Will getting a NAS save me money?

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I watch the vast majority of my movies and such on my PS3, although the vast majority of them are stored on my PC. I'm aware that running a Quad Core Gaming PC just to stream my files to my PC is probably a waste of electricity, but will buying a NAS be worth it?

I've found a second-hand quad-bay NAS for only £75, which would be ideal for me as I have 3 x 1TB hard drives in my PC, and a third smaller drive for my OS.

Assuming I watch 2 hours of videos a day (on average, rounded up :p) how long would it take for me to get my £75 back? My spec is in my sig. Any advice on how to work it out?
 
You'd need to know the average draw of the current kit and the proposed kit.
Then you can woork out how many kw/h's your are saving which can be translated into a cost.
 
It was my understanding that a PC only uses as much energy it needs, so if it is completely idle other than streaming movies then it shouldn't be drawing tons of energy. Of course it wont be as energy efficient as a dedicated NAS since you will still have fans running and an OS running that uses CPU time (even when idle), but even so I would have thought that when just streaming movies and doing nothing else, the PC wont be using a ton of power (compared to running a game).
 
The NAS boxes you get normally average ~10-40W whilst a quad core pc will probably be closer t0 100+W. The only way you will know what yours uses is with a meter and to test it.
 
Well, every pc component has a minimum amount drawn when idle, for most things, cpu etc, it's negligible, the problem is really the gpu. Most draw more than a nas when idle, which is significantly higher than a nas when you add the few watts for evey additional component.

But as other have said, you wont know exactly how much unless you meter it, although imo, putting you lare drives in a nas and networking them is only an improvement. That in itself would make it worth the £75.
 
I was deciding this based on an old 10/100 NAS unit and getting a dedicated server together.

The server costs more per hour but using standby and other power saving methods and the increased transfer speed - (upgrade provided gigabit) the actual savings against use worked out cheaper.
Plus the server was cheaper than a gigabit NAS. If however the initial cost is not a problem a NAS will work out cheaper. Perhaps an ITX is another route which can do more work for you?
 
I am using a WD MYBOOK WORLD 1TB, I stream all my films/music/photos off of it through to my ps3 which is linked up to a 50" sony bravia HD TV , all my systems automatically back up to it and I have public drives for all the systems in my house to share data so it isn't duplicated. I freakin love it. I am just about to daisy chain another WD 1TB drive off of it.
 
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