Hi, I’m currently considering building a low powerd home streaming server for my media collection.
My main issue is that I’m currently hoarding my collection on my main PC , a 9800x3d that , lets be honest is not the most efficient thing to do.
I’d ideally whould like to find someting that I could hedgehog with a bunch of M.2 drives . I can get a bunch of 2-4 TB drives cheaply where I’m at .
I’d preffer not use any Hdd or at least not more then 4 , I have 4 18TB drives in my PC at the moment.
I was looking at something like the CM3588 from Friendly Elec . I don’t need a bunch of power all I need it to do is 4k transcoding for my TV. Being able to run something like Jellyfin on it is ideal tbh.
I was also considering something with say 1-2 M.2 slots on a board with eider 12th gen or am5 in eco mode. Bifurcating the PCI slotots for M.2 but I’m not sure about the power draw there as well as the fesability of doing that with a board that won’t cost me an arm and a leg.
If at all posible please try to suggest something that’s attainable in Europe and doesn’t cost me more in import fees then the product it’s self
@Dutch_Master The 12 bay Asustor Flashstor Pro that only draws ~40W at full peak load you mean?
It is still a good m.2 NAS, but the market is shifting more towards E1.S form factor on NAS cases. Still, $799 for the base unit is still a steal for a passive NAS bay capable of up to 48 TB of storage (at $200 per drive that is a hefty $3.2k though…) CPU is a bit slow still, but definitely not a bad purchase especially if you stagger the releases.
However, if you need performance the Gen 2 is out there… For $1 299. It’s better in pretty much every way though.
If you want to be more future proof, E1.S can still house m.2 drives, but gets expensive fast and E1.S still makes more sense in the enterprise arena.
Unfortunately the AI boom is currently vaccuuming up more or less every DRAM module and SSD on the market, so if you want cheap m.2 you better strike fast or the shortages will last for quite a while.
Yeah the whole thing is 1000 and respectively almost 2000 euros … And thats without drives… Can you atleast run custom software on it ? Also this takes the fun out of building one
Why didn’t you just say you wanted to build something Internals, maybe this? Used pcpp.no, based on your user name. If this is wrong feel free to pick other components based on your market:
I used the N100M you mentioned. So far has been trouble free, never had any issues with it. But I don’t think it will do for an NVME build. There’s no bifurcation on board, there’s a single M.2 x2 slot, a PCIe x2 and a PCIe x1. The wifi slot is cnvio so proprietary Intel connection.
I’d say it’s the most feature rich and reliable board based on the N100 platform. The chinese ones have all sorts of gremlins to deal with like no fan control, cheap SATA controllers, janky BIOS.
If SATA is still viable for you this will do for sure!
Hey mate.The CM3588 NAS Kit from FriendlyElec fits your needs perfectly.It has four M.2 slots for those cheap 2-4TB drives.Rockchip RK3588 handles 4K transcoding in Jellyfin with ease.Idle power draw stays under 10W.You can grab it on AliExpress for EU shipping.Fees stay low since they ship direct from warehouses here.Add OpenMediaVault for simple setup.
If you want x86, check CWWK X86-P6 with N150 CPU.It supports four M.2 too, but draws a bit more power.Both run quiet and cool for 24/7 use.
Unfortunately it’s not the right platform for your needs. The cost of SATA SSDs is also stupid so if you have lead on cheap M.2 drives follow through with that.
The CM3588 NAS is a great little platform for what you need to do!
I’ve almost finished building something that might meet your needs if you don’t mind used hardware.
Lenovo Tiny M920Q £90 second hand.
Mine came with a Pentium Gold G5400T, which I’ve replaced with an i5-9500T for £38.
A few SMD components to solder in an additional M.2 slot, or your can buy the M920X which already has it, but that’s harder to find/more expensive.
Another small modification(you can do it with conductive ink if you can’t solder) and an addon card splits the weird 8x+4x PCIE slot into two 4x m.2 slots and a 4x PCIE slot.
Around £45 from Europe:
or £30 from China. (Plus some interesting variations.
That gives you a total of four m.2 slots(one of them also supports SATA), plus the 4x PCIE slot which you can fit an M.2 adapter into, or something like a 10g NIC, or in my case a U.2 adapter for curiosities sake.
There’s also an E-key M.2 slot for a wifi card, which in theory you could fit an NVME SSD into with an adapter. The first PCIE lane is there, but where you’d hope the second would be it’s instead used for Intels CNVio bus thingy. So you’d only get 1x.
I couldn’t get an SSD with adapter to work in there at all though.
There’s also a single SATA connection which I’ve put an SSD in.
So that’s ~£160 for something that’ll hold 6 SSDs if you count the SATA one. I’ve not measured the power draw yet, it’s not quite finished, but I’m thinking 9th gen Intel will be alright.
How low power we talking? Is it just for Jellyfin?
Cause looking at these, the builds suggested are good. ^
But I mean, if it’s just say, for movies, then this is good, and you wouldn’t need much else. But if you want to get crazy later (like me) then more might be needed.
Can you atleast run custom software on it ? Also this takes the fun out of building one 
Internals, maybe this? Used pcpp.no, based on your user name. If this is wrong feel free to pick other components based on your market: