Spec me a NAS/HTPC

Kemik · 1 Dec 2008 at 21:59

Hey,

I've got £400 to work with to buy a 1TB RAID1 NAS or build the equivalent as a HTPC.

I've been looking at the QNap Turbo Station TS-209 II but I've heard many people say it's much better to build a HTPC yourself for the money.

Size and power efficiency is key for me. As long as it can do pretty much everything the QNap can do I'll be happy. I.e. redundancy, iTunes server, FTP, Webserver, Twonky (DLNA) if possible so I can hook up my PS3. Hoping to be able to easily expand the storage size at a later date but having 2 x 1TB HDDs in RAID 1 is fine for now.

Thanks in advance.

fobose · 1 Dec 2008 at 22:36

Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (WD10EACS) x2
OCZ 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-6400C4 Dual Channel Platinum Revision 2 XTC Series DDR2 (OCZ2P800R22GK)
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4200+ 2.20GHz (Socket AM2) - OEM
Arctic Cooling Alpine 64 CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940/AM2)
Gigabyte GA-MA74GM-S2H AMD 740G (AM2) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
Antec NSK 6580 Super Midi Tower Case - Black/Silver (430W Earth Watts PSU)
LG GH20NS10 20x DVD±RW SATA Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM

Total : £366.75 (-£9 for the free deliver your entitled too).

I chose that case as it has rubber grommets for 5x hard drives, so you can add another 2x 1TB for RAID 1 and another single drive if you like. Didn't select an OS incase you wanted to use linux or sumit

Not to sure on the heatsink, just spec'd it as it was cheap (hopefully its silent

).

Kemik · 1 Dec 2008 at 23:31

Thanks man.

Would I need a separate RAID controller?

lsg1r · 1 Dec 2008 at 23:36

I would have personally spent an extra 20 quid or so and gone for one of the 780G motherboards over the 740 one because of the better built in graphics card. The 780G boards have a hd3200 based graphics card which are able to decode h264 (software and os allowing) meaning the x2 4200 would be able to manage 1080 res files or blu ray if needed. The 4200+ really tops out at 720p on its own.

edit: Most new boards should have a built in raid function, usually not as good as a dedicated chipset but better than software.

Kemik · 2 Dec 2008 at 00:11

I'll take a look at the 780G then. The motherboard says its hotswoppable. Does that mean I can remove a drive and replace it with another and it'll rebuild the array on its own? All I can find as a definition is that it'll allow the removal and installation of new drives while running.

lsg1r · 2 Dec 2008 at 00:34

Kemik said:
The motherboard says its hotswoppable. Does that mean I can remove a drive and replace it with another and it'll rebuild the array on its own? All I can find as a definition is that it'll allow the removal and installation of new drives while running.

yeah thats basically right, but I wouldn't recommend it without a supporting caddy etc.

Kemik · 2 Dec 2008 at 00:41

Highly tempted now

The cheaper price and ability to expand further in the future in definitely big pluses.

I'm guessing for iTunes server support I'd need to use Windows? From the motherboard manual it looks like the RAID setup only works using Windows anyway.

At the moment I'm split.

Self build
+ More expansion
+ More computing power
+ Cheaper
- Larger
- More noise
- More expensive to run (power)
- Need to set everything up myself

QNap
The opposites of the above.

zinglebarb · 2 Dec 2008 at 01:08

why not build using a mini itx board with either the atom or the via cpu? only uses 25 to 50 watts. Throw an adaptec sata raid controller at it and then run free nas. You certainly do not need a dual core cpu to do the job. If you need all the apps then just run windows on it

fobose · 2 Dec 2008 at 07:10

I only speced the 740G as the OP didn't state it would be used for HD playback, which is why I also didn't spec a monitor or keyb/mouse as once setup it can be remotely accessed.

Regarding ITX/atom, ocuk only stock one ITX board that I can see which costs twice as much as the AMD board. The said ITX board only has 1x pci-express slot and no PCI (as far I am aware PCI-E x1 RAID controllers with more than 2 ports are hard to come by?).

agent_paul · 2 Dec 2008 at 08:36

if your going to build one yourself, i would also suggest looking into a mini itx motherboard. but the thing to add about building a nas / htpc is that you would need to setup every bit of software yourself. The Qnap which you was looking at has everything setup for you out of the box(i assume it does), so you would just plug and play i guess .

I've also been thinking about getting a custom built nas / htpc because my current nas (synology ds106j) doesnt have the power and doesnt do everything i want.

zinglebarb · 2 Dec 2008 at 11:36

fobose said:
I only speced the 740G as the OP didn't state it would be used for HD playback, which is why I also didn't spec a monitor or keyb/mouse as once setup it can be remotely accessed.

Regarding ITX/atom, ocuk only stock one ITX board that I can see which costs twice as much as the AMD board. The said ITX board only has 1x pci-express slot and no PCI (as far I am aware PCI-E x1 RAID controllers with more than 2 ports are hard to come by?).

The op requested power efficient. If you build a full sized pc with a standard cpu its gonna cost a lot to run over the long term. The board will ship with 2 sata controllers so with the raid its 4 so if expansion was required you could use 2 more hard drives and run software back up application on it so you will not need to run a raid 1 array to keep it safe.Bare in mind most ITX boards come complete with the cpu. I was answering the question asked by the op not promoting a board on OCUK. I did not link elsewhere so did not break any rules but there are a lot of itx boards out there and for a nas they are far and away a better option unless you do not mind a second full pc on your leccy bill

Kemik · 2 Dec 2008 at 14:27

As this will primarily be used as a backup with TimeMachine, would you guys say the QNap will be really slow because it's over the network? If so, can I hook it up with my Macbook Pro using USB 2.0 and still have it on the network via Ethernet?

If it's going to be really slow I'll go ahead and build from scratch.

lsg1r · 2 Dec 2008 at 15:00

having both a single drive synology and a windows vista based file server (I use it for more than just a file server), the windows machine is a lot quicker than the synology at transferring data to and from another machine.

I suggested the 780g chipset as its slightly better powerwise and its also more futureproof, the op may eventually go for a hd format with a htpc etc