Tomek20225

I'm not really an audiophile, but this doesn't surprise me. Phones are built as multimedia devices, and you'd expect that sort of quality from a company like Apple. Your motherboard manufacturer probably chose the cheapest DAC and amp to put on. If you want better sound out of your PC, get a dedicated sound card.

Dont know much at all about Audio, But the above is no surprise. As your PC will just have mostly very basic sound on board, Where a phone built around the fact it needs to have the best audio possible as its a phone.
 
I would advise a sound card would improve the overall audio performance.
 
Thats my take on it anyway  

Sorry I don't really know enough to start recommending things. I would suggest you either start reading Amazon reviews for sound cards around $30, or make another thread in this topic asking for suggestions. (Or both )  

Wish i could advise but i honestly dont know  
 
I would like to know as well tbh, So hopefully someone who is in the know answers  

Sure, if you want the equation to evaluate to "terrible".

here's the way to explain it:
 
- each usb port is a two lane road.
- the uplink to the computer is also a two lane road.
- as long as the total amount of cars doesnt exceed the capacity of the two lane road to the computer there's no slow down.
- when there's too many cars there's a traffic jam and the devices will have to wait their turn to send cars.
 

1.
a) They often come with the vendor's software that allows you to access it over a web interface. They tend to be clunky and slow, though, so a lot people don't use the vendor's software.
 
b) Depends on the model. Some cannot be expanded, while others have more drive bays that you can put more drives into. Compared to a built one, they're not as friendly to expansion. 
 
c) Yes. They're mostly plug and play. 
 
d) No. AFAIK, no pre-built NAS has connections that go through the company's servers, other than software updates, maybe. 

2.
a) FreeNAS is a popular choice. There's tons of apps and support for it, due to the large community. 
b) Depends on the OS. Most (Including FreeNAS) can be run off a USB. 
 
3. It can be set up to be accessed from your phone, yes. 

4. Theoretically, you would see a maximum of 100Mbps over your local network if you're using the router as a switch (plugged directly into it) and it only supports up to 100Mbps. However, when you consider in performance overhead and interference issues of WiFi, you'd likely see speeds closer to 80Mbps. 

5. You would theoretically get 1Gbps over the local network. Have to factor in the same issues with WiFi, though. 

A note on 4 and 5: Your internet speed does not affect your local transfer speeds. You could still use the NAS on a local network without any internet connection. The only time it would affect the speeds is when accessing the NAS from outside the network, over the internet. In which case, you would be limited to your data plan's upload speed. 

6. Yes. If you had a Gigabit NIC in both the NAS and a PC you want to connect, then you should be able to get a Gigabit connection between them. Connecting them both to a Gigabit switch would also work, but if it's just one PC that will be wired, then there's not much point in going for a switch. 

7. RAID 5 is a good option for a NAS. Ideally with 4+ drives. It's a good middle ground that offers speed, redundancy and capacity (doesn't half capacity like some RAID modes do). If you're not fussed about redundancy, and want the drives to combine capacity, then you could go for a JBOD (NOT RAID 0), which combines the capacity of the drives, but you only lose the data on the drive that fails, rather than all data like you would in RAID 0. RAID 10 could also be an option (minimum of 4 drives), but it's not exactly cost effective when compared to RAID 5. 
 
8. If your TV supports DNLA streaming, then yes. If not, you can get media players that support DNLA or UPnP that can stream from the NAS and output to the TV. 

9. 
a) It depends on your requirements. If you're literally just wanting a device to store files like photos, music, documents and such, then buying one can work out cheaper. If you want a streaming device that will be accessed by multiple users, and is going to be streaming 1080p + video, then building is worth it. The CPU in the pre-mades is a big limiting factor if you're planning on running a media server like Plex on the NAS. When building, you can add in ECC RAM (and a board and CPU that support it) to lower the chances of data corruption and crashing. It does cost more, though. 

b) Again, it depends on your usage. Building one gives you more freedom to do what you want with it. Easier upgrades, more features on OS like FreeNAS and so on. 

c) I would personally build one myself. Something like an i3 4170, 16GB ECC RAM, cheap server board that supports ECC and however many WD Red drives. 

10. None that I know of. You can get adapters that allow you to use 3.5" drives in 5.25" bays, but most boards aren't hot-swappable, so you'd have to turn to system off when switching a drive, which defeats the purpose of quick drive changes, anyway. Most mITX cases don't use 5.25" bays at all now, so you'd have to take off the side panels anyway. 

1. It depends on what you want from it.
a/b/c) A prebuilt NAS has the benefits of being smaller and tidier than building it yourself. They are also easier to setup. The drawbacks are that they are far more limited. You can't run whichever software you want on it (like maybe you want to host a server on it as well) and you won't be able to upgrade it with more drives later.
d) I don't really know what you mean with question D. I can connect to my NAS without going through NetGear's servers.
 
a) If you build the NAS yourself then it depends on what you want from it. You could just run Windows if you wanted that. The benefit is that you will be able to run for example game servers on it as well with ease. If you want something more NAS oriented then FreeNAS is very popular and offers some very nice features.
2) Depends on the OS (FreeNAS can) but it is not recommended. You should just install the OS.
 
You mean access the files? Yes, and you can do that with a prebuilt as well. Although, it depends on what app you are using. For example on my Galaxy phone the stock file explorer did not support it, but ES File Explorer does.
 
Your transfer rates would be terrible. You basically need gigabit for your NAS. Your Internet connection speed won't affect anything though (unless you are for example at school and access your NAS). While you are at home no traffic will leave your local network. For example I get about 120MBps when I access my NAS from my desktop. 120MBps is about 1000Mbps (notice the small B). I do not have a 1000Mbps Internet connection.
 
