Small, Cheap download box?

[entireweb]

I built a system along the lines of what you are looking for. Basically its a 24-7 download machine and file sharer.

Mine is.

The Intel® Desktop Board D945GCLF (atom based all in one board)

Venus 669 case (good because it can hold multiple hard drives and has a 5.25 inch slot. Also it has a good 200w power supply included)

1gb ram

1x2.5 250gb western digital green power

1x3.5 750 gb western digital green power

1 PCI gigabit ethernet card.

The system was chosen to be the lowest powered that was reasonably attainable at the time. It draws about 50W in load.

I would recommend two hardrives for a download machine. One hardrive will be the "downloader". This is my 2.5 inch. Its constantly active writing the torrent chunks. The other harddrive should be your "final" hardrive. In this case the "downloader" when finishing a torrent will move the file to the "final". It is the "final" that is shared on the network.

I use azureus running under XP on the torrent machine. I control the downloads from another PC using the azureus remote control plug in AzSMRC. In this case I dont need a monitor or keyboard connected to the torrent machine. For all other connectivity issues I use VNC to control the torrent PC.

I have been running it now for about 6 months, without problem.

 

[Col_M]

Does the Foxconn DH-839 really hold 3x3.5" drives? I just went to the Foxconn website and it lists as: 1*5.25 external, 1*3.5 externa,l 1*3.5 internal
If it did or there was a Mini-ITX one that did at less of the cost of the chenbro then I'd be very interested.

Yeah, from looking at the the pics and fromt he description there is the one internal 3.5" bay, a 3.5" external which is for a FDD and a 5.25" for an optical drive.

So that's 3 places to put a 3.5" HDD as I'm not having fitting an optical drive.

As I understand it

 

[entireweb]

Yeah, from looking at the the pics and fromt he description there is the one internal 3.5" bay, a 3.5" external which is for a FDD and a 5.25" for an optical drive.

So that's 3 places to put a 3.5" HDD as I'm not having fitting an optical drive.

As I understand it

The Venus 669 case I mentioned before can take 4x3.5" HDD. Plus I am sure it could take an extra 2.5" as well. BTW its 60 quid! Overclockers dont sell it, but you can search google.

 

[Col_M]

The Venus 669 case I mentioned before can take 4x3.5" HDD. Plus I am sure it could take an extra 2.5" as well. BTW its 60 quid! Overclockers dont sell it, but you can search google.

Yeah that was one of my other options, it doesn't look too bad either Actually I just checked and it was the 668

 

[entireweb]

Yeah that was one of my other options, it doesn't look too bad either Actually I just checked and it was the 668

The 669 is pretty good IMO. It has a reasonable quality 200w power surply, the chassis is good quality IMO. I removed its rear fans as they did nothing IMO. Its down side is that the case cover is very thin aluminium and offers little noise dampening. Also the power supply doesnt have a on/off switch on the back. A minor point. But its cheap and does the job

 

[Methanoid]

We've done this to death only last month in another thread.

Beat my 13W Linkstation Live ??? Its a 400mhz CPU which is fine to max a 20mbit connection downloading via usenet or torrent or http/ftp.

Mine also acts as web server and as central file server.

More info at the blog linked below

I love my Linkstation. Atom is crippled by being paired with a 22W chipset called 945GC (and derivatives). What is the point when Atom is 2-4W to ruin it with that crapppy chipset. Until Atom has the Poulsbo SCH with it I am avoiding like plague

 

[entireweb]

We've done this to death only last month in another thread.

Beat my 13W Linkstation Live ???

Can it run peerguardian behind BT?

How long does it take to unrar a 4gb download?

How many hard drives can it use?

Can you automatical click a torrent link, from the webbrowser of your "control" PC and then box downloads it, or do you have to copy the URL and then paste it via its own interface?

But anyhow you are correct about the wasted wattage of the atom board chipset, however the atom board is now less than 50 quid. So if you build the machine I propose then you can bin the cheap board and upgrade to a Poulsbo based one, if/when it comes out.

 

[Methanoid]

Can it run peerguardian behind BT?

How long does it take to unrar a 4gb download?

How many hard drives can it use?

Can you automatical click a torrent link, from the webbrowser of your "control" PC and then box downloads it, or do you have to copy the URL and then paste it via its own interface?

But anyhow you are correct about the wasted wattage of the atom board chipset, however the atom board is now less than 50 quid. So if you build the machine I propose then you can bin the cheap board and upgrade to a Poulsbo based one, if/when it comes out.

Who needs Peer Guardian if what you are doing is legal

LS takes one HD, LS Duo takes two and the new LS Quad.. well U can guess.. or get a Terastation.

Torrents no, you cannot click on and have them download. Then again you cannot unless you are logged on to the PC you'd be using.

How long to unRAR 4g.. no idea... I leave mine on 24/7 cos it is so cheap to run. Who cares if its 20ms or 1 hour or whatever.

 

[Chaos]

We've done this to death only last month in another thread.

Beat my 13W Linkstation Live ??? Its a 400mhz CPU which is fine to max a 20mbit connection downloading via usenet or torrent or http/ftp.

Have you tried the Viglen MPC-L thats ment to run at 8-11w dunno if its any good just heard about it the other day.

Edit: On second thoughts you cant stick in a proper drive into it so stuck with laptop ones so the linkstation sounds better.

 

[Methanoid]

2.5 drives are quieter and more economic but slower generally and much more expensive