Atom 1.6 GHz dual core suitable for home media server

[sirhawkeye64]

I have an older Zotac ION (Intel Atom N330 1.6 GHz dual core) board that's sitting around that I was going to turn into a home (media/file) server for myself. This board has 4 GB of RAM and has SATA 3.0 Gbps ports. Wondering if this will be suitable? The server will ONLY be used for serving data, not transcoding or anything like that. I will probably just set it up as a network share to my other systems (so I'm NOT planning on using any Media Streaming softare like Plex, at the moment).

The storage drives are connected to a SATA 3.0Gbps interface (this is an older motherboard, about 4 years old) but I don't anticipate this will bottleneck the system. It will be connected to the wireless router via a wired gigabit ethernet.

Or, since my router (Nighthawk R7000) has a USB 3.0 port, would I be better off using a USB 3.0 hard drive connected directly to the router?

 

[CodyMondo]

there should be no problem, the atom even though its a low power chip it should be able to handle file transfers just fine

 

[Wolfshadw]

Yes, that will be fine for your purposes. The system I built for my mother uses the same processor. If I could install more than 2GB of RAM (motherboard limitation), she wouldn't be begging for a new computer this holiday season!

-Wolf sends

 

[sirhawkeye64]

I figured so. I had figured that the real limiting factor would probably be the 1Gbps transfer speed between the PC and the router.