Do I buy a NAS, or build my own video server?

[GamingDaemon]

Hello All,

I have a very nice home theatre setup:

• JVC Projector
• Denon AV Tuner
• Denon Blu Ray Player
• 110 inch screen
• 5 electric reclining chairs
• Riser for the back 3 seats for stadium seating

But I have a number of movies I ripped a while ago from my HD DVD collection (I was an early adopter ). I am planning to build a very small HTPC using the Intel Core i3-2105, but that is not what this post is about. My question is about accessing the video files. I would like my HTPC to be able to access the movies I ripped using RipBot264.

My requirements for the storage for the video files are:

• Low power/wattage usage
• Always on
• Easy access to the video files

Every room in my house has at least two CAT6 gigabit Ethernet connections.

So, should I:

1. Buy a NAS? Like the Synology DS211J?
2. Build my own SFF server using an Intel Core i3 processor that is low power, and with 4 2TB hard drives?

I am worried that the NAS might be too slow. I have already tested that I can play my .mkv and .mp4 files stored on one PC in my house on another PC by simply accessing the network share across the network. It worked flawlessly. That is exactly what I want, but I feat that the NAS is not going to provide me with that functionality.

Which way should I go?

Thanks in advance...

 

[jinjuku]

Hello All,

I have a very nice home theatre setup:

• JVC Projector
• Denon AV Tuner
• Denon Blu Ray Player
• 110 inch screen
• 5 electric reclining chairs
• Riser for the back 3 seats for stadium seating

But I have a number of movies I ripped a while ago from my HD DVD collection (I was an early adopter ). I am planning to build a very small HTPC using the Intel Core i3-2105, but that is not what this post is about. My question is about accessing the video files. I would like my HTPC to be able to access the movies I ripped using RipBot264.

My requirements for the storage for the video files are:

• Low power/wattage usage
• Always on
• Easy access to the video files

Every room in my house has at least two CAT6 gigabit Ethernet connections.

So, should I:

1. Buy a NAS? Like the Synology DS211J?
2. Build my own SFF server using an Intel Core i3 processor that is low power, and with 4 2TB hard drives?

I am worried that the NAS might be too slow. I have already tested that I can play my .mkv and .mp4 files stored on one PC in my house on another PC by simply accessing the network share across the network. It worked flawlessly. That is exactly what I want, but I feat that the NAS is not going to provide me with that functionality.

Which way should I go?

Thanks in advance...

A NAS should have no problem serving up. Even 100 Ethernet (12MB/second) is more than enough through put for BR/HD DVD).

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

+1 jinjuku. Performance is not your concern. I'd more concentrate of price/gig , redundancy and convenience. You could get low power atom power (much less power consumption than any core i3)

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

I built a 30TB NAS that has worked great also. I use a SSD for the Windows 7 OS, and the storage is all 2TB HDDs x 15.

The only thing I watch is BD ISO files. They look and sound awesome.

Because of the large size, I don't keep it on all the time, though. I keep it in Sleep Mode and wake it up with a touch of my wireless keyboard. It takes about 10 seconds and I'm ready to watch BDs.

 

[GamingDaemon]

A NAS should have no problem serving up. Even 100 Ethernet (12MB/second) is more than enough through put for BR/HD DVD).

+1 jinjuku. Performance is not your concern. I'd more concentrate of price/gig , redundancy and convenience. You could get low power atom power (much less power consumption than any core i3)

Thank you jinjuku and BoredSysAdmin. If 12MB/sec is all I need to watch BR and HD DVD across the network, that is encouraging. What are some atom motherboards?

I built a 30TB NAS that has worked great also. I use a SSD for the Windows 7 OS, and the storage is all 2TB HDDs x 15.

The only thing I watch is BD ISO files. They look and sound awesome.

Because of the large size, I don't keep it on all the time, though. I keep it in Sleep Mode and wake it up with a touch of my wireless keyboard. It takes about 10 seconds and I'm ready to watch BDs.

I really like this solution. What case did you end up using? What processor and motherboard? How much memory did you need? Is 2GB enough or should I go 4GB (it's so cheap today)?

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

I'd be looking at this box:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822122010&cm_re=nas_storage-_-22-122-010-_-Product

If you start counting in all the extra pieces like hot-plugable disk caddy's you'd get about same price with DIY...

but if you insist going diy:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131731
or with AMD (slightly faster cpu)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130567R
just pick small atx case with 3 5.25 slots and add something like this to add ability to hotplug drives:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817994076&cm_re=sata_cage-_-17-994-076-_-Product

 

[GamingDaemon]

Thank you again BoredSysAdmin!

