Low Power Low Heat RSS Torrent Downloader


kizer

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I'm currently toying with the idea of building a Low Power, Low Heat RSS Torrent Downloader.

 

1. It needs to run Windows because I like the RSS feed in uTorrent

2. Low Power because I'm tired of this P4 that is basically an oven in my office

3. Small form factor would be nice so I don't have to have a lot of space

4. Doesn't have to have a lot of space since I'd more than likely keep a handful of torrents on it and dump them to my unRAID anyways.

 

Does anybody have any ideas or suggestions that they would use?

I normally run WinXP on my current machine along with a few apps that do the things I need.

 

Do I do anything else on it? Well typically I do surf the net now and then on it and watch a few videos. I don't really do much with it, but its nice having it on so I can normally walk in and do some surfing opposed to firing up a new machine. I almost commissioned my Laptop, but I figured what a waste of a piece of equipment since it would more than likely burn it out faster.

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Yeah I currently have an AsRock ION 330 and thought man I'd love to pickup a second since they run great, but that Stealth is crazy expensive.

 

I'm still considering a Laptop since it does have a built in monitor as long as I can find one reasonably and of course something that doesn't sound like a Jet engine because those little fans can get loud.

 

What I"m using now is a rack mounted P4 2.8GHZ and honestly it gets it done, but I'm more or less cleaning house and I want my room back and the days of big monster PC's are numbered so I figured why not go smaller, quieter and hopefully something that puts out less heat because I sware every-time I close the door to watch a flick since my wife is using the TV in the living room I can hear the motherboard fan spin up and it drives me crazy. The room Temp goes up and I hate having to open the window LOL

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@neilt0

I actually thought the same thing. I thought that machine is so slick and INMHO its a little to small for my unRAID build, but for a little desktop machine it would be cool and since its a dual core thats a bonus.

 

@lionelhutz

I really like this one too

http://www.willudesign.com/Bt320gTop.html

 

@StevenD

You know I could look at that. I'm only running a 2.8ghz Sempron, but with 4GB of ram so I'm guessing I could make that work. I wonder how hard it would be to get a lite version of XP running on that. Time to research. ;) Wait a second are you running unraid in a windows environment or windows on a linux environment? LOL

 

I think for the sake of argument I'd rather just build something small than try and complicate my unRAID server. Of course that does sound cool, but I'd rather burrn out a small machine than allow anybody to touch it because they need to use it.

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What about something like this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856119044. They have them in various configurations: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100008345%2050002136&IsNodeId=1&name=Foxconn. I have the NT330 model serving as my HTPC for now. Runs torrents fine, has ripped (I have not tried encoding) DVDs/BRs. And its hardly any bigger then my wireless router!

 

They do go on sale regularly at newegg, either cheaper or combo'd with RAM/DVD drive. I made a deal alert at slickdeals and picked mine up for $145 w/ matching external DVD drive on black friday.

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I do like the Zacate with the Radeon HD6310 graphics if you do want to play back some media. Otherwise, any cheap Atom board or box would work. Those Foxconn boxes are cheap and would work great for torrents but I don't see how that could be used as a HTPC. I can't see an Atom without an ION chipset being capable of playing back any HD files. Just saying, if you do go to play some kind of video you may find certain Atom systems very lacking.

 

You're thinking a maching to do this and ripping too? Maybe a mini-ITX i3 build would be more suitable then. I suppose without any re-encoding an Atom or Zacate would still get the job done though, since you're basically just copying the data off the disk to a hard drive.

 

Peter

 

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Well the primary reason for this machine would be light surfing and just a little torrent box, but a bud in my office said "Hey if you get rid of your P4 what are you going to use to create ISO's and VOB's with?"

 

Of course its not my main intent, but figured might as well throw that one out on the coals and see what I can get. I have the AsRock ION and man I really like the machine for my HTPC, but figured why not see what else is out there. It would be great to get a pre-built machine that can at least read DVD's, but you know I could always plugin a portable DVD player via USB or fire up another to do the ripping. I just want to turn off the oven in my office and maybe rid myself of the loud fan.

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You will love the peace when you dump the typical noisemaker PC. There are some cute boxes, but the cute often comes at the expense of shoe-horned into place fan noise. If you find one that is reviewed as working and quiet enough then it should meet the needs you are asking here.

 

My HTPC is a E6300/Zotac 9300 mini-ITX system. It's worked great and is nice and quiet with only 1 x 120mm fan and a 2.5" laptop drive (going SSD this week) running in the case. I might have been able to get away with an Atom or prebuilt box too. However, I looked at those systems and thought they had "nowhere to go". If it didn't work then I had no options to fix it. And I was going to expect it to do all my HT and PC work, HD video, browsing, email, dual monitors, ripping, downloading etc at the same time.

 

Peter

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...Those Foxconn boxes are cheap and would work great for torrents but I don't see how that could be used as a HTPC. I can't see an Atom without an ION chipset being capable of playing back any HD files. ...

 

You're thinking a maching to do this and ripping too? Maybe a mini-ITX i3 build would be more suitable then. I suppose without any re-encoding an Atom or Zacate would still get the job done though, since you're basically just copying the data off the disk to a hard drive.

 

Peter

 

 

The foxconn nettop that I am using has the ION chipset. Only problem I have had was with a m2ts file in VLC, and once I unloaded the processing to the ION chipset it played it fine. It is the priciest one of the group, but I think still in line with similar solutions. It can also easily be repurposed easily - one is currently being used at my work as a VOIP server, and we just received one to be used to stream internet video to a TV display (they are both lower end ones)!

 

It is also very quiet - I was worried when I bought it that it would be noisy as I had seen many complaints about that but it has not had a problem. Many people I read also resolved their noise issues when the added a SSD instead of a platter drive.

 

I would prefer a small Zacate box, hopefully they come out with something soon or I will just have to roll my own.

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Thanks for the ideas guys. As it is with most things money is going to dictate what I can spend and when so I'll just let this thread do its thing and hopefully when I can get some more cash I'll give it a go.

 

@lionelhutz

I completely agree with the becareful what you buy. I don't mind putting things together, but sometimes you can land a great deal if its a package deal. I guess thats what I meant to call it not prebuilt. ;)

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@StevenD

You know I could look at that. I'm only running a 2.8ghz Sempron, but with 4GB of ram so I'm guessing I could make that work. I wonder how hard it would