In your case you would get about 10MBps since you got a 100Mbps router that you will connect it to. Do not connect your NAS wirelessly. Your speeds will be even worse if you do that. You want a gigabit router, and connect the NAS with wire. What speed you will get to for example your phone entirely depends on what WiFi you got. It might be really fast, or it might be very bad.
 
Upgrading the router alone would increase your local transfer speed by about 10x. Upgrading your router would not affect the transfer speed while you are for example at school though.
Upgrading your Internet connection to the 100Mbps plan would increase your transfer speed by 10x when you for example access your NAS while at school. Upgrading your plan would not affect the transfer speed while you are at home though. Please bear in mind that it is your UPLOAD speed that will matter in this case. Just upgrading your download speed will not make transferring files from your home to school any faster.
 
Whether or not it is "enough" depends on what you want to do and what hardware you got. I am satisfied with my 120MBps local transfer speed. My NAS can handle more, but going above 1Gbps is kind of a pain. My upload speed is 100Mbps which means that while I am for example at school I get a download speed of about 10MBps. That's fine with me as well.
 
 
You can get 100MBps transfer speed with just a gigabit network card and a gigabit switch (or router). No need to do all the stuff Linus did. The NAS you end up getting (prebuilt or not) will most likely have gigabit Ethernet anyway so as long as your network gear supports it, you will get 100MBps transfer speeds (LOCALLY) without doing anything special.
 
Depends on the number of drives and what you want to achieve.
I got 4 drives and use RAID 5. That means that I get good read speeds (bottlenecked by my gigabit connection), alright write speeds (not that important for me) and one drive can die without any data being lost.
So out of my four 2TB drives I got 6TB of usable storage.
 
Depends entirely on your TV. It might, but don't count on it.
 
 
The problem with a lot of your questions is that you can't generalize like that. You need to state budget, what options you got, what you are going to use it for, how many drives you got, what your network looks like etc.

The gigabit NIC is probably not needed since the motherboard probably has gigabit network on it anyway.
And yes, it will be enough. It might struggle a bit if you want to run something like Plex, but I would recommend against that anyway (better to just stream the original file).
 
Yes, it would transfer files at about 100Mbps locally (which will be around 12MBps). That's pretty slow though. Like I said, in my NAS I get bottlenecked with gigabit, and that's 10x the speed you would get on your 100Mbps connection. I mean, it will be usable but it will also be noticeable that you are being bottlenecked heavily by your network. At least when you are transferring large files to and from your NAS (like when you put the videos onto it).
It should not impact the performance when you stream videos and watch photos though, unless you do it to several units at once.
 
Locally, yes.
 
It depends on how you configure it. I can make a video how it looks for me (don't have time to do it right now though, but it basically just acts as a regular folder).
 
Depends entirely on what you want to do. You could probably install it in a VM first and try it out if you are worried.
 
I got mine turned on 24/7. The drives spin down once I haven't accessed it in 2 hours, but the NAS itself is always on.
 
Once it is configured, it won't need anything. You just turn it on and it works (again, once it is configured).

1. Prebuilt NASs can be fine, depends on what kind of use cases you are looking for.  There's no such thing as expendability.  You get a set amount of bays and that's it.  Easy to setup.
 
2. FreeNAS is frequently recommended
 
3. Sure, why not.
 
4. Internet speeds do not determine your transfer speeds in the intranet.  Data never leaves your home so even with no internet you can still use it.
 
5. See above.
 
6. Yes
 
7. If you have 4 drives minimum, RAID 10.
 
8. If your TV can read from the ethernet source, then yes.
 
9. Building is more worth it, and frequently cheaper or the same price for vastly improved CPU resources, which you can use to run other stuff on as well.
 
10. No idea.

Hi
I've bought myself a beast PC half year ago, then I refurbished my 5 year old PC for my grandparents (added SSD, installed fresh OS etc.) so that they don't have to use my parents former 10 (? - I'm not sure) year old PC. There is nothing to do with it right now - it's just hanging out in the basement.
Grandparents like their PC and love to use it. Now they want one in their second house near the town lake. They reminded themselves that they have one and asked me to prepare it, make it faster, clean it etc.
I agreed. I don't have it yet, but I think what I can do with it. I believe it's specs are:
CPU: AMD Athlon XP 1800+
GPU: Nvidia GeForce 6200
MOBO: ?
RAM: Elixir 1,25GB
HDD: 160GB PATA
PSU: Codegen 300W
CASE: (random really old one - http://cdn.overclock.net/3/3f/3f26b555_vbattach175037.jpeg - looks like this)
OS: Windows XP (idk)-bit
It's space is all cramped and it runs very slowly + I'm not sure what I can do more.
I came with four ideas:
 - format the whole HDD,
 - install new fresh OS,
 - install some programs like Malwarebytes and CCleaner and set it up to manually check the PC state every set period of time,
 - upgrade.
While 3 first ideas aren' bad, but fourth is impossible (unneeded).
Doing the first and third thing is simple, I'm not sure about the OS. Is installing new one actually a good idea? What OS shall I choose? I was thinking about Windows 10, because of low system requirements and running nice&cool on even old machines (but I'm not sure if on that old too...). I don't want to install Linux because I've already learned grandparents using Windows.
What do you think about it overall? What OS shall I pick? Am I wrong somewhere? Do you have any other ideas to make this PC faster/better?

Thanks in advance
Thomas