide which player to go for due to each having it's limitations. I'm thinking that i should do it the other way around:-

1. Buy/Build a NAS first

2. share media to players I already own:

• DLNA TV(Room 1)
• PS3 with normal TV (Room 2)

3. If they don't play, then get a dedicated player.

What do you think?

[Biscuit]

If it was me i would build an x86 based NAS, then you have the flexibility to try many different pieces of software to get the media to stream to the devices properly, it removes any limitation on your back-end basically.
I would keep your current HTPC as your main HTPC for now. To try and help the power consumption, only have it on when you are actually consuming media and install the operating system on a USB stick. I know you said you have tried undervolting, try also dropping the clockspeed/multiplayer then dropping the voltage.
Work your way from there.

[dave87]

lol...thats way too much, considering its an ultra low power pc.

I'm going to go out on a limb here, have you actually checked how much of a cost difference there is between 15w and 20w over a year?

20w running 24/7 for a month, works out to be £4.06
15w running 24/7 for a month, works out to be £3.05

So £12 a year.

So, add into the equation the expenditure to get an ultra low power NAS box (which I might add is a few quid) and the number of years it will take you to make back the difference between that and say the HP Microserver (which at a generous 40w will cost £8.12/month) you can see why it doesn't fuss us much.

Added to that I know the Microserver will have sufficient computing power, space and RAM to do what I want (within reason) where as the majority of NAS boxes are underpowered to say the least.

[nasorpc]

@ biscuit and dave - my htpc is a big box, so it looks an ugly thing for a player, but what if i kept this htpc and converted it to a NAS...is it powerful enough? just to get me to realise what i'll be missing, what NAS would my pc speed be in comparison with?

after messing around with the bios last night, i have managed to reduce the power to 54w can you recommend any other methods i can bring the voltage/wattage down without affecting performance and stability?

i just want an easily accessible media solution guys. why can't we bring back the VCR...so much easier.

[Biscuit]

Well considering most NAS boxes are only a couple of hundred MHz, im pretty sure what you have should be more than powerful enough!
Another thing which might drop a couple of watts is disabling all ports which are not in use such as serial and parallel ports

[nasorpc]

Right i see. I just thought that this was becoming an old pc, but from what you've told me, it seems to be more than adequate.

It doesn't have any parallel ports as this is a gigabyte ma785gmt-ud2h .

Other than one USB, SPDIF & DVI (at the back) and 2 USB (at the front)

I don't use the any other ports such as the VGA, HDMI, 8 ch sound etc - but i don't think they can be disabled.

One thing though -I have Kingston 2gb Ddr3 1333mhz Hyperx Memory Cl7(7-7-7-20). I'm sure this uses some wattage.

Also the motherboard has ATI Radeon HD 4200 integrated - the bios had the clock on 500. I dropped it to 200, but no difference on wattage.

If there are any suggestions on dropping the AMD Athlon II 240e x2 cpu voltage or changes to the bios that may reduce its power consumption, then i'm all for it.

[Biscuit]

Sounds like you have got it down to a minimum pretty much!

[nasorpc]

im sure it can come down much further. the psu is the bog standard 200w. the videocard has 3d enabled, so could i not disable that?

If 54w is the minimum on idle then that is high, dont you think?

[Biscuit]

Its not too bad really, have a look at dave87s post, makes the actual differences it makes pretty clear.
You could disable stuff from within windows, such as 3D on the GPU. Its probably in the catalyst control centre.
Have a look through the power management settings in windows, perhaps you can adjust some features there.
Getting yourself a decent power supply might help as CTF posted earlier in this thread, the efficiency of it is the main thing.

[nasorpc]

ok mate. im not happy with the case anyway as its way too big. so my next questions are:-

1. what mini atx case can you recommend?
2. what psu shall i get that will be more power efficient?
3.how do i setup this system? as a nas? or simply a windows media player with pc share abilities for the ps3 to access?

[abaxas]

Just to get rid of most of the fud/bad information in this thread.

You do not need a powerful machine to put out a samba share/torrent/serve media. Hence why most nas(es) are low mhz arm processors with 128/256 ram.

The main advantages are power and noise. Which for something that is switched on 24/7 is usually more important than overall grunt.