Budget NAS for 1080p

nicknack35

nicknack35

nicknack35

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5 Apr 2014
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1,476
Hey all im not to sure if this is the place to ask. But seen few discussions here about NAS. I currently looking to buy a NUC for the main TV in the living room. But it won't have an internal drive only SSD. Now our main HTPC in our bedroom the internal drive is nearly full and our external drives are nearly full due to backing up our movie and music files. Now im looking for something that we can download to aswell as show our movie and music collection on the HTPC in our bedroom aswell as the NUC in the living room. PLEX will be used to show our films and music. But that will be over the local network so Transcoding won't be an issue. I will be getting a PLEX pass due to a family member been a user to stream my film collection. At the moment he brings his drive to exchange films so PLEX will be ideal if he wants to watch a film i can put it on my PLEX for him to view.

Requirments

Be able to stream 1080p on 3 tv's 20gb + MKV's With HD audio ( if needed) 2 at the most bedroom and living room

Leave on most of the time instead of leaving the HTPC's on due to downloading and Streaming

8TB storage will be enough

Low on energy

Cheap as possible Budget £300
 
Cheapest DIY NAS is probably buying of those HP Microservers, especially if you can get a deal with cashback. People have run them with XPEnology (Synology O/S) though I haven't had any hands on experience with it, as I own an official Synology NAS.
 
A Synology NAS would be a fine choice. That's what id proberly go for if it can be around £300 if i have to cut back from 8TB to 4TB for the time been that be ok
 
Eulogy said:
I *might* be selling my old Synology DS412+ soon (https://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-068-SY) on here in the near future if you're interested. Was going to put up on the MM.

Was looking for around £225 for it, although my sister wanted first dibs so I am just checking with her first before I officially put it up for sale, if she says no it will be going up there instead.
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Yea that be great many thanks.Just let me know and we will sort it
 
I doubt my sister will want it but have to ask, family etc. Do you have access to the MM here? there is a post count/length of time since registration requirement, but you might have it :)
 
It's over 1000 posts, I don't recommend spamming to get it they will delete your posts. I'd feel safer selling on the members market proper so yeah best to carry on looking! :)
 
Dsteviedee said:
No trading outside of MM.
I'd edit your post if I were you.
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Yeah will do, though I did say I was going to put it up on the MM rather than sell outside of that!

Point taken though, I'd rather not fall afoul of the rules.

Nicknack do checkout the hp microservers, they offer very good value for money.
 
Ugh it was the G1610T but the cash back deal expired after June by the looks of things. They may come up again though if you wait around a bit.

Alternatively take a look at either the DS415 Play or DS415+ (https://www.synology.com/en-us/products/compare/DS415+/DS415play) for 4 bay options.

I haven't looked at other manufacturers so much personally, which may do more competitively priced units.
 
I could be wrong but I don't think you actually need a powerful NAS since you're not transcoding.

Get a QNAP 431-S 4 bay. Load it up with 4x 2TB. It will be used as nothing more than a dumb 'file server'

All the processing will be done locally on the HTPC or media device. The advantage of that is the Q-nap can easily 'disseminate' the files to three or four clients - it's up to those clients to do the processing then unless I've misunderstood your requirements?
 
sansnom said:
I could be wrong but I don't think you actually need a powerful NAS since you're not transcoding.

Get a QNAP 431-S 4 bay. Load it up with 4x 2TB. It will be used as nothing more than a dumb 'file server'

All the processing will be done locally on the HTPC or media device. The advantage of that is the Q-nap can easily 'disseminate' the files to three or four clients - it's up to those clients to do the processing then unless I've misunderstood your requirements?
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One of the major benefits (imo) of the Synology is the app support for various things I use like Sonarr, Sab, Couchpotato, Plex. How does QNAP handle these apps?
 
