Stick 16GB of ram in there along with the hard drives and your good to go. It won't be the most power efficient NAS, but it'll get the job done. ECC memory is "nice to have" but not "do or die" with ZFS:
Then grab the hard drives (I assume you have a power supply? If not, then grab the unit I put in my PcParts list above).
The laziest and cheapest option is to use your existing desktop PC. Just add a hard disk and leave it always on. An 8TB HD is like $200. Transcoding (CPU) does not affect gaming performance (GPU) very much so it should not be much of a bother really. And yes I did the benchmarks that demonstrate that is indeed the case.
The second cheapest option is to get any parts you have lying around, buy some questionable hard drives, stick them in a case and hope for the best. This is what I did and ended up with 10.5 TB usable for $400. Questionable reliability but that is countered using ZFS and RAIDZ-2. For non-mission critical data, it's fine.
The issue with that Phenom II X6 is that it does not have the AVX instruction set which is heavily utilized when transcoding. That means it could probably handle 1 stream easily, but might start stuttering at 2 or 3 simultaneous transcodes depending upon the quality settings. It should be fine to use as long as you configure the software to disallow more than 2 transcoding instances at any one time.
The third cheapest, is to make sure those drives are new which bumps the cost up to ~$900-1k. Yeah...
The most expensive option for a home setup is new core components (with ECC RAM) + new HDDs, or specially designed ones like buying those ITX motherboards that cost $200-$400 just for the board itself and to care that it "looks nice." o_O That comes out to what, 1.5k-2k for NASFeratu?
That makes sense to run a home business out of, but ripping BDs and streaming? It's lazier to just leave a desktop PC always on in the corner.
Not to be rude at the people above, but seriously if you don't know what a NAS is or does just frankly keep out of this trying to convince someone not to use one. Someone is asking how to build a system, not how to get off the idea of building one.
Sharing a hard drive from your Desktop is not the same as having a NAS.
I didn't really want to comment on any of it, but I kind of have to...
That is just wrong on so many levels. Anyone who ever streamed to Twitch or YouTube or you name it knows this.
By the way if you're interested GamersNexus just did a Benchmark on this a few days ago.
This is a good way to loose your data. ZFS only works if the drives are of the same capacity.
You forget that those are Motherboard and CPU in a package. And with those boards you can save a lot of running costs in the long run.
Also nobody cares if it "looks nice", who said that...
PS: I took the liberty and moved the topic to build a PC and tagged it 
Thanks for moving it
@mihawk90 what are your thoughts on using some of the old parts laying around. Also, the difference with say the Synology NAS Which I'm guessing are just similar to a build but prebuilt.
As long as it's not the HDD's it's perfectly fine. Depends on the parts though. If you have some older CPU it might be a problem with encoding multiple streams, missing instruction sets and/or just slow speed, you can test it beforehand if you already have them and if it works fine, if not you can still buy stuff.
I wouldn't use used HDDs if you can avoid it, never know what they have endured already. ZFS is fine if a drive fails, but since you need equally sized disks in the first place... might as well get new ones.
I have never used a synology NAS myself, but we had a QNAP (I think?) at a place I used to work and the system is pretty locked down. If there are apps you can install that do whatever you want it's fine, but if you want to do more customization you're going to need to jump through some hoops to "unlock" the underlying OS since they are typically rather locked down for security purposes.
And yes, they are just regular PC parts in the end, but watch out as for most of those if you just replace the RAM you're technically voiding the warranty.
You can also lookup the Thecus NAS' that wendell reviewed a while ago, he was pretty impressed with it. Though in either case I don't know how well they encode, depends on the board they are using. Some are just using dual-core atoms, some the same 8-core Atom mentioned above, some use Celerons... pretty much just look up what hardware they actually use.
On the bright side if something breaks you have a warranty to work with, so that's nice I guess.
Real the opening post. He isn't necessarily asking how to build a system, but rather how to get a home media server up and running. A NAS, or building a new system for it, is just one possible way of accomplishing that goal.
I merely presented some available options. An existing desktop would work for a home media server and, after explaining what the pros and cons are, it is up to Ace2020 to weigh those pro's and cons for their use case.
You missed the second sentence. It was an important one.
Topic: https://forum.level1techs.com/t/windows-10-idle-versus-load-performance-on-fx-and-ryzen/117278
Scroll down to the bottom to get all of the games. MLL has some MLL specific issues with Ryzen so read the disclaimer post for that chart. Here is a typical case example:
I actually did do benchmarks of actually encoding in the background while running the games. And no, there is very little difference between the "Idle" scores and the gaming while under CPU "load" tests.
Want to say I am wrong? You better have your own benchmarks.
