Another Newbie Wants A NAS

[SupaCupa]

As I'm sure you've all seen so many times here, I'm a confident PC builder who is looking to create a NAS to store and stream media to iOS devices and the like. I've got a budget of about $2500 AU which is about $1900 US. From my research and digging through these forums I've come to a couple of questions.

 

1. Should I build my own system and install FreeNas or buy a prebuilt?
2. Should I use Plex, Infuse or something else? (I want to be able to stream to Apple TV as well as iOS devices)
3. If I do build my own what kind of specs should my build have so that I can readily stream 1080p 60fps and maybe even 4K footage.

Its likely the NAS will be located on a property other than my house so I'm also wondering if this would require any specific hardware implementation. 

 

Thanks so much for any help in advance, I'll be looking forward to seeing your replies. 

[Lolucoca]

What I would do is just build some cheap ass Celeron/Pentium system, add a couple gigs of RAM and install freenas. You can handle RAID within freenas. If I were you I would use Plex, it's easy to use. Streaming Data over a Network isn't a hard task cause the decoding is not taking place at the NAS side of things. A Pentium will totally do. 

[SCHISCHKA]

9 minutes ago, SupaCupa said:

Should I build my own system and install FreeNas or buy a prebuilt?

ha ha ha. duh. for me its either build or buy ex-lease professional/enterprise level workstation & server stuff that i cant afford brand new.

10 minutes ago, SupaCupa said:

Should I use Plex, Infuse or something else? (I want to be able to stream to Apple TV as well as iOS devices)

no harm in trying them all. Plex does the job. I have never used infuse

10 minutes ago, SupaCupa said:

If I do build my own what kind of specs should my build have so that I can readily stream 1080p 60fps and maybe even 4K footage.

you need to state number of clients.

11 minutes ago, SupaCupa said:

Its likely the NAS will be located on a property other than my house so I'm also wondering if this would require any specific hardware implementation. 

is it going in your chicken coop? If your network is going to be the slowest part then as above you to calculate for the number of clients.

 

[SCHISCHKA]

5 minutes ago, Lolucoca said:

What I would do is just build some cheap ass Celeron/Pentium system, add a couple gigs of RAM and install freenas. You can handle RAID within freenas. If I were you I would use Plex, it's easy to use. Streaming Data over a Network isn't a hard task cause the decoding is not taking place at the NAS side of things. A Pentium will totally do. 

you can handle RAID with < 512mb of ram using linux. A media server for a few clients where there is more reading than writing does not require all the ZFS features that freeNAS provides. If you look at hardware requirements for all ZFS feature you are getting into some expensive server grade stuff. Server grade stuff + ZFS is good for lots of clients with lots of read and write demands. media streaming not so much. Look at the protocols used for media streaming, they dont exactly require every 0 and 1 to be accountable

[Lolucoca]

@SCHISCHKA Of course you don't need 8GB of RAM for a NAS running freenas. I run mine on 2GB which is totally fine. But I wouldn't go lower than that.

[SCHISCHKA]

13 minutes ago, Lolucoca said:

@SCHISCHKA Of course you don't need 8GB of RAM for a NAS running freenas. I run mine on 2GB which is totally fine. But I wouldn't go lower than that.

without the advanced features of ZFS what is the advantage over mdadm or BRTFS? I trialled ZFS for personal use and Im sticking with BTRFS for my desktop's built in backup and mdadm for my fileserver. mdadm emails me if a drive fails. does freenas email you if a drive fails?

[desertcomputer]

1. Personally, building a system yourself is best way unless you could find a cheap server on ebay or gumtree etc. 

2. Yes, Plex is quite nice and easy to setup with freenas especially. 

3. Your budget could fit a xeon if you want to lower storage to begin with (4x4TB or 2x8TB) and 32GB ram and you should be set to stream at 4k. You should able to stream on relative low powered CPU on plex if it direct stream or direct play. 

 

 

18 minutes ago, Lolucoca said:

@SCHISCHKA Of course you don't need 8GB of RAM for a NAS running freenas. I run mine on 2GB which is totally fine. But I wouldn't go lower than that.