Eulogy said:
One of the major benefits (imo) of the Synology is the app support for various things I use like Sonarr, Sab, Couchpotato, Plex. How does QNAP handle these apps?
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Good question but honestly I have no idea, I don't use those apps at all. Infact I don't even use Plex anymore, only Kodi, as I've found I have no need to transcode and I much prefer Kodi's interface.

I can only say that as a file server, the Q-nap has been fine and it only cost me £170 so it's a pretty strong fit for the budget nas category
 
If you need to transcode three 20GB MKVs then you will need a DIY NAS. Any of the Synology ones that can do that are hellishly expensive. I built a Plex server last month with the following spec for £365:

NZXT H230 Classic Silent Midtower Case Black (£49.99)
Plextor PX-M5S 256GB SSD (£43)
HyperX Savage 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) 2400 MHz (£67.99)
Gigabyte Z87-D3HP Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX (£45)
Intel Core i5-4670K (£133)
Raijintek Themis Direct Contact CPU Cooler (£19.99)
NZXT FN-120 Enthusiast Performance Case Fan - 120mm (£6.99)


I had a power supply that I used for the above build so I saved a bit of money there. You could easily drop the CPU to an i3 4170, ditch the aftermarket cooler and drop the RAM to 8GB and come in on budget.

I upgraded from a Q9650, 8GB with a D Link DNS-345 NAS and it's been a massive performance upgrade. Power saving is on so the i5 will downclock to 800Mhz when idle, all the drives spin down and I have no GPU so power consumption at idle is very good. If I need the power then it will clock up to 4GHz on all cores and I've got a very fast responsive server. I've also done a fair bit of encoding of high bitrate MKV files so friends can play them on their PS4/XBox and it rips through encoding as well which is a bonus.

I have 12TB worth of storage on my Server but as it is all just media that I can easily download again I have not bothered to RAID the drives as I don't need the redundancy.

The HP microservers are decent but they have really weak processors and lack the space to fill them up with HDDs. However, if you don't need to transcode they are very good value for money with the cashback.
 
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Transcoding won't be an issue i have HTPC with plex on and the NUC will also have plex which will be on the main TV so i can login to my plex account on the NUC which will have windows 7 on. Im looking for mainly storage for the NUC and my main HTPC the storage on my HTPC is nearly full and the NUC will only have SSD with no internal HDD.But a family member might want to use my plex to stream my movies but i don't think transcoding will be needed
 
MG42Maniac said:
If you need to transcode three 20GB MKVs then you will need a DIY NAS. Any of the Synology ones that can do that are hellishly expensive. I built a Plex server last month with the following spec for £365:

NZXT H230 Classic Silent Midtower Case Black (£49.99)
Plextor PX-M5S 256GB SSD (£43)
HyperX Savage 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) 2400 MHz (£67.99)
Gigabyte Z87-D3HP Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX (£45)
Intel Core i5-4670K (£133)
Raijintek Themis Direct Contact CPU Cooler (£19.99)
NZXT FN-120 Enthusiast Performance Case Fan - 120mm (£6.99)


I had a power supply that I used for the above build so I saved a bit of money there. You could easily drop the CPU to an i3 4170, ditch the aftermarket cooler and drop the RAM to 8GB and come in on budget.

I upgraded from a Q9650, 8GB with a D Link DNS-345 NAS and it's been a massive performance upgrade. Power saving is on so the i5 will downclock to 800Mhz when idle, all the drives spin down and I have no GPU so power consumption at idle is very good. If I need the power then it will clock up to 4GHz on all cores and I've got a very fast responsive server. I've also done a fair bit of encoding of high bitrate MKV files so friends can play them on their PS4/XBox and it rips through encoding as well which is a bonus.

I have 12TB worth of storage on my Server but as it is all just media that I can easily download again I have not bothered to RAID the drives as I don't need the redundancy.

The HP microservers are decent but they have really weak processors and lack the space to fill them up with HDDs. However, if you don't need to transcode they are very good value for money with the cashback.
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is your storage connected via separate NAS or internal? Also what OS are you running on that?
 
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