Small home media server. - Build one? Buy one? Remote Control?

[Falcos_Commisar]

FreeNAS is the best OS for a home server, for sure.

Ohh, it's neck and neck with OMV

 

[Screw Danlon]

hese devices are great - they are former business/education machines and usually flood the used marked at pretty good prices (Lenovo, Dell and HP all make variants). The specs are also usually much better than what you can get on something like a NUC for a fraction of the price.

How’s the power usage & heat? I’m thinking of building a small Plex server, solely because I don’t want to leave my main desktop constantly running.

right now I’m trying to decide between getting a small box, or just getting an external HD and attaching it to my laptop.

 

[Stasi]

How’s the power usage & heat? I’m thinking of building a small Plex server, solely because I don’t want to leave my main desktop constantly running.

right now I’m trying to decide between getting a small box, or just getting an external HD and attaching it to my laptop.

Laptop is a good solution if you don't want to spend money, I actually used an old laptop for a while to stream meadia around the house.

For the mini PCs - Don't have a watt meter to measure from a socket but expect they will be similar power draw to a laptop. The Ryzen TDP is 35w and the Pentium is a measly 6w. Temperatures seem OK, I've not had any issues so no reason to do any real testing. The Pentium sits just under 40c with some stuff running in the background, the Ryzen is playing video now and is 50c, will get higher with more demanding tasks.

Again, these are enterprise machines so expect them to be rock solid for the most part, certainly compared to any consumer stuff. These companies won't want to piss off their business clients with shoddy hardware or design. Lenovo learned a painful lesson with their xx40 line of laptops where they "improved" the trackpad, got shit on from a great height for fucking with something that worked perfectly fine and changed it back to the old design in the next iteration in embarrassment.

 

[PetrifiedTom]

I think best solution is to buy cheap NAS and learn things from there. Sure, you won't use most of things but it also help you to understand what's possible with home server.

 

[Screw Danlon]

Laptop is a good solution if you don't want to spend money, I actually used an old laptop for a while to stream meadia around the house.

For the mini PCs - Don't have a watt meter to measure from a socket but expect they will be similar power draw to a laptop. The Ryzen TDP is 35w and the Pentium is a measly 6w. Temperatures seem OK, I've not had any issues so no reason to do any real testing. The Pentium sits just under 40c with some stuff running in the background, the Ryzen is playing video now and is 50c, will get higher with more demanding tasks.

Again, these are enterprise machines so expect them to be rock solid for the most part, certainly compared to any consumer stuff. These companies won't want to piss off their business clients with shoddy hardware or design. Lenovo learned a painful lesson with their xx40 line of laptops where they "improved" the trackpad, got shit on from a great height for fucking with something that worked perfectly fine and changed it back to the old design in the next iteration in embarrassment.

Thanks, that’s a perfect answer. I’ll stick with the laptop for now and if a good bargain comes along, I’ll grab it.

 

[tehpope]

I use OMV with a Raspberry Pi 4 2gb model. No issues. Runs great. As long as you have an ethernet connection to your streaming device, should play 4k rips just fine.

There's a great thread on the Kodi forums about what device to get to run it.

START HERE - Pick the Right Kodi Box (updated Dec 2020)

I use an Odroid N2+. Runs android. No issues with pretty much anything. I ran into issues with AV1 stuff, but that's a kodi thing across all devices. I think Matrix fixes that. You can also use CoreELEC and run Kodi straight from it too. Android is just more convient for me since I can switch between Kodi and Retroarch with ease. I also have a X96 Air box. Its one of those cheap chinese android boxes. But it can run Kodi off an SD card without using the original software. No issues and can handle 4k fine. Great value for $50. Can also run EmuELEC too if you like retro gaming.

 

[gangweedfan]

I just use my ps3 with movian lol. I love the XMB menu.