Should I build my own media server or buy a NAS?

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GamingDaemon

GamingDaemon

Senior member
Apr 28, 2006
474
7
76
Hello,

Not sure if this is the right forum for this question, but I am thinking of a building my own server for media storage. It would have a bunch of HD DVD and Blu Ray movies I have ripped to .mkv and .mp4 format. I would like this media server to store these files and serve them up to my HTPC and other machines around the house. My entire house is wired with 2 or more CAT 6 Ethernet connections in each room.

Here’s what I want the server to do:
  • Be on all the time
  • Low power
  • Easy access to the files use NTFS and Windows 7

Here’s what I am thinking of buying:

So, in addition to the above questions, does anyone have any case recommendations?

Thank you in advance…
 
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DaveSimmons

Elite Member
Aug 12, 2001
40,730
670
126
- Do you want the box to do encoding or just serve files?
- How much disk space?
- Does case size matter?

You can buy external drive enclosures that can serve files using some tiny Linux firmware.

If you build your own, you can use a bigger case with 120mm low speed quiet fan(s) and good airflow to keep everything cooler. It can also run Windows.

For encoding the i3-2100 might make sense because it encodes at 4x or more of the speed of an Atom or AMD E-350. For just serving file the Atom uses less power.

4 GB is fine.

Why would pay extra for hot-swapping?
 
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flensr

Member
May 28, 2009
76
0
0
Some might disagree but I wouldn't consider i3 to be overkill. i3 plus cheapish mobo won't cost a ton more than cheaper solutions, but then you're guaranteed to not be cpu limited for a long time.

4GB of ram is plenty.

Consider a real intel based NIC instead of the crummy realtek NICs built into most motherboards.

Get a good PSU. Doesn't have to be high capacity, just decent quality.

Hot swap backplane is probably overkill. Just built the box and stuff in a big drive. If you want to save some money I like western digital caviar blue. Nice drives and cheaper than the caviar black. Avoid all of the "green" low power drives because they spin down and you'll have long access delays spinning them up for file transfers. If you want to use RAID 1 for fault tolerance, consider WDC caviar blacks since the faster drive performance can partially offset the reduced performance of the RAID 1 array.

Consider what OS you plan on using... I'm using the old version of windows home server with a very old 1ghz celeron, 512mb ram, a 1GB WDC caviar blue (on a cheapo SATA card), and an add-on NIC. It works fine and I get decent transfer rates for single user transfers and single backups, but it chokes a bit when multiple users are transferring files. Faster hardware and the newest home server software would probably work better. Win7 will work ok if all you want to do is simple file sharing but you don't get any of the automated server stuff like backups or the ability to reliably stream multiple files like you should get from windows home server.
 
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flensr

Member
May 28, 2009
76
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Almost forgot to mention that many of the reasonably priced pre-built media servers and NAS boxes are badly hardware limited. Network performance for the cheaper NAS boxes can be absolutely terrible compared to even a stripped down "real" computer.

If you don't already use them, make sure you are using gigabit ethernet switches and NICs. You generally won't get 10x the performance but 3-4x performance improvement over a standard 10/100 switch is nice.
 
GamingDaemon

GamingDaemon

Senior member
Apr 28, 2006
474
7
76
flensr said:
Some might disagree but I wouldn't consider i3 to be overkill. i3 plus cheapish mobo won't cost a ton more than cheaper solutions, but then you're guaranteed to not be cpu limited for a long time.

4GB of ram is plenty.

Consider a real intel based NIC instead of the crummy realtek NICs built into most motherboards.

Get a good PSU. Doesn't have to be high capacity, just decent quality.

Hot swap backplane is probably overkill. Just built the box and stuff in a big drive. If you want to save some money I like western digital caviar blue. Nice drives and cheaper than the caviar black. Avoid all of the "green" low power drives because they spin down and you'll have long access delays spinning them up for file transfers. If you want to use RAID 1 for fault tolerance, consider WDC caviar blacks since the faster drive performance can partially offset the reduced performance of the RAID 1 array.

Consider what OS you plan on using... I'm using the old version of windows home server with a very old 1ghz celeron, 512mb ram, a 1GB WDC caviar blue (on a cheapo SATA card), and an add-on NIC. It works fine and I get decent transfer rates for single user transfers and single backups, but it chokes a bit when multiple users are transferring files. Faster hardware and the newest home server software would probably work better. Win7 will work ok if all you want to do is simple file sharing but you don't get any of the automated server stuff like backups or the ability to reliably stream multiple files like you should get from windows home server.
Click to expand...

Thank you flensr!

So for the network card, something like this? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16833106121

I think I will stick with Win 7 for now, i can always get WHS.