As a caveat, streaming a game is not the same thing as background transcoding. Similar? Yes, but with some minor differences. The benchmarks I did are closer to the scenario envisioned (desktop used to stream separate media while gaming), and hence they carry more weight due to those minor differences.
It depends on how much you care about the data. If it is just media that you literally have a BD copy of already, then it might be worth it to keep costs down.
And if you are going to be buying questionable hard drives, it should not be much of a bother to make sure they are the same size.
On an unrelated note, it is actually possible to use ZFS with heterogeneous disks somewhat efficiently by creating sub vdevs for each pool. The idea is similar to extending the RAID 10 concept additional layers.
So the issue is upfront costs vs long term for the dedicated motherboards. It might be better to pay the upfront cost or it might not and spread the costs out over time. And looks are always a factor.
That heavily depends on the CPU you're using though. Do the same with a 7700k and that already struggles, let alone a weaker CPU. Watch the GamersNexus benchmark for it from a few days ago (can't link it since YouTube is blocked at where I am currently).
And I'm aware transcoding is slightly different from game streaming, since most of the load is the encoder itself though it's at least comparable.
Exactly what I was saying all along.
This is in direct conflict to the results I posted above. Switching from an FX 8350 throttled @ 3.4 Ghz to Ryzen 1700 OC'd @ 3.7 Ghz did not yield significantly better or worse performance under the above chart.
Under Win 10, in any game that is GPU bound, or nearly so, there will not be a significant difference in avg FPS while under CPU load. The benchmarks I did prove that. They don't suggest it. They prove it. And it actually also makes sense if you stop and think about it.
I watched the GamerxNexus videos before my first post in this thread. Why do you think that I do not believe their results contradict mine?
Then you should be fine I my self just use a regulator computer no raid no ECC ram, but I am only have one stream going at the same time and I don't use FreeNas. I have been using Plex for about two years.
It would definitely be new drives never know where used ones have been.
I also been looking on Ebay at used enterpirse servers for possibly a cheap route maybe don't know much about the Xeons CPU over desktop ones. Also, they have desktop style ones over the 1U-2U which at this point if I had a Network Managed Switch and Router I would lol
If you can get one cheap sure go for it, just weigh the initial cost vs. the running costs in energy and whatnot Maybe also an enterprise surplus center if you have one around.
As of right now I hooked up the spare parts I have with DDR 3 8gbs of ram with a 1tb storage I had laying around. I installed FreeNAS and Plex Plugin. I Ripped Rogue One with makeMKV came to ~40Gb the video ran fine on my gaming desktop client streaming from the server. As for Streaming that on to the Chromecast cause a lot of stuttering due to playback of original size but once I went to Quality Settings to due 1080p at 8 Mbps stuttering went away seems fine but I feel it off but it might just be me. As of right now i'm placing the video file through handbrake to bring down the size and see what the results are from that.
yes, reduce/reuse/recycle ... if it doesn't work out, you can always just transplant the flash drive on which you installed the system and the HDD to the new system.
As for streaming to chromecast, ... if it's an older 2.4GHz chromecast, and you have an ethernet port closeby, you can try wiring your chromecast. .. there's also chromecast ultra that does 5GHz, can stream 4k and comes with an ethernet power adapter.
Your benchmarks are using basic entry level GPUs, Gtx 660 Ti and Gtx 1050 Ti. Your not seeing a performance degredation because your GPU is bottlenecking FAR before the CPU, because the GPUS in question are very, very weak cards by todays standards. Your using a 1700 and a 8350 with WEAK video cards, throw a 1070 in there and you will see VERY different results...
That's exactly the point! That's exactly it! That is what everyone misses.
People think that "oh my game suck, I better upgrade my CPU" are just flat out wrong 99% of the time. The same holds true for CPU loads while gaming (more so for Plex/Emby than game-streaming).
If the CPU isn't doing anything because the bottleneck is the GPU, then it doesn't matter if there is encoding in the background or streaming or whatnot. The fact that the CPU that was idling, is now under load, just doesn't matter because the bottleneck is still the GPU. The only GPUs that can shift any amount of that bottleneck to the CPU (even an FX 8350 @ 3.4 Ghz) are those $500+ graphics cards. Even an FX 8350 @ 3.4 Ghz (lauded as terrible for gaming) can actually get every frame out of a 1050 Ti (or 99%).
If you have anything less, like a GTX 690, GTX 770, GTX 960 or 1050 Ti (see the trend?) then CPU loads will NOT affect gaming performance. People do not understand that because all of the other reviewers only ever test with $500 GPUs because they are trying to shift the bottleneck to the CPU because otherwise every CPU would perform exactly the same.
That is why I recommended to the OP that a cheaper alternative would be just to put the media server software on their home PC. Unless they have some card (card "x") that performs high above a 1050 Ti (6k points) and below a 1080 Ti (13k points), even under CPU load, the system will still game the same.
And by that point (say a GTX 1070), you are already seeing such a high average FPS counts that it doesn't actually matter even then. Humans can't really differentiate between 100 fps and 85fps after all.
As someone with a 144hz monitor and call tell between 144hz and 120hz, I LAUGH at that. I've mistakenly tested that on myself. After moving my system around to do changes it switched down to 120hz and I was unaware that the change had occurred (fucking dvi), but after playing CS for minutes I could tell something was wrong.
Yeah, but most people don't pair a $300 8 core 16 thread cpu with a <$150 graphics card...
That's just plainly wrong. My Xeon 1231v3, bottlenecks a 980 Ti (rough equivalent to a 1070), at 1080p and even at 1440p (using DSR to simulate) without having any transcoding task going on, just playing games. In battlefield 1 and 4, my Xeon 1231v3 bottlenecks the 980 Ti into the 80% range and even dipping as low as the 60% range at 1440p in multiplayer. The 1070 prices are back into the $400s and will soon drop back into the $300 range as the mining craze passes, that's inevitable.
Yeah it is one of the first gen Chromecast which operate on 2.4Ghz the second gen one does 2.4GHz and 5GHz
This is either placebo or actually a frame-times issue. The frame-time issue is a topic with closer relation to minimum frame times than averages. For example, to the human eye 24 fps video looks smoother than 40 fps in games. Why? Frame times. Some games have issues with frame times especially poorly implemented times.
It is not that you can tell the difference between 120 fps and 144 fps, you can't. It's that sometimes a given frame will take longer to encode than other frames so even though the minimum or average frame rates do not show it, the actual experience is to watch a specific frame on the monitor longer than other frames which come faster in succession. I actually did not perform enough testing to draw enough definitive conclusions for frame times under load. However, for miniumums (as reported) and averages, the conclusion is clear.
Agreed. Most people who PC game do so at 720p using integrated graphics. They pair their $200 Intel CPU with nothing.
Now of the sub-group of most people, there is the sub-group of pc gamers, there is sub group of pc gamers who decent hardware (builders), then there is another sub-group that cares about getting the best performance they can out of their games.
edit: typo
No, its not. There is a reason that people actually buy higher than 60hz monitors, BECAUSE THERE IS A DIFFERENCE. I'm playing CS:GO on a 980 ti and a haswell quad with HT xeon @ 3.6ghz, there are no frame time issues. I sustain higher than 400fps constantly, without dips, ever.
So your counter argument is that there is a small subsection of pc gamers with good hardware? ARE WE NOT TALKING ABOUT THIS SPECIFIC SUBSECTION RIGHT NOW? The dude is building a FreeNas box in addition to his pre-existing system, you think he has shitty hardware? His leftovers are a fairly competent system by themselves.
Also your plainly wrong that most people play with integrated graphics...
http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey
The last bit. If you couldn't tell, I was addressing the first part of text I quoted and not the second, specifically this bit:
I never addressed the second part of the quote and it was left in by accident. No I'm not going to do benchmarks to prove common sense, your benchmarks are ridiculous and prove no non-obvious point. Yes if you pair a half-decent 8350 or a very, very good 1700 with a basic (or years out of date) tier graphics card there is going to be cpu overhead to spare that could go towards encoding. Now if your working with a modern graphics card that's 1070 level or higher, you are going to have issues. Once again, most people, with a good cpu, aren't pairing it with a $150 graphics card. There is a REASON people say that the graphics card should be the most important component in a gaming desktop.
I'm done with this thread, these arguments are ridiculous. @ OP if you decide to go FreeNas and want help setting it up tag me and I'd be happy to help.
Cool story bro. Any Benchmarks? Any controlled testing? Anything besides saying nu-uh and using caps lock?
The idea is that we are talking about a really niche group and we have not asked about his specific hardware.
Knowing that CPU loads, like encoding, do not actually effect gaming performance for any relevant CPU (not dual-cores) and are not even noticable in benchmarks, except for ultra-high end ones where FPS counts are so high they do not matter anymore, I gave every option, including recommendations supported by benchmarks, and let him pick based upon his available resources, knowledge of his hardware etc.
So your counter argument is that there is a small subsection of pc gamers with good hardware that would be able to measure a difference in benchmarks? And that OP is totally probably within that niche within a niche without asking? Wait what?
I am so very glad we both agree on this point.
It was exactly to put actual numbers on that very obvious point, that the CPU just does not matter for gaming, even while encoding in the background, that it was worth doing the benchmarks I did.
