- Aug 26, 2014
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Hi all
I've been looking into upgrading my existing storage box into more of a general use computer/media server as well, but I'm on a tight budget. As such, I'm looking for some advice. As of now, my ageing ThinkPad X201 is relegated to media player service, which is a bit inconvenient as I'll be needing it for school as well (and undocking it from behind the TV every day is a pain, to say the least).
The current specs of the storage box are:
Asus AT5NM10T-I mini-ITX motherboard with Atom D525 @1.8GHz
4GB (2x2) DDR3-1600 SODIMM
750GB 7200rpm Boot drive
3x2TB storage drives
Fractal Design Node 304 case
Clearly, this CPU isn't up to snuff when it comes to media playback (not to mention that the motherboard lacks HDMI) - and for some reason the CPU refuses to throttle even at 0% load, so it runs quite hot (for an Atom, ~40C) as well.
After looking around I've landed on two alternatives (based both on price, personal preference and part availability in Norway):
Either:
AMD Athlon 5350 (Kabini) + ASRock AM1B-ITX + 4/8GB of value DDR3
Or:
AMD A8-7600 or A10-7800 + ASRock FM2A88X-ITX+ + 8GB of DDR3-2133
Also, I'll be moving my old Intel X25-M 80GB from my laptop to use as the boot drive for this.
The second alternative is of course much more expensive (about 2x with the A8), but will give me a lot more performance and quite a few aditional features: integrated WiFi, 2 more SATA slots (definitely a big plus in this use case), more USB3.0 ports. The integrated graphics should be good enough for some light gaming, and the CPU should be capable of transcoding for Plex.
On the other hand, from scanning cpubenchmark.net (yeah, I know basing anything off of a single benchmark is dumb, but bear with me), the Athlon 5350 should be comparable in performance to the i5-520M in my laptop (if not a bit faster) - which is plenty fast for the use i'm describing, and it uses half the power of the A8/A10. I've not been able to find an AM1 motherboard with more than four SATA ports, but that's what I have today, so at least I'm not moving backward. And OK performance for half the price is a tempting proposition.
Do you have any advice for me? Any thoughts regarding performance, upgradeability, platform longevity? Is a cheaper platform today worth the added cost of a SATA add-in card for later if I need more storage? Any and all help is greatly appreciated.
I've been looking into upgrading my existing storage box into more of a general use computer/media server as well, but I'm on a tight budget. As such, I'm looking for some advice. As of now, my ageing ThinkPad X201 is relegated to media player service, which is a bit inconvenient as I'll be needing it for school as well (and undocking it from behind the TV every day is a pain, to say the least).
The current specs of the storage box are:
Asus AT5NM10T-I mini-ITX motherboard with Atom D525 @1.8GHz
4GB (2x2) DDR3-1600 SODIMM
750GB 7200rpm Boot drive
3x2TB storage drives
Fractal Design Node 304 case
Clearly, this CPU isn't up to snuff when it comes to media playback (not to mention that the motherboard lacks HDMI) - and for some reason the CPU refuses to throttle even at 0% load, so it runs quite hot (for an Atom, ~40C) as well.
After looking around I've landed on two alternatives (based both on price, personal preference and part availability in Norway):
Either:
AMD Athlon 5350 (Kabini) + ASRock AM1B-ITX + 4/8GB of value DDR3
Or:
AMD A8-7600 or A10-7800 + ASRock FM2A88X-ITX+ + 8GB of DDR3-2133
Also, I'll be moving my old Intel X25-M 80GB from my laptop to use as the boot drive for this.
The second alternative is of course much more expensive (about 2x with the A8), but will give me a lot more performance and quite a few aditional features: integrated WiFi, 2 more SATA slots (definitely a big plus in this use case), more USB3.0 ports. The integrated graphics should be good enough for some light gaming, and the CPU should be capable of transcoding for Plex.
On the other hand, from scanning cpubenchmark.net (yeah, I know basing anything off of a single benchmark is dumb, but bear with me), the Athlon 5350 should be comparable in performance to the i5-520M in my laptop (if not a bit faster) - which is plenty fast for the use i'm describing, and it uses half the power of the A8/A10. I've not been able to find an AM1 motherboard with more than four SATA ports, but that's what I have today, so at least I'm not moving backward. And OK performance for half the price is a tempting proposition.
Do you have any advice for me? Any thoughts regarding performance, upgradeability, platform longevity? Is a cheaper platform today worth the added cost of a SATA add-in card for later if I need more storage? Any and all help is greatly appreciated.
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