building own server, need advice

deus3x · 21 Feb 2011 at 13:49

I have ordered a server which i mainly want as a file server.

What kind of spec will i need, it will be streaming blu rays over cat 6 connection and used to access data.

Will windows 7 be ok or a i best to use a server edition.

All advice welcomed.

mikeh501 · 21 Feb 2011 at 16:50

pretty much anything you buy will be capable of streaming blurays across a network.

Will it be doing anything else? For instance if your doing transcoding on the fly that will require a beefier proc (AirVideo / PS3 streaming etc)

and Windows 7 will be fine, no issues. Also consider free stuff like FreeNAS etc.

deus3x · 21 Feb 2011 at 17:26

Hi Mike,

I was looking and a system which is low wattage. I will look into an i3 system and see what budget i can arrange.

Its mainly for streaming to the home network, all movies on the HDD and streamed direct to my media centres.

3dcandy · 21 Feb 2011 at 19:43

That's a doddle for a much lower spec system, i3 could be seen as overkill. However, it can also be powered down etc. nicely. I'd personally look at maybe a Linux based solution, if only for the cost side of things...

chokedoke · 22 Feb 2011 at 14:04

Yeah for the purposes of streaming video over your network one of the linux distros (ubuntu perhaps) would work just as well. The media centres should be able to connect to the smb shares without any issues.

Im currently running one of the newer ion processors for my nas box that streams media around the network and it performs great even with HD content

blueacid · 25 Feb 2011 at 08:50

You could easily make do with an Atom, or even a second hand Pentium 3 if all it's doing is just holding data on hard drives & spitting it out over the network.

For the record, my home fileserver was a Pentium 2 @ 350Mhz, 512mb ram, software (yes) raid-5, 100mbit lan. It could happily saturate the 100mbit lan in both directions with file transfers to/from the RAID, processor was at 40%

An i3 is overkill.

droyden · 25 Feb 2011 at 17:59

Go with an atom or some Sempron/Celeron. You should consider number of SATA ports on your mobo if you intend to have a decent amount of storage. Also if you look at an older PC you should be careful to make sure that it will support larger/newer drives.

Yes, use linux. Alternatively buy a NAS (QNAP etc)