Home Built Mini ITX NAS

[Tori Wallace]

I am just chasing some advice from people. I am looking at building a headless NAS to plug directly into my router to replace my 1000W main pc which I currently run 24/7 and the NAS will let me turn it off.

I just picked up a case with a Atom 1.6GHz with 256MB PC2100 RAM for a cheap deal. Guy had been using it for a NAS. My question is, with me upgrading it to its 1GB Max RAM, will it allow streaming to my 2 Astone MP310 media players via UPnP at the same time (all rooms have their own Media players)? If so, whats the best OS for s Single Core Atom?

Otherwise I am thinking of getting a new Micro ITX MB and a AMD A4 4000 3.2GHz DC with 4GB RAM (around $150). I don't want to spend the money if the Atom can do the job.

Cheers for any advice on OS or Hardware from the experts on here

 

[sadams04]

Depends on what OS you want to run. Throw Windows on there with a Home Share and you might get it done. FreeNAS could possibly get you there, but it would want more memory. Does the Atom have a 1000 NIC, or 100? The Atom might be able to serve up your data, but it would be on the cusp from a CPU and MEM perspective... It is free to try!

 

[Tori Wallace]

Throw Windows on there with a Home Share and you might get it done. FreeNAS could possibly get you there, but it would want more memory.

Windows requires less RAM than NAS4Free? I think its a 1000 NIC. Someone suggested trying out Windows 8 on the atom and just install a AV and a File Server like PS3 Media Server. Would this be a good option with the dual core new build as well?

 

[sadams04]

Windows requires less RAM than NAS4Free? I think its a 1000 NIC. Someone suggested trying out Windows 8 on the atom and just install a AV and a File Server like PS3 Media Server. Would this be a good option with the dual core new build as well?

Windows doesn't require less, but is more forgiving (caches to the disk). FreeNAS will just suffer on performance.

With the newer hardware (A4) any of those solutions would do you well. Just make sure you have a 1GB network backbone. You will struggle with HD content to multiple devices over 100MB links.