Student accomodation server/media centre

Tarty

Tarty

Tarty

Associate
Joined
29 Jan 2006
Posts
166
Location
England-Kent
I am a first year student and University, I already have a gaming rig of my own, but next year when moving out of university accommodation I'm living in a flat where there are going to be seven of us. They have all voted me to be one to sort out our future network and internet connection etc, which I have already thought about.

However, my latest idea or setting up a network server PC, in which would be used to store all our media/ back up work etc has gone down very well with the rest of the group. The idea is to build a very cheap PC, which will sit next to the main phone line socket, where the cable internet connection does, and will be where wired / wireless router is and will be able to be accessed via that for everybody to get to their media and thus access it on their own pc's / Laptops from their respective rooms.

All of us were going to buy a separate 250 gb+ Hard drive and thus at the end of the year be able to walk away without quibbling about what is each person's.
Budget is £400 requiring a case able to take the drives / motherboard / ram / processor / extra s-ata cards to be able to take 7 drives / psu able of powering the drives and a case to fit them all. And will be running linux or possibly media centre, depending on ease. (advice needed)

Any help with this would be greatly appreciated as I've personally never set up anything like this at all. I've built many PC's but not really on this sort of specification.

Thank you for your time

edit: should have said disks would be in jbod configuration.
 
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I'd also like to see what people find for this as I'm interested in doing something similar. Same situation, well thinking more towards media function to connect to our living room TV etc, just with one less person :P
 
Ive just built a server for all my files.. cost just under £200 as there was no need for monitor just use remote desktop to access it.

Im using a AM2 Sempron 3400+, 512mb Ram and a 160GB SATA Drive

will be upgrading ram and more hard disks soon but it works perfect, I have media centre running on it and i have no problems with it atall.

Although its going to be being used by 7 people you dont need anything special you should be able to get something thats more than good enough for £400.

.. Oh yeah its much better than my NAS boxes i used to have =D
 
Got a similar setup here. Although the server is owned by me.

2.4Ghz P4 Northwood, 1Gb RAM, 1.2Tb RAID3 storage.

It runs Server 2003 (Joys of MSDN-AA!) and has Azureus running 24/7. Remotely controlled by anyone who wants to using AzSMRC. Helps schedule the downloading (as we have limited peak time!) and is a great central space to keep stuff (as no one has anything approaching 1.2Tb of disc space!)
 
Wasn't intending on connecting it to the TV, as we get sky+ with our flat.

Main thing I need advice is with the case, s-ata pci cards, as most mobos' can take 4-6 s-ata drives, and I was intending on a 550w psu, which I suppose will be satisfactory.

was intending on

Product Name
GeIL 1GB (2x512MB) PC6400C5 800MHz Value DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GX21GB6400DC) £28.99

Abit NF-M2S Micro ATX (Socket AM2) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £34.99

Antec TruePower Trio 550W PSU £51.99

Samsung SH-S183ABEBN 18x18 DVD±RW Dual Layer Serial ATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £16.99


AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+ 2.00GHz (Socket AM2) - Retail £45.99(£54.04)

Sub Total : £178.95
£8.95
Vat : £32.88
Total : £220.78

Looking at that it really only needs a case able to hold 7 hard drives and some pci cards. Wasn't intending on overclocking, and I do have an old 7800gt gpu that I could add, but I doubt it would be necessary.

I was intending on buying this myself, as when the year is up I'll keep it and it'll go onto my next house
 
Even that's probably overkill - look on members market for an old Athlon XP system.

You don't have a case listed at the moment.

EDIT: Just noticed you can't access members market - look on ebay etc then.
 
fini said:
Even that's probably overkill - look on members market for an old Athlon XP system.

You don't have a case listed at the moment.

EDIT: Just noticed you can't access members market - look on ebay etc then.
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Thing is I don't want to build a half arsed pc, as it will be used for a few years with the same use, as I do have a large amount of media on this pc atm, with over 1Tb of internals almost full at the moment, gradually transfering my pictures to an external 750 recently bought. Looking at what I've already specced up, I think maybe £250-300 is a more reasonable budget.
 
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It would be a lot better for you to all put the same amount of money towards it and then sell it at the end and split the money evenly. That way you wouldn't need 7 hdds, otherwise it's going to require more power and a bigger case which will cost more money. You also have more chance of a hdd failure.
 
