Re: Buuilding a home server
An A4 3300 has lower idle and lower load power consumption than an Athlon II X2:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5005/h...buyers-guide/2
The Celeron G530 is a good alternative which is cheaper,however,you pay more for equivalently specified Intel motherboards.
However,the level of transcoding is the main issue IMHO. If it is HD material,you might need a Core i3 or A6 CPU,although I cannot be certain.
Re: Buuilding a home server
If needs be the transcoding for video can be dropped. It's not a high priority. Would just be nice to have :)
Re: Buuilding a home server
One of the following setups should do the job.
AMD
AMD Llano A4 3400
http://www.ebuyer.com/282388-amd-lla...-ad3400ojgxbox
MSI A75MA-P35
http://www.ebuyer.com/320147-msi-a75...l-hd-a75ma-p35
Intel
Celeron Dual Core G530
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/intel...che-65w-retail
MSI B75MA-P45
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/intel...che-65w-retail
Both setups have six SATA ports. If you are running an HTPC,the AMD IGP is better,but from your purposes,it does not seem the case,and the G530 is a faster CPU which should be more useful.
If you want something faster for encoding then the A6 3650 would be a good choice for the AMD setup:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/AMD-A6-3650-...0138301&sr=8-1
It is very good value for money,and the IGP might be useful for things like HandBrake when the OpenCL is released.
However,I would check out the drivers for the Llano IGP are ATM. AFAIK,AMD drivers under Linux have improved.
Re: Buuilding a home server
Have you considered the HP Microservers that loads of us are running? Approx £130 for a 4-bay server, only a little dual core so transcoding is out of the question for big MKVs but you could still convert in advance.
Re: Buuilding a home server
If you want small and you're considering something like the Celeron G530, you could do worse than this MSI s1155 MITX motherboard from ebuyer, only £42 at the minute. Only has 4 SATA, but does have a PCIe x1 slot so you could add a second SATA/RAID card if you needed more ports...
Re: Buuilding a home server
If you need a compact server case, look at the fractal array r2, I think it supports itx, has space for 4-6 drives, dual slot pci, and a 300-350w psu, I personally like it cause its puny and looks really sleek.
Re: Buuilding a home server
I'd side with Snooty on this one Hands, £230 gets you a HP Proliant Microserver, £110 cashback from HP. Ends up working out at around £120 inc delivery within the UK, for a 4 bay server with a 250GB drive installed. Linux or FreeNas and you are up and running. (using server 2008 myself, no idea how to use it and its obviously overkill, but its study related).
Not sure if you are in the UK tho, for some reason i'm thinking states, might be similar deals available tho.
edit : place i got it from within Amazon Marketplace appears to be out of stock atm, this link might help
http://www.amazon.co.uk/HP-ProLiant-...0177910&sr=8-2
Re: Buuilding a home server
Thanks for the respsones.
The HP Microserver looks very tempting and seems to be a bargin at only £120 with cashback!
Think i'm going to do some more reasearch on it but on the face it seem to suit my needs and has a bit of upgradbility.
Re: Buuilding a home server
Got one of the older HP Microservers here and it does everything I need - from client pc backups through to file serving - can max out the GbE adaptor pretty much. Mine does have 8gb of RAM - but that is cheap enough - circa £35 :)
Re: Buuilding a home server
uses PC ram too, nice n cheap :)
Re: Buuilding a home server
Quick question I have regarding the HP server is does it accept 3TB hard drives (i wouldn't be using one as a boot drive as I know all sorts of difficulties would come into play then).
Re: Buuilding a home server
cant find anything that says it wont mate, i'll keep looking tho
Re: Buuilding a home server
Loads of examples of people on the web saying they've used 3TB drives, can't see why not. Only HP thing I know of that doesn't like them is the B110i RAID card.
Re: Buuilding a home server
I have the first gen HP Microserver and it's fantastic. Small, inconspicuous and just does the job.
When you say 4x HDDs would be enough, that's good (HP has 4 drives which ARE hot-swappable if you set it up correctly).
I started with WHS v1 which I loved, particularly with the drive expander, but as I was doing a lot of DCP cinema work, the onboard AMD controller was a bit slow. Also, basedon WS2003, you're limited to 2TB drives, although the hardware supports 3TB as previously suggested.
I've now upgraded to WHS v2 (based on 2008 R2) and whilst it's nice to have 3TB support, MS dropped the drive expander feature so you lose any built-in redundancy capability.
As a result, I upgraded and added a p410i smart array controller to the 16x PCIe slot and it conveniently uses the same mini-SAS connector so I just plugged in the existing 4 drive bay cable into that. Now running hardware RAID 5 with 4x 2TB drives, with the ability to live expand if I wanted to add more drives (would put them above where there's a space for the optical drive).
Just one issue with the hardware: the onboard HP GbE is pants, and despite driver upgrades and firmware upgrades, it does crash if you do some seriously heavy file transfers over it. Now this might only be the case if you're using a Windows-based OS - if going down the linux route, you might be ok (do some more reading).
In the end, I just bought an Intel Pro1000 CT desktop adaptor and installed it in the PCIe 1x lane, next to the RAID controller. It supports jumbo frames too, and since disabling the onboard LAN and moving over to that, I've not had any problems at all.
With 2x 2TB drives installed, it idles ar around 30W power which is pretty good. It's probably around 45W now with the extra drives, 410i RAID controller and intel NIC.
I also use "Lights Out" as a power saving plugin which I've set up to monitor for devices which require the NAS. If no one requires it, it will automatically shut down.
Anyway, I'll stop blabbing on now, but if you want any more info on using the box with WHS, let me know. :)
Re: Buuilding a home server
Re: Buuilding a home server
Quote:
Originally Posted by
tfboy
I also use "Lights Out" as a power saving plugin which I've set up to monitor for devices which require the NAS. If no one requires it, it will automatically shut down.
Is Lights Put a windows plugin?