Help building home server

[gibbo_ap]

Morning all i am wanting to build a 'small' home server. With the main intention serving to my TV and other devices - so DLNA support on the OS.

Whilst for this end i could just get an old crapper, i'm paying the elecy bill now (NEW HOUSE!), i was wanting a low powered system - possibly atom based.

Now whilst i have seen many of the tiny foot print machines they havent the expansion for the amount of hdds i have (4 - 3x 3.5, 1x 2.5)

Has any one any ideas for a station which is uber low power, and enough room for a few hdds?

cheers

[jinnantonnixx]

Take a look at these guys....

Synology Network Attached Storage - Products :: DiskStation DS211

The DS4xx series holds four disks.

It comes with built-in DLNA server:
http://www.synology.com/dsm/audiostation.php?lang=us

[glennda]

HP Microserver?

[tommej]

Sounds like the HP microserver would be right up your street.

HP hd204ui, KVR1333D3N9/4G, 2GBFREENAS8, 633724-421 ProLiant MicroServer '4TB NAS Box' Bundle | ServersPlus

[januttall]

i built a system using an atom mother board i bought with memory in the only thing i had to add was the hdd, o/s and power pack. i bought 3 and stacked them ontop of each other with threded bar as the mounting holes lined up. 2 run microsoft server and one ubuntu server.photo.jpg the great thing is there dual core at 2.5 ghz "from memory might be wrong" and suposadly 64 bit instruction set ovusly it depends on the one you buy but its worth checking to see which atom mother boards you can buy as mine are abought 12 months old

[Chris_]

You could build your own, Chenbro make some nice ITX cases for this purpose (Chenbro Micom Co., Ltd.). 4x 3.5" drives and a 2.5" drive.

[januttall]

this might sound daft but where do you plug the power in?

[edutech4schools]

I would go for either a hp micro server or QNAP NAS server. I have both but normally use the QNAP for my general day to day media needs.

Both the QNAP NAS and Synology Nas (posted above) are more than just a NAS, they are fantastic servers in their own right.

[gibbo_ap]

i forgot to mention it needs to be cheap!

[sted]

i forgot to mention it needs to be cheap!

if the3y still do the cashback the microserver should be <£150 iirc

[JoeBloggs]

HP ProLiant Athlon II Neo N36L MicroServer.. | Ebuyer.com

£224.98inc. vat
Cashback available with this productPurchase this MicroServer and claim £100 cash back.
Free Delivery Available

[Chris_]

i forgot to mention it needs to be cheap!

Ooo er, just had a look at how much that Chenbro case is... looks like a Microserver (and cashback) would be cheaper than the case alone!!

[nephilim]

HP Microserver - get cashback and job done. Stick S2K8R2 on there and you should be good to go with media support etc.

[dhicks]

Has any one any ideas for a station which is uber low power, and enough room for a few hdds?

For a low-powered server processor, I'd go for AMD's Brazos chipset as it includes hardware support for virtualisation, which Atoms tend not to. Although designed for laptops and similar devices, they are available in small form factor desktop motherboards, like ASRock’s E350M1 - a motherboard with the processor integrated, so you buy the motherboard and the processor comes with it, which is a bit cheaper. That should work passivly cooled, I think.

At home, I have a machine built on a similar Atom-based motherboard in a small-ish case - it's pretty quiet, but not absolutly silent. If you need to use several disks I'd get a case big enough to take a multi-disk caddy:

LinITX.com - Internal Drive Bays

Alternativly, if you want a completly silent computer, I also have a passivly cooled Tranquil PC ixLS that I use as a server:

Custom Builds - Tranquil PC Limited Store

They do make machines they sell as home servers, media servers, etc, but those quickly get rather pricy - I bought the basic bare-bones model and added some external eSATA harddrive caddies.

[gibbo_ap]

HP ProLiant Athlon II Neo N36L MicroServer.. | Ebuyer.com

£224.98inc. vat
Cashback available with this productPurchase this MicroServer and claim £100 cash back.
Free Delivery Available

I think this looks like the winner!!! thanks all! thats quite cheap with the cash back, i may try and find some EEC around here

not to ask the SO