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Tarty said:
Thing is I don't want to build a half arsed pc, as it will be used for a few years with the same use,
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I understand what you're saying, but there's no way a file server needs the spec you've given it.

If you want to take the spec down slightly then look for a AMD Athlon 64 3000 or something similar - you wont need anywhere near the amount of processing power you think you do.
 
fini said:
I understand what you're saying, but there's no way a file server needs the spec you've given it.

If you want to take the spec down slightly then look for a AMD Athlon 64 3000 or something similar - you wont need anywhere near the amount of processing power you think you do.
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I've looked for a am2 processors on a popular auction webbie, and see am2 3000+ and 3200+ going for about £20-30 so that might be a better option.

Main thing is suggestions about the case, there any cheapish ones with 7 or so 3.5 bays... not intending on getting 3.5 - 5.25 converters

Edit: noticed the Antec Titan 550 Tower Case which has 6 internal drives, ( for basically peanuts) and the 550w Antec psu I was intending on buying. Anybody got any knowledge about it?
 
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I have a chenbro gaming bomb case, that was cheap and has space for about 8 3.5" drives. Would still reccomend buying less bigger hdds, the money saved would be enormous.
 
Energize said:
I have a chenbro gaming bomb case, that was cheap and has space for about 8 3.5" drives. Would still reccomend buying less bigger hdds, the money saved would be enormous.
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I completely agree, but as there are 7 of us, we were intending on all putting in a single drive so we'd all be able to walk away with them at the end.
 
Just and update, I've purchased a second hand MSI 939 mobo with 4 s-ata connectors, which has build in Gigabit Lan. Thus making me only need a single pci-e s-ata card. Next I'm looking for a case and a psu to run the lot of them. Looking towards a 550w Antec psu and a so called Thermaltake Xaser that I can get pretty cheap and can take the hard drives and from the amount of cooling should be able to keep them cool.
 
Now I think of it I can't understand why you are building a sever, I mean if everyone is going to be buying their own hdd they may as well just add it to their existing pc anyway. :confused:
 
Energize said:
Now I think of it I can't understand why you are building a sever, I mean if everyone is going to be buying their own hdd they may as well just add it to their existing pc anyway. :confused:
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i agree with this, because you're not actually just getting everyone to buy a hdd, you need to build a machine to hold them as well, unless you're going to shoulder the cost of that? also what happens if one of the hdds dies in the year, who decides who pays for get it fixed/rma'd?

i'm in a similar situation needing to build a server for HD media sharing, although in my situation i'm paying out for the cost of the server, right now its sitting on a x2 3800, 2gb ram with plenty of hdd space (3x 300gb raid3, 3x500gb raid3, 2x250 raid1, 1x300gb, 1x250gb)
 
I am building the server myself, we're doing it that way as all of the other have only got laptops, and we all want to share our movies etc between us. I infact hadn't even thought about who would pay for the rma etc if one of them went down, but it would also be a place where we could very easily back up our data. I infact probably need it more than all the others put together, as I'm the one with thousands of pictures (shooting raw takes a lot of space after a while), over 500gb of music / album artwork and hundreds of movies. And its also something for me to fiddle about with over the summer, hope that makes more sence to you now.
 
Tarty said:
I am building the server myself, we're doing it that way as all of the other have only got laptops, and we all want to share our movies etc between us. I infact hadn't even thought about who would pay for the rma etc if one of them went down, but it would also be a place where we could very easily back up our data. I infact probably need it more than all the others put together, as I'm the one with thousands of pictures (shooting raw takes a lot of space after a while), over 500gb of music / album artwork and hundreds of movies. And its also something for me to fiddle about with over the summer, hope that makes more sence to you now.
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A slightly more expensive case which would help cool all those HDDs would be something like the lian li v series, Its a 100 i know but looks like you've got the rest for cheap.

Without appropriate cooling, 7 hdds will get very hot and damage lifespan im afraid.

sid
 
sid said:
A slightly more expensive case which would help cool all those HDDs would be something like the lian li v series, Its a 100 i know but looks like you've got the rest for cheap.

Without appropriate cooling, 7 hdds will get very hot and damage lifespan im afraid.

sid
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Was intending on getting a cheaper case, and modding it putting in a few 120 mm intakes infront of the drives to keep them cool
 
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