I am thinking about a good Fractal Design R3 case, with a simple Gigabyte mobo. Then an I3-2100. I'll probably start with 2x 2TB drives from WD.
 
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flensr

Member
May 28, 2009
76
0
0
That intel card should be good, but double-check for driver availability. Newegg shows that it is vista certified but does not mention windows 7, so it is possible that intel never made win7 drivers for it. Poor drivers could completely eliminate any benefit you'd get from using a good network card.

edit: the feedback on newegg says that there are no win7 drivers. So you might want to keep looking for a newer card.

You might want to just start out with the onboard networking and see if it's satisfactory. If you don't get the performance you see, then you could upgrade the NIC. But if the onboard network card is good enough, that would save you a few bucks.

Last, if your motherboard has free pci-e slots, consider getting a card that is pci-e, not pci.
 
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bupkus

Diamond Member
Nov 25, 2000
3,816
0
76
I bought a single HDD enclosure by Synology. I liked their OS features and really just wanted to play with it. Only cost $150+ and I like its small footprint.
 
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beginner99

Diamond Member
Jun 2, 2009
5,214
1,585
136
The first thing is cost. How much are you willing to pay?

The pros of "out of the box" NAS is that it works out of the box. If you DIY you will run into problems especially with the sharing of the files.

How much space/drive bays do you need? The fractal is a nice case i have the R2 for my normal PC. It's nice because of the many drive bays but it isn't small. If I would build a DIY NAS I would pick a chenbro case. Yes, they ain't cheap but already have quite a few features built in including a low wattage PSU.

Will you run RAID, especially RAID 5? Usually this is done using the intel chipset but could also be done in software. Anyway it needs quite a bit of CPU power and hence in that case a i3 is not the dumbest choice. If you are limited $-wise I recommend the 35 w TDP Sandy Bridge Pentium. It's about 40$ cheaper than i3.

Green drives are fine. Yeah they do need to spin up if you don't use them for a certain time but use less power and are quiet (inaudible in the fractal case).

Anyway such build will cost about the same as the "higher class" out-of-the-box NAS wich usually have a dual-core Atom. See smallnetbuilders for benchmarks. IMHO they are fine for home users. 100 Mybte/s in RAID 5 is possible and that is probably the network limit because 1 gigabit/s = 125 mbyte/s. You can't get higher speed unless you use teaming.
 
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dclive

Elite Member
Oct 23, 2003
5,626
2
81
GamingDaemon said:
Hello,

Not sure if this is the right forum for this question, but I am thinking of a building my own server for media storage. It would have a bunch of HD DVD and Blu Ray movies I have ripped to .mkv and .mp4 format. I would like this media server to store these files and serve them up to my HTPC and other machines around the house. My entire house is wired with 2 or more CAT 6 Ethernet connections in each room.

Here’s what I want the server to do:
  • Be on all the time
  • Low power
  • Easy access to the files use NTFS and Windows 7

Here’s what I am thinking of buying:

So, in addition to the above questions, does anyone have any case recommendations?

Thank you in advance…
Click to expand...

Dumb question: Why not add them to your current machine, and just keep it on all the time? The $$ lost in electricity will look tiny compared the the hundreds you'd need to spend on another machine. Another alternative is Patriot Box Offices with custom firmware and 2.5" (or USB) drives; they can both playback any media format under the sun but can also NAS (SMB) share it too.
 
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beginner99

Diamond Member
Jun 2, 2009
5,214
1,585
136
dclive said:
Dumb question: Why not add them to your current machine, and just keep it on all the time? The $$ lost in electricity will look tiny compared the the hundreds you'd need to spend on another machine. Another alternative is Patriot Box Offices with custom firmware and 2.5" (or USB) drives; they can both playback any media format under the sun but can also NAS (SMB) share it too.
Click to expand...

I have a Neatgear router that lets you attach a usb HDD but performance is very, very bad. I assume same would be for the Box office thingy. HD moves are easly 10 GB and if you have to move these files around you want some speed.
Actually that is another thing that speaks for an i3 build instead of atom. Unraring HD movies. ;)
 
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hans007

Lifer
Feb 1, 2000
20,212
17
81
i think it depends on what your needs are. i have a cheap d-link DNS-320 nas ($80). and its more than enough for like serving media and backing stuff up.

but if you want more speed you could buy a faster nas, or whatever. I have friends who have $800 4 bay raid 5 SOHO nas boxes for their houses by thecus or synology which are much faster. and a friend of mine has a very nice windows home server nas which is just as fast (though not raid in the same way, or with the same enterprise features) for maybe $400.

i tend to think if its just going to do one thing like serve files you are better off with a dedicated nas. its just less of a hassle and uses less power etc. but some of the more expensive solutions cost more than a real computer, so i guess theres a real choice to be made at the higher end. the cheaper units that are under $200 though, i think its worth it to get over building an actual PC.

also you definitely dont need a core i3-2100 for this. just get a G620 or something, and save yourself the $50.
 
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dclive

Elite Member
Oct 23, 2003
5,626
2
81
beginner99 said:
I have a Neatgear router that lets you attach a usb HDD but performance is very, very bad. I assume same would be for the Box office thingy. HD moves are easly 10 GB and if you have to move these files around you want some speed.
Actually that is another thing that speaks for an i3 build instead of atom. Unraring HD movies. ;)
Click to expand...

I thought you wanted a media center. If so, the PBO "NAS" is fast enough to serve HD content.

Atom vs. i3 and unrar'ing - well, all of that is very minor compared to the difference in moving to an SSD. Go whole hog and just buy an SSD.

Oh wait - isn't this a media center? :)
 
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hans007

Lifer
Feb 1, 2000
20,212
17
81
dclive said:
I thought you wanted a media center. If so, the PBO "NAS" is fast enough to serve HD content.

Atom vs. i3 and unrar'ing - well, all of that is very minor compared to the difference in moving to an SSD. Go whole hog and just buy an SSD.

Oh wait - isn't this a media center? :)
Click to expand...

i had a pbo, and the nas on it is pretty slow. its not fast enough to saturate a 100 mbps connection. it will be ok for serving media. ... i'd say its about the same as those routers that have usb ports or a pogo plug or something like that.
 
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Emulex

Diamond Member
Jan 28, 2001
9,759
1
71
yeh if you get a cheap raid controller like the LSI with freebsd8/raid-z (hint i have some for sale $50 with 8 port fan-out cable) you can really have a ton of drives and afford to do raid-10 and really whip up the speed. just run windows 7 on the core and use a vm to export the NAS functions.. that way you can have the best of both worlds! heck you could even run a copy windows home server. google vmware fusion and bios440.rom
 
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dclive

Elite Member
Oct 23, 2003
5,626
2
81
He'll be limited to 100MB/s with gigabit anyway; why does he need to 'whip up the speed'? What is the benefit, for a simple media server NAS, to anything beyond a single drive or two (two for a mirror, perhaps)?
 
Trader05

Trader05

Diamond Member
Mar 1, 2000
5,092
19
81
I did both at one point. I did a simple share from my main tower at the time (i7 920) and shared it across to my PS3 and WDTV's, that was fine but I think between windows updates and the buggy software on the WDTV I was having more issues than anything. I ended up doing a project a couple months ago and went with a Synology DS-211 NAS with 2x 2TB hard drives, mirror raided. I think the price was around $500 with everything, I could of went cheaper with those green drives but I did 7200rpm Hitachi's. The speed of the NAS was really fast and the software/os was really good. I never had a problem streaming anything over gigabit. I'd suggest the NAS, its smaller and has to be a lot less power hungry than a system.
 
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dclive

Elite Member
Oct 23, 2003
5,626
2
81
Trader05 said:
I did both at one point. I did a simple share from my main tower at the time (i7 920) and shared it across to my PS3 and WDTV's, that was fine but I think between windows updates and the buggy software on the WDTV I was having more issues than anything. I ended up doing a project a couple months ago and went with a Synology DS-211 NAS with 2x 2TB hard drives, mirror raided. I think the price was around $500 with everything, I could of went cheaper with those green drives but I did 7200rpm Hitachi's. The speed of the NAS was really fast and the software/os was really good. I never had a problem streaming anything over gigabit. I'd suggest the NAS, its smaller and has to be a lot less power hungry than a system.
Click to expand...

I just did a WHS box with 4x2TB. Having everything presented as one share volume across 4 drives is very handy.
 
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obidamnkenobi

Golden Member
Sep 16, 2010
1,407
423
136
It think i3 and 4GB ram sounds like overkill. I'm in a similar situation picking out parts for my server, and have concluded that for simple back up and media streaming an E-350 is good enough. If I remember correctly an Asus E-350 micro ATX board (5xSATA) with CPU is around $150, while i3 CPU+mobo is $120+$100 or so. Uses more power, for no apparent benefit as far as I can tell.

My current server is my old celeron single core laptop, 1GB ram running ubuntu server and it can stream 1080p no problem.
 
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dclive

Elite Member
Oct 23, 2003
5,626
2
81
Agreed (on the single core Celeron bits) - if you aren't transcoding, it's simply a question of being able to push 2-4MB/s thru a network connection; anything in recent memory can do that.
 
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Anonemous

Diamond Member
May 19, 2003
7,361
1
71
I just use an old Core Duo laptop as a file/media server running windows MCE along with some light encoding. Is there a huge difference between using XP MCE and WHS?
 
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