Custom nas help!

[Aidanlockett1]

Help! I want to convince my parents that they need a NAS, because we have a crapload of CDs pictures and movies. Our internet is shite because the router is on the complete left side, and all the rooms are on the right with solid wood walls inbetween. Plus we have a pretty bad plan and this is the easiest way to setup a place for all our media. My thought is using the Coolermaster 110, a pentium g4400 and 4 gbs of ram. We have a 3gb external drive that I wanna crack open to keep cost low. Also file transfer is a bitch. And an ssd as the boot drive with an sfx psu. Thoughts?

 

TL:DR I want a NAS that i can upgrade and use a lot, part list is cheap pentiuim 4gbs ram ssd boot and existing 3tb hdd i have. Any changes or thoughts would be great

[79wjd]

There isn't really a need for an SSD as the boot drive. You could use something like FreeNAS, in which case, the OS will run in memory and you can just boot off a flash drive (although, you'd want 8gb of RAM). I would also look towards a G4560 since you'd get 2 extra threads -- if it's not too much more expensive (a G4400 would be good for two transcoded 1080p plex streams and a G4560 would be good for about four).

 

How would a NAS help with your poor wifi problem though?

[tt2468]

8 minutes ago, Aidanlockett1 said:

Help! I want to convince my parents that they need a NAS, because we have a crapload of CDs pictures and movies. Our internet is shite because the router is on the complete left side, and all the rooms are on the right with solid wood walls inbetween. Plus we have a pretty bad plan and this is the easiest way to setup a place for all our media. My thought is using the Coolermaster 110, a pentium g4400 and 4 gbs of ram. We have a 3gb external drive that I wanna crack open to keep cost low. Also file transfer is a bitch. And an ssd as the boot drive with an sfx psu. Thoughts?

 

TL:DR I want a NAS that i can upgrade and use a lot, part list is cheap pentiuim 4gbs ram ssd boot and existing 3tb hdd i have. Any changes or thoughts would be great

I think you'd have a better chance of getting your parents to actually buy something is to go prebuilt. Prebuilt solutions are a lot more reliable (usually) and easier to understand. You can convince them that they need it, but actually getting them to shell out the money is the hard part.

[Aidanlockett1]

Just now, tt2468 said:

I think you'd have a better chance of getting your parents to actually buy something is to go prebuilt. Prebuilt solutions are a lot more reliable (usually) and easier to understand. You can convince them that they need it, but actually getting them to shell out the money is the hard part.

yep, my main concern is that a wd my cloud cant be cpu upgraded and in a lot of cases storage upgraded

[Aidanlockett1]

1 hour ago, djdwosk97 said:

There isn't really a need for an SSD as the boot drive. You could use something like FreeNAS, in which case, the OS will run in memory and you can just boot off a flash drive (although, you'd want 8gb of RAM). I would also look towards a G4560 since you'd get 2 extra threads -- if it's not too much more expensive (a G4400 would be good for two transcoded 1080p plex streams and a G4560 would be good for about four).

 

How would a NAS help with your poor wifi problem though?

id would help in the sense that more data can be sent through at a steady rate (our internet plan in specific is bad)

8mbs ethernet down is nice n all but that going in wireless through a house with 5+ cellular devices, throw in a microwave and walls streaming from a local server(NAS) would be better that internet

[79wjd]

12 minutes ago, Aidanlockett1 said:

id would help in the sense that more data can be sent through at a steady rate (our internet plan in specific is bad)

8mbs ethernet down is nice n all but that going in wireless through a house with 5+ cellular devices, throw in a microwave and walls streaming from a local server(NAS) would be better that internet

Streaming from a local NAS won't solve the wifi problem though -- if the wifi is terrible it will still be terrible. The only difference is that when you have a good wifi signal you'll be able to stream better since you won't be limited by your ISPs speed. 

[paddy-stone]

Agree, your wifi speed doesn't even come into the equation at all in this scenario.

 

I think you might be better off with a SOC (sorry not SOC as such, but on-board CPU I mean) solution on an mITX board, and then have a chassis like a fractal design node 804, that can hold upto 8x 3.5" HDDs... then at least you could upgrade in the future by replacing the motherboard/cpu. Stick freenas on it and configure it properly for plex etc and it's a very capable little machine for not too much money really. You could go with the g4560 as @djdwosk97 mentioned, then you wouldn't have to upgrade anything in the future except CPU if you can find them second hand at that point.

Either way it'll be enough for your needs I suspect for a few years.