Not true if you are planning to run on FREENAS or planning to run ZFS or plugins such as plex. 

[Pixel5]

the server you are looking for doesn't need much performance as it will only deliver the files and your devices will need to do the decoding.

 

Especially for your 4K streaming you want to make sure your network is able to handle it, 4K streams with high bitrates can really put your network to the test.

[jkirkcaldy]

Just a word of warning if you are thinking about 4k content to be played via Plex. 

 

Whilst you can play 4k content on plex using fairly low powered cpu's this is only if the client you are watching the media on supports it and is being played via direct play. This means your media needs to be in the correct codec supported by your client. As soon as you play it on a client that doesn't support direct play 4k content ie. apple tv and ios devices it's going to need to be transcoded and you're not going to have a good time transcoding high bitrate 4k files in real time using a celeron or pentium processor. 

 

If 4k is something that you are going to want in the future it may be worth building a system on a chipset that will let you upgrade to a more powerful cpu down the line when you want to implement 4k. 

 

Maybe go for a kaby lake i3 with 8gb ram or something similar then down the line if and when you want to start looking at 4k again you can get an i7 to help transcode the 4k media. Or look at Ryzen?

 

(All of this assumes that you won't be storing multiple optimised versions of your media which would be the way to go about using a low power cpu and still having 4k support) 

 

In terms of having your server somewhere away from your house - you will need to make sure that, that property has an amazing upload speed  or a direct connection to your network if you are thinking about streaming media at 1080p60fps or 4k. 

[SupaCupa]

Thanks for all your replies, this will be very very helpful.

18 hours ago, Pixel5 said:

the server you are looking for doesn't need much performance as it will only deliver the files and your devices will need to do the decoding.

 

Especially for your 4K streaming you want to make sure your network is able to handle it, 4K streams with high bitrates can really put your network to the test.

What kind of bitrates are we talking? Australia doesn't have the best of internet. Our upload speed maxed out (on the home network) is 30mbps and the same speed will likely be available at the premises we want to run our NAS from, unless there's a special enterprise speed option. Will 30mbps be enough to host this NAS or would it be smarter just to run it from home? 

 

18 hours ago, jkirkcaldy said:

Whilst you can play 4k content on plex using fairly low powered cpu's this is only if the client you are watching the media on supports it and is being played via direct play. This means your media needs to be in the correct codec supported by your client. As soon as you play it on a client that doesn't support direct play 4k content ie. apple tv and ios devices it's going to need to be transcoded and you're not going to have a good time transcoding high bitrate 4k files in real time using a celeron or pentium processor. 

 

If 4k is something that you are going to want in the future it may be worth building a system on a chipset that will let you upgrade to a more powerful cpu down the line when you want to implement 4k. 

 

Maybe go for a kaby lake i3 with 8gb ram or something similar then down the line if and when you want to start looking at 4k again you can get an i7 to help transcode the 4k media. Or look at Ryzen?

 

The idea of 4K is more of a safety thing, it would be nice to have this NAS be prepared for the next generation of media which really seems to be going in the direction of 4K content. Your idea of using a low power cheap CPU and upgrading when necessary sounds great. 

 

19 hours ago, SCHISCHKA said:

you need to state number of clients.

The NAS will only really be being hit by 1-2 devices at once and 4 at max.

 

19 hours ago, SCHISCHKA said:

A media server for a few clients where there is more reading than writing does not require all the ZFS features that freeNAS provides. If you look at hardware requirements for all ZFS feature you are getting into some expensive server grade stuff. Server grade stuff + ZFS is good for lots of clients with lots of read and write demands. media streaming not so much. Look at the protocols used for media streaming, they dont exactly require every 0 and 1 to be accountable

I'd be hoping this NAS would be capable of holding essentially all the photo/video backups that the family needs while also then being a media server from which we can stream movies. 

[Pixel5]

2 hours ago, SupaCupa said:

Thanks for all your replies, this will be very very helpful.

