I'm going to be building a NAS/media center pc. I've never owned or used a NAS or media pc before so I'd like some help finalizing my parts list. I will be reusing some parts from my previous small form factor build which I will mark on the list. The primary purpose will be a media center pc, but it will also double as a NAS for any media or important files that we want to share or backup.
So I have a couple questions, will 4GB of memory be enough? I left it 1x in case I ever want to add an additional stick. This case is the best I could find for a reasonable price that does everything I want, have any other recommendations?(it has to be flat-lying) I'm buying the optical drive even though there might be spacial issues with the PSU cables. This is there for the heck of it, but I won't be sad if it doesn't fit.
The last thing I'm debating is what OS to put on it. I've done some research and OpenMediaVault (Debian based) seems to be one of the better ones out there, and I'll run maybe Plex Media Server on top of that. I'm asking this here just in case anyone here has a suggestion about it, but I'm going to take it up on the Linux forums as well.
I try to avoid any cases with 80mm fans. I've owned several with 80s and they're always the loudest things in the system.
I do like Silverstone, though, and this would be the case I'd choose if it were me. Just about the same footprint, only thicker and with better cooling options.
I agree, I purposely chose the quietest, non-crap, low rpm fans I could find and I'm going to run them at lower rpm in an attempt to fend off that noise. So hopefully it's not excruciatingly loud. I'm a bit of a stickler for silence myself.
I'd prefer to have only one machine, plus the flexibility is amazing. I've been playing around with Rockstor on a VM and can't seem to figure how to install something like XBMC/Kodi on it. Would you happen to know? (I'm still a noob at this Linux thing)
If you Plex you can stream your video to everything including tablets and phones even XBMC can connect to it. Plex does a good job of organizing and meta data tagging of content.
And since general user aren't touching the server you don't have to worry about things being jacked up.
If you are dead set on the all in one solution I would use Opensuse for good BTRFS support and then use XBMC for the front end. And have Samba (Network file sharing), Owncloud and Plex running in the background