Marticus1982
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- Jan 21, 2009
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HI All, i'm not sure all of these questions belong here, but it seems easier to put all my thoughts in one place, so hopefully someone will be able to help.
Currently I have one PC in the livingroom doing triple duty as HTPC / Gaming PC / media server (i7, 16bg ram, 5tb storage in raid with backup ).
Hi have been looking at NAS for the past year or so and deciding whether to purchase or not, but to be honest i've been fairly underwhelmed by the choices at my price point of a couple of hundred pounds..
i will need something capable of streaming hd media to a few devices locally, but i may also end up giving access to my family in the UK so that could double...
I do however have an old PC sitting in my office with a dead power supply.
it's an old i5 3400k iirc with 8gb of ram, on an asus motherboard of some description (can't remember details).
So my idea is to turn this into a media server, does this sound feesable? will it take too much juice? anything i should be aware of?
assuming the computer would make a suitable media server we get to my next issue i don't think adding a second full size tower to my downstairs entertainment area is going to pass the old WAF. so i'm considering moving everything to a rack and having it under the stairs where i have a lot of extra space.
so next questions: can i fit a standard atx system into a rackmount chassis? being a media server, it won't have any pci cards as i will only use the onboard stuff, but i have read that 1u chassis would be too small due to the fan and heatsink, so 2u?
and i assume i would need the correct style psu (have seen plenty on ebay)
and of course i would be switching the htpc to a rackmount setup, so i guess 4u is the minimum for an atx with pci cards and a standard power supply?
aaand storage...
at the moment everything is stored on the htpc, divided over several different drives of different sizes etc.
If i build the media server i understand i can transfer this setup to the server and leave as is, but i have also seen on ebay some old drive arrays.
would using one of these even be feesable? and if so would it be worth it over just sticking everything into the one system?
and how would i get something like this running?
any suggestions?
thanks!!!
Currently I have one PC in the livingroom doing triple duty as HTPC / Gaming PC / media server (i7, 16bg ram, 5tb storage in raid with backup ).
Hi have been looking at NAS for the past year or so and deciding whether to purchase or not, but to be honest i've been fairly underwhelmed by the choices at my price point of a couple of hundred pounds..
i will need something capable of streaming hd media to a few devices locally, but i may also end up giving access to my family in the UK so that could double...
I do however have an old PC sitting in my office with a dead power supply.
it's an old i5 3400k iirc with 8gb of ram, on an asus motherboard of some description (can't remember details).
So my idea is to turn this into a media server, does this sound feesable? will it take too much juice? anything i should be aware of?
assuming the computer would make a suitable media server we get to my next issue i don't think adding a second full size tower to my downstairs entertainment area is going to pass the old WAF. so i'm considering moving everything to a rack and having it under the stairs where i have a lot of extra space.
so next questions: can i fit a standard atx system into a rackmount chassis? being a media server, it won't have any pci cards as i will only use the onboard stuff, but i have read that 1u chassis would be too small due to the fan and heatsink, so 2u?
and i assume i would need the correct style psu (have seen plenty on ebay)
and of course i would be switching the htpc to a rackmount setup, so i guess 4u is the minimum for an atx with pci cards and a standard power supply?
aaand storage...
at the moment everything is stored on the htpc, divided over several different drives of different sizes etc.
If i build the media server i understand i can transfer this setup to the server and leave as is, but i have also seen on ebay some old drive arrays.
would using one of these even be feesable? and if so would it be worth it over just sticking everything into the one system?
and how would i get something like this running?
any suggestions?
thanks!!!