What kind of bitrates are we talking? Australia doesn't have the best of internet. Our upload speed maxed out (on the home network) is 30mbps and the same speed will likely be available at the premises we want to run our NAS from, unless there's a special enterprise speed option. Will 30mbps be enough to host this NAS or would it be smarter just to run it from home? 

i think we need to clarify here what exactly you are intending to do.

 

From the previous posts i was thinking you want to stream media within the same network as the NAS is located, now it sounds more like you want to stream to outside of the network.

The first option is fairly easy and you only bottleneck could be your wifi speed.

Regarding 4K streaming, i have my 4K TV connected via cable but the TV only has a 100mbit port and i sometimes get little stutters of buffering when watching movies with high bitrates (but these movies also need like 80-100GB disk space so you won't have many of them)

 

For streaming to devices outside the network you may want to consider transcoding on the NAS so you dont send out the stream with a huge bitrate to a phone that can't even display 4K cause the screen is 1080p or something.

 

Also make sure your apple stuff is able to decode DTS sound as this will be the first thing you run into otherwise.

 

The last question for me would be if you want to take time to set everything up server wise or if you prefer and easier solution which would mean getting a prebuild NAS.

[Jarsky]

23 hours ago, SupaCupa said:

Should I build my own system and install FreeNas or buy a prebuilt?

For smaller systems, generally prebuilt such as a Synology or QNAP is the way to go - but if you want a system that has more flexibility then i really enjoy doing a custombuilt

Quote

1. Should I use Plex, Infuse or something else? (I want to be able to stream to Apple TV as well as iOS devices)

Plex is the most widely supported - you can also enable AFP for streaming direct for files that arent supported by Plex.

Quote

1. If I do build my own what kind of specs should my build have so that I can readily stream 1080p 60fps and maybe even 4K footage.

 

If you want to be able to stream 4K, then you'll want 4 strong cores - especially if you're going to be transcoding it with Plex (though you probably wont be doing that to Apple devices).

 

I would do something like this as an example: https://au.pcpartpicker.com/list/nFzVQV

 

Keep in mind even 1080p can eat up to ~20Mbps so you arent going to be streaming 4K remotely from a 30Mbit up connection.....4K typically consumes around 50-70Mbit.

[ChalkChalkson]

On 6.6.2017 at 0:33 PM, SupaCupa said:

$2500 AU which is about $1900 US.

For that you'll get a pretty wicked NAS, check out this NAS I speced out for this thread

Quote

1. Should I build my own system and install FreeNas or buy a prebuilt?

you get way better value and upgradability if you build it yourself, I would recommend unraid, since the rest you want to do is very simple there, check out this guide I wrote for unraid 

Quote

1. Should I use Plex, Infuse or something else? (I want to be able to stream to Apple TV as well as iOS devices)

I don't know about Apple TV, but Airvideo HD has a really good rep for iOS, but I personally use Plex, because of its great name recognition (I basically leave the titel be, after I finish ripping with MakeMKV) and its broad compatibility

Quote

1. If I do build my own what kind of specs should my build have so that I can readily stream 1080p 60fps and maybe even 4K footage.

You don't need much for that, the NAS I linked you there is about 400$ without drives and will handle uncompressed blue-ray streaming via Plex without maxing either memory or cpu

[ChalkChalkson]

On 6.6.2017 at 0:47 PM, SCHISCHKA said:

is it going in your chicken coop? If your network is going to be the slowest part then as above you to calculate for the number of clients.

I just assume you have just one client at teach time, since otherwise you would have probably stated that (and what you are doing might be illegal in that case)

A normal blueray has a bitrate of 36 Mbit/s, even really cheap networking gear gets you to about 100Mbit/s, so this shouldn't (tm) be a big issue. Streaming over Wifi might be a different story, I don't know jack sh!t about your Wifi at home, so you'd need to measure that speed on your own  

[Pixel5]

9 hours ago, Jarsky said:

I would do something like this as an example: https://au.pcpartpicker.com/list/nFzVQV

why should anyone spend that much on an i5 when you can get a ryzen with more power for the same price or one with similar speed for less.

