NAS build or buy?

[Erfurt]

Hey guys

 

So I'm thinking about getting a NAS, mainly for some music and movie streaming, but should I build one myself or buy a prebuild one. At the moment I don't have any spare computer parts, so if I was to build one myself, I would have to buy the parts for it. In the prebuild department, I would only need like 4 HDDs, and therefore have I looked at WD My Cloud EX4 and the Synology Disk Station DS415play, the My Cloud is cheaper, but Synology is probably better, I don't really know. But what would you guys do, and why? Would love to get some feedback, and recommendations.

[Fulgrim]

If you want to keep the cost low, build your own with some cheap parts. A mate of mine has put together his own NAS, with 4x 3TB drives, and is running FreeNAS on it. It's using an old Athlon II cpu with 4GB ram lol, it gets the job done. Currently running a Teamspeak 3 server off it as well.

 

Since you want it just to stream data off it, you don't need a high-end setup. It's mainly the drives which will bump the price of it up, depending on how much storage you're after.

[Erfurt]

If you want to keep the cost low, build your own with some cheap parts. A mate of mine has put together his own NAS, with 4x 3TB drives, and is running FreeNAS on it. It's using an old Athlon II cpu with 4GB ram lol, it gets the job done. Currently running a Teamspeak 3 server off it as well.

 

Since you want it just to stream data off it, you don't need a high-end setup. It's mainly the drives which will bump the price of it up, depending on how much storage you're after.

I see, I might build one if I can get some cheap parts. Was thinking about getting 4x3 TB and run them in raid 5

[thekeemo]

I would"

 

a) Go with an old computer that nobody uses

B) Get a pre-built if its cheaper than building a cheap one

c) if a and/or b is inapplicable i'd build my own

 

EDIT: damn auto smiley