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What to expect with cheap xpenology?


secretliar

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That's weird, I don't really have a budget. I'm just checking what would be the price of a Xpenology build that satisfy me :S

 

The only thing I have right now is 2x3Tb hardrive and I know that my next build will have 4 disks (but there's no rush to buy them rightaway).

 

I'm really just checking what would be the price of a build fast enough to use my applications without lag and without buying an overkill computer.

 

Are Asrock Q1900-ITX good for these kind of use?

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I don't think the budget question is weird. Essentially all you said was, "I wanna run a bunch of Stuff, how much will that cost". The most logical answer given the limited information was "How much to you have to spend?". There are so many choices in the PC world, and really the best way to figure out what route to go is by bracketing your budget. How can we know what will "satisfy you" without knowing what your plans are? You mentioned a few of the stock apps and a few other basic 3rd party ones... but also mentioned Probably Others.. so what are those others, and make a list and see what is CPU intensive. Maybe you need dual nics or plan on encoding video via Plex? 

What are your requirements? What components do you already have? Is this a 24x7 machine or just on-demand? Expansion capability?

Generally, when it comes to cpu horsepower i tend to err on overbuilding on stuff like this. There is always some intensive thing that I cock up that i want to do, even if I can't forsee that when I build. I did a bit of your homework here and looked up the j1900 for you. http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel Celeron J1900 @ 1.99GHz

that is a pretty low single thread rating for doing video encoding (DS Video like you mentioned). But i bet its a great budget solution for a NAS that doesn't do too much heavy work. More powerful than most OEM NAS hardware, but a bit too anemic (IMHO, it may work perfectly for some) for any real cpu intensive work. 

 

 

 

Posted via MyXpenology

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Sorry! I didn't mean that you question was weird, I meant to tell that I was weird because I didn't have a budget for now.

 

 

My wish list would be :

 

- 24/7 running NAS

- DS Audio

- iTunes Server

- SickRage (Sickbeard custom)

- CouchPotato

- VPN Server (I use it rarely when I'm somewhere with too limited connection)

- Syncthing

- DS Download

- 4 disk minimum

 

If it's not adding too much to the price :

- Dual Nic would be nice (I would use it only to make sure that DS Download use a VPN router so I have a killswitch, because I couldn't find any other solution yet)

- I don't need to encode videos. But I'm afraid that one day I'd need it.

 

I'd prefer overbuild too. Because I saw what's happening and how sorry we can be when we cut too much thinking it will be enough

(remember... my DS212 with 90Mo/s without app, and only 30Mo/s if I start my apps...)

 

 

I thought about it, I don't really have a budget, but I'm looking for 400/500$ maximum for a diskless system. I could go a little higher if needed or if it's really better to future-proof the build.

Am I naive to hope for a price like this?

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ahh, i can see how I misentrpreted the weird comment then.

All of those apps listed would probably be fine with a celron.  Its where you get multi tasking going is where it might get bogged down. that j1900 is pretty minimal like I said on the single thread rating. The automation of SickCouch lends itself to Plex as far as the actual media watching/listening is concerned. At that point you'll wish you had more horsepower. Video encoding with Plex is totally automated depending on your screen/bandwidth so the more you can thow at it the better and less buffering. Granted the system in my sig is way overbuilt, but i have multiple users streaming at a time. I went with a professional board because of the features like a 3rd nic dedicated to management. It has its own embedded web interface that gives me console access, monitoring and power control. 

that rough budget doesn't seem out of the question though, even for something a bit more beefy. You sound at least somewhat knowledgable about HW, so its probably safe to assume you have some components laying around. What about that cool little unlocked Pentium G3258? the chip costs as much as the Asrock board (~$70), but the thread rating is around 4x(!) per core. Granted its not a 10w cpu, but there are always trade offs i guess. 

8gb mem: $40

itx board: $100

Processor: $100

expandible Case/PSU: $120  

seems doable doesn't it even with padding in my numbers above?

 

 

Posted via MyXpenology

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@brantje :

I already build a computer with i5-4460 (and tested DSM with virtual box!), it's really fast but I'm prefer sure it's really too expensive for my use :S

I'm okay to overbuild, but it seems too much. I know how to build these computers, I'm here because I would want to learn more about less expensive builds.

 

@butter_fry :

- I know stuff about computers. I build some. But I don't do it often and I don't work in it so I always need to relearn stuff online everytime, that's why I'm here asking today :smile:

That's also why I'm kind of afraid when I read "unlocked". If I'm not wrong it means that I can overclock it, and I would like to avoid going there :S

- I'm okay to consume more power than an usual NAS, if the horsepower is good enough :smile:

- I'm interested in the 3rd NIC. Is it enough to avoid plugging a screen etc. to the NAS when there's an issue or for the install? Or is it for lighter tasks?