 

[SCHISCHKA]

6 hours ago, Pixel5 said:

why should anyone spend that much on an i5 when you can get a ryzen with more power for the same price or one with similar speed for less.

 

I would get the cheapest one with most threads. At this time ryzen would likely be more appropriate. Unless something like a quad core celeron can do the job

[Jarsky]

7 hours ago, Pixel5 said:

why should anyone spend that much on an i5 when you can get a ryzen with more power for the same price or one with similar speed for less.

 

Why would anyone want to get a discreet GPU for a NAS if they don't need to? Additionally the i5 has higher IPC so for the task, a Ryzen of a similar price point really wouldn't have much benefit.  It also has Intel HD630 graphics and plex can offload transcoding tasks to the GPU (h264 & hevc under Windows)

[SCHISCHKA]

25 minutes ago, Jarsky said:

Why would anyone want to get a discreet GPU for a NAS if they don't need to? Additionally the i5 has higher IPC so for the task, a Ryzen of a similar price point really wouldn't have much benefit.  It also has Intel HD630 graphics and plex can offload transcoding tasks to the GPU (h264 & hevc under Windows)

Is IPC of Ryzen that bad that it cannot be used for networking & multimedia duties?

You could under clock a ryzen and it would still perform as a home NAS. it would use less power too.

I have an A4-7300 that can stream FHD videos and serve files without bottlenecking gigabit networking.

Someone else on this forum uses a 6W celeron m-ITX as a fileserver without issues.

Consumer NAS also use low power CPUs.

The question I ask is Ryzen + AM4 board is cheaper and use less power?

Why buy the more expensive option?

 

[Blebekblebek]

Why these people keep recommending a ryzen for a nas?

It's a NAS.

 

Any dualcore processor would do the job

Get the cheapest system you can get with Gigabit network, that's it.

 

Get Celeron/Pentium/Atom, put 8GB RAM and tons of storage. That's a NAS.

 

[Jarsky]

6 minutes ago, SCHISCHKA said:

Is IPC of Ryzen that bad that it cannot be used for networking & multimedia duties?

You could under clock a ryzen and it would still perform as a home NAS. it would use less power too.

I have an A4-7300 that can stream FHD videos and serve files without bottlenecking gigabit networking.

Someone else on this forum uses a 6W celeron m-ITX as a fileserver without issues.

Consumer NAS also use low power CPUs.

The question I ask is Ryzen + AM4 board is cheaper and use less power?

Why buy the more expensive option?

 

 

The IPC of Ryzen isnt bad, but Intels 7th Gen is still better. 

Underclocking does nothing but lower the ceiling due to limiting max frequency - C6/C7 power states will take care of that.

Sure you can use celerons no problem for fileservers, but the OP specifically indicated he wanted some way to stream to devices and remotely - Plex fill this gap which does require more power. 

Ryzen + AM4 aren't necessarily cheaper - the cheapest 6 core Ryzen CPU is still nearly AU$300 - and ITX boards for Ryzen are only new to the scene and not available yet. Furthermore due to the massive AM4 mounting system, the ITX boards that have been announced don't fit M.2 drives. 

 

I was giving the OP an option for a compact NAS build, feel free to do the same.

Ryzen is a desktop CPU to be paired with a GPU. It's not always the best option - especially for a compact build. 

[Blebekblebek]

And how celeron/pentium would struggle to do any of that?

 

if A4 74000 can do it why not Celeron/Pentium which is clearly perform better than A4.

My Nas using Athlon X3, it streams fine, FTP, Torrent, iSCSi enabled and it still doesn't budge over 50% usage.

 

 

[Jarsky]

16 minutes ago, Blebekblebek said:

And how celeron/pentium would struggle to do any of that?

 

if A4 74000 can do it why not Celeron/Pentium which is clearly perform better than A4.

My Nas using Athlon X3, it streams fine, FTP, Torrent, iSCSi enabled and it still doesn't budge over 50% usage.

