Dann kommts halt drauf an was du dir preislich vorstellst.. Laptops mit APU o.ä. sind nicht allzu teuer und dürften für CS:GO reichen, für Laptops mit anständiger GPU musst du aber um die ~1000€ rechnen...
Uuuuuuund die SSD im Plex Server ist abgeraucht. Uuuuuuund ich hab noch kein Backup gemacht. Party hard.. Naja jetzt kann ich mir ja überlegen auf Linux zu wechseln..
"Green" Plex-Box that's actually white
PCPartPicker: https://pcpartpicker.com/b/mvyfrH
It's time for another buildlog - but this time not for a gaming rig but a small homeserver-project.
So I have a NAS (Synology DS215j) hosting all my data including movies etc which I access through the network (1GBit/s on copper and 54Mbit/s on WiFi) on most of my devices. Unfortunately my tablet is too slow to decode 1080p- or even some 720p-files properly and stutters or even leaves the image out by only playing audio. So to counter this I decided to setup a Plex server. First idea was to use the NAS since it offers Plex support but after 1 hour of configuration I received the motivating result "Your server is to slow.". Turns out the DualCore 800MHz ARM CPU in my NAS can only handle audio and maybe 360p (not even 480p!) video.
As a result I decided to build my own Plex server which would read the files from my NAS, transcode them and stream them into the network per request, but since it also had to run 24/7 it needed to be energy efficient - in other words: very low power consumption in idle. I found some rather fast, yet low power CPUs on ebay but as prices were a little high on most of the newer ones I settled with a Sandy-Bridge i3, a 2120T to be exact - T for the extra underclock when in idle, pulling the power consumption down to mere 4W. Next was the mainboard which I actually only found one option on ebay, supporting this CPU - and I got it, an ASUS P8H77-I. A friend of mine still had some 6GB (3x2) DDR3 1066MHz RAM kit and an OCZ Agility2 50GB SSD lying around so I got that for a few bucks. For cooling I wanted to go as quiet as possible resulting in the Hyper 212 Evo by CoolerMaster with passive cooling intended.
The latter almost didn't fit due to chips on the back of the mobo but it seems like it's stable even with just two turns of threading.
Since I still had an old PSU lying around I wanted to test the hardware I had so far and build it on the mainboard-box, which turned out to be a depressing experience - again. The mobo had a defective 2nd RAM slot so from my 3 2GB DIMMs I could only use 1. In addition the PSU seemed to have a loose connection resulting in many unwanted shutdowns during setup. So I ordered a 4GB HyperX Fury DIMM with 1333MHz and went searching for a highly efficient PSU and a nice case for mITX systems with a towercooler. My results were firstly the picoPSU in the 160XT version bundled together with a 150W power brick and secondly a Fractal Node 304 in white.
With all set in place I started to build the full system into the case since I managed to finish all the Windows (replaced later on) and Plex installations while waiting for the last parts to arrive and approved of it's result in tests with multiple PCs and Android devices. Getting the board with the already attached heatsink into the case was bit tricky but I pulled it off with a lot of twisting the whole thing around. The Node 304 actually is a little big for just a mITX server without a lot of storage or other hardware-based components - but I might use that for an upgrade to a full NAS later on. Some cables like the USB3-header weren't easy to connect since they were almost too short but everything worked out in the end. Since I wasn't planning on using a SFX or ATX PSU I had the whole PSU space left open which actually was one of the major features I liked about the Node 304 because it is in the front of the case with an extension cable reaching out to the back. Just as if it was made for it, I placed my 150W power brick in the PSU spacing and strapped it down with some cableties.
The result was a compact mITX build with almost pure passive cooling from basically just one 140mm casefan (the 2 80mm ones in the front are running on low speed and pretty much don't move any air). I verified 3 seperate 1080p streams to 3 different devices simultaniously without any laggs so far and the idle power consumption stays in the range of 18-21W - being capped out on full load (running a CPU benchmark) at 42W.
As I mentioned I might think about converting this into a full NAS system by adding a RAID-card and HDDs to it. On the other hand I would never have the option to go 10GBit/s that way (not enough PCIe lanes) and I'd have to setup custom scripts to handle the jobs my Synology NAS handles at the moment. I also would switch the OS to Debian or FreeNAS if I were to do so since I am not fond of Windows as a high-availability-OS for servers (I handle enough of them at work already). But that's all for a later project, so thank you for reading and I look forward to your comments!
Ist das beste Display vor dem ich selbst je gesessen habe. Und nein ich kann Dir keinen schenken. Alle Kohle schon weg
P.S. Kanns sein das heut übermässige viele Idioten auf LTT unterwegs sind oder bin ich nur zu überempfindlich. Ich hasse solche möchtegern Freizeit Mods die meinen alles kommentieren zu müssen <_<
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