- I'll definitly avoid the Celeron, to make sure to be futureproof.

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@brantje :

I already build a computer with i5-4460 (and tested DSM with virtual box!), it's really fast but I'm prefer sure it's really too expensive for my use :S

I'm okay to overbuild, but it seems too much. I know how to build these computers, I'm here because I would want to learn more about less expensive builds.

You can replace the I5 with an i3, replace the 16GB with 4GB or 8GB.

@butter_fry :

- I'm interested in the 3rd NIC. Is it enough to avoid plugging a screen etc. to the NAS when there's an issue or for the install? Or is it for lighter tasks?

You can access the nas via SSH, incase of network problems / NIC not reconized, then you should plugin a screen and keyboard to find out what is wrong.

 

 

Posted via MyXpenology

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@brantje :

I will think about it. But isn't the power consumption going to high with this kind of CPU and mobo?

You're right. I guess we don't need a 3rd NIC for that?

 

--

 

Also, I saw people talking about esxi etc.

Can I run it directly on the computer or I always need to use a virtual machine?

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@SECRETLIAR I just brought up the pentium because it was inexpensive. You don't have to OC, it is just less expensive than the non unlocked models for some reason. just a random suggestion for bang for buck.

SSH is great if the machine is working correctly of course.The management NIC gets access at a lower layer than the OS (unlike SSH). So if something really goes sideways you can always kill and hard boot it, turn it off, or hard on. Essentially it is like being in front of the monitor through a web browser. Just a nifty feature, nothing manditory especially in a budget build. My machine is in a remote location where I don't always have access to a non functioning machine, but wouldn't consider my board a budget board though.

power consumption is roughly the same for the i5 and i3 and Pentium. Within a few watts anyhow, unless you get an S chip.

1T7J48A

 

 

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@SECRETLIAR I just brought up the Pentium because it was inexpensive. You don't have to OC, it is just less expensive than the non unlocked models for some reason. just a random suggestion for bang for buck.

SSH is great if the machine is working correctly of course.The management NIC gets access at a lower layer than the OS (unlike SSH). So if something really goes sideways you can always kill and hard boot it, turn it off, or hard on. Essentially it is like being in front of the monitor through a web browser. Just a nifty feature, nothing mandatory especially in a budget build. My machine is in a remote location where I don't always have access to a non functioning machine, but wouldn't consider my board a budget board though.

power consumption is roughly the same for the i5 and i3 and Pentium. Within a few watts anyhow, unless you get an S chip.

http://1drv.ms/1T7J48A

 

 

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errmm stay mainstream i guess. I'm no expert there though i see rumblings in these forums about Broadcom nics being weird. But all my builds have just worked perfectly so... Did one build on an old (2012) AMD embedded Zotac mini-pc thing that worked perfectly. 

I found a board with an onboard USB port which was nice for the boot drive. SSDs are nice for installing the apps onto for speed. 

I think things get weird when you get into exotic HBA/SATA cards and the Enterprise NICs. But since xpenology gets to inject drivers, you might be able to get the edge stuff cooked in at a later date if you make it easy for them.

 

 

Posted via MyXpenology

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I paid about £400 for the Dell T20 in my signature (after a rebate from Dell). That price includes the server, an additional 16GB of ECC RAM, the SSD and HDD for the ESXi datastores and a cheap Marvell 4 port SATA card (this is passed through to one of the DSM VMs and will have the 4 3TB drives from my old server attached to it soon).

 

This will handle everything you mention above and a lot more. To give you an idea of how fast the Xeon is, it will transcode a 1080p MKV to 720p 4Mbps at around 12x realtime (so so around 5 minutes for an hour of video). The T20 is also extremely quiet (in fact, it's quieter than my water cooled main PC).

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@berwhale,

Congrats, sounds like a beast. What processor is it? e3-1220 / 1225 v3?

£400 seems incredibly low priced for a server... must have been one heck of a rebate!

 

I bought the server for £250 from eBuyer with a £70 rebate from Dell. eBuyer were bundling an extra 4GB of RAM with it at the time, so it started with 8GB. Processor is the E3-1225 v3 3.2Ghz.

 

16GB ECC RAM from eBuyer = £80

Samsung EVO 850 250GB from Amazon = £71

2.5" WD Black 750GB from Amazon = £47

Marvell 88SE9215 PCI-e SATA from DX = £22

 

Total = £399

 

Both the EVO and the WD Black fit in the optical drive bay at the top of the case, this leaves all four 3.5" bays free for the data drives i'll be moving from my old Xpenology box. A friend gave me the quad port Intel NIC, so I saved a bit there.

 

I think I've ended up with significantly more grunt than a £400 Synology NAS :smile:

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