Ok, so I like the backplane idea a lot. Is the ADM E-350 much faster than the Intel Atom? And how much memory do you think I need? 4GB?

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

I really like this solution. What case did you end up using? What processor and motherboard? How much memory did you need? Is 2GB enough or should I go 4GB (it's so cheap today)?

I have the Antec 1200 case. It's got a bunch of fans for cooling. It comes with 3 HDD cages. Each cage holds 3 HDDs. But you can buy extra cages directly from the Antec website store for $25 each HDD cage.

So if you want 12 HDDs, just get 1 extra cage.

http://www.amazon.com/Antec-Gaming-Twelve-Hundred-V3/dp/B004INH0FS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1310749554&sr=8-1

I bought a $50 motherboard, $70 Intel Dual Core CPU, a $20 CPU fan, $40 2GB RAM.

I had to get some of the Syba Raid SATA cards too for all the HDDs:
http://www.amazon.com/SD-SATA-4P-Serial-Controller-SIL3114-Chipset/dp/B000Y06JV0/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1310750501&sr=8-7

Just get a few of these 3TB HDD for storage:
http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Intellipower-Cache-Desktop/dp/B00471UDWI/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1310750605&sr=1-1

I also bought this SSD just for the OS:
http://www.amazon.com/OCZ-Technology-Vertex-Solid-OCZSSD2-1VTX30G/dp/B001NPCTB4/ref=sr_1_6?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1310750675&sr=1-6

If not, I still recommend getting a separate smaller HDD just for the OS, and leave the storing to the big HDDs.

PSU is very important. I would get the biggest PSU right now. I initially got a 650W PSU. But when I added more HDDs, my OS wouldn't even start!

Something around 1,000Watts should work for future expansion:
http://www.amazon.com/Corsair-CMPSU-950TX-950-Watt-Certified-Compatible/dp/B002O3W3TW/ref=sr_1_31?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1310751075&sr=1-31

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

Thank you again BoredSysAdmin!

Ok, so I like the backplane idea a lot. Is the ADM E-350 much faster than the Intel Atom? And how much memory do you think I need? 4GB?

Not much, but it is 5-10% faster in most cases and upto 50% in other cases (not typical for NAS thou)

Ram - depends on the OS - for windows - 2Gb would enough, 4gb would not make it faster (for file serving), other os's - it depends

 

[jinjuku]

Thank you again BoredSysAdmin!

Ok, so I like the backplane idea a lot. Is the AMD E-350 much faster than the Intel Atom? And how much memory do you think I need? 4GB?

It's measurably better performance wise. I just (15 minutes ago) finished installing Win7 x64 Ultimate edition on my Asus E-350 based 2.0 machine.

Anand of Anandtech.com said it best: Brazos is the nail in the Atom coffin. I have a 96 GB SSD drive and damn that thing is FAST.

 

[sholling]

SSD for a HTPC? Yes!!! SSD for a server? Unnecessary. The reason is that for a HTPC you want the fastest possible boot and application load times. But you also want a spinner to store the swap file and all temp files so that you can limit the number of writes to the SSD.

On the other hand who cares how fast a server boots... It's running 24x7 and the applications are running 24x7. The bottleneck are the data drives and the network speed and frankly 5400rpm drives are plenty fast enough enough for serving media to one and probably two HTPCs. 4GB is enough but with 8GB of RAM running roughly $60ish I'd put the extra $20-30 there instead just to prevent potential bottlenecks. While the extra RAM isn't technically necessary it's cheap. Remember that the motherboard is reserving 256MB or more of that RAM for video.

FWIW my server running Win 7 64bit, NOD32, TightVNC, MM4 and a hard disk monitor (to alert me about problems via email) is using about 2.2GB of RAM at idle plus .25GB for video. With an E350 and 8GB my server is meeting my performance expectations. The only thing I miss is RAID5.

 

[bigpow]

My take;

My HTPC and Photo Editing PC, each has 60GB SSD for boot drives & traditional HDD (2x1.5TB & 4x1TB) for temporary data, respectively. Built these PC for a very specific purpose.

Having said that, I wouldn'd build a DIY NAS box. Perfectly happy with Synology DS411 NAS box hosting 4x 3TB, this is for semi-permanent data. Cheap, reliable, quiet, small, low-power, saves a lot of time. On top of that, it's DLNA & could do more services than what I need. DSM3 OS rocks.
It's ON 24x7x365, hosting printer and serving ipad2, notebook, xbox, ps3, etc.
I could even get it to do record surveillance videos with some IP cameras, how cool is that? All supported out of a very small quiet box that doesn't require a lot of power.