 

 

It would be extremely taxing to transcode 1080p60 streams, let alone 4K, on an A4, Athlon X3 or a Celeron/Pentium - especially processing DTS audio as well. 

 

Read the OP's requirements...

On 6/6/2017 at 10:33 PM, SupaCupa said:

If I do build my own what kind of specs should my build have so that I can readily stream 1080p 60fps and maybe even 4K footage.

Its likely the NAS will be located on a property other than my house so I'm also wondering if this would require any specific hardware implementation. 

 

When you play files off your NAS locally to your PC/HTPC/etc...off a network share, you're only doing basic file transfer over SMB protocol - while your end device, is doing the decoding of the video file. In a remote media server, with something such as plex, unless you have a DirectPlay device, then the server is doing the heavy lifting. 

 

This is completely different to your setup. 

[Blebekblebek]

Not on multiple devices thats for sure, but it can.

https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/2q2jxj/best_transcoding_cpu/

The point any processor newer than those could handle it without breaking a bank

 

Specially if you suggesting Ryzen in the system, not only it's overkill the GPU it self already waste of money.

Get G4560, i3, or even older build up computer with an i5/i7 in it, which cost $200 or less.

This ATOM Quad/Octa core still make more sense than Ryzen for NAS

 

 

 

And spend the rest of money for storage instead CPU Power.

 

[SupaCupa]

Thanks for all these replies everyone.

 

To clarify, the idea of streaming 4K was really just a question to see if it would be possible to futureproof this NAS as much as possible. By the sounds of it the network will be the main factor limiting that. Not to worry though, most of the media will be 1080p anyway and to stream 4K files Australia's infrastructure just needs to catch up. 

 

I'm more than happy to build the system myself. While I'm sure that it would be much easier to just by a Synology prebuilt and move on but I like the idea of building my own and I think it might be a fun little project.

 

From reading through this thread and some other NAS topic threads I just need to find a case, mobo with gigabit, about 16BG of ram, a lower power CPU and a few drives. Oh and a reliable power supply. Should be simple enough. Thanks for all the help, any further suggestions would be welcome. 

[domandric034]

55 minutes ago, SupaCupa said:

Thanks for all these replies everyone.

 

To clarify, the idea of streaming 4K was really just a question to see if it would be possible to futureproof this NAS as much as possible. By the sounds of it the network will be the main factor limiting that. Not to worry though, most of the media will be 1080p anyway and to stream 4K files Australia's infrastructure just needs to catch up. 

 

I'm more than happy to build the system myself. While I'm sure that it would be much easier to just by a Synology prebuilt and move on but I like the idea of building my own and I think it might be a fun little project.

 

From reading through this thread and some other NAS topic threads I just need to find a case, mobo with gigabit, about 16BG of ram, a lower power CPU and a few drives. Oh and a reliable power supply. Should be simple enough. Thanks for all the help, any further suggestions would be welcome. 

Here is a NAS that you should be looking for : 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel - Core i3-6100 3.7GHz Dual-Core Processor  ($109.89 @ SuperBiiz) 
Motherboard: ASRock - Z270M-ITX/ac Mini ITX LGA1151 Motherboard  ($118.49 @ SuperBiiz) 
Memory: Crucial - Ballistix Sport LT 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory  ($54.99 @ Amazon) 
Storage: Western Digital - Red 4TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($135.99 @ SuperBiiz) 
Storage: Western Digital - Red 4TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($135.99 @ SuperBiiz) 
Storage: Western Digital - Red 4TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($135.99 @ SuperBiiz) 
Storage: Western Digital - Red 4TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($135.99 @ SuperBiiz) 
Case: BitFenix - Prodigy (Black) Mini ITX Tower Case  ($78.99 @ SuperBiiz) 
Power Supply: Corsair - RMx 550W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply  ($89.99 @ Newegg) 
Total: $996.31
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-06-08 05:03 EDT-0400

 

2x Gigabit Ethernet and also Wi-Fi inside motherboard and it is Z270 chipset so you can throw i7 easily if you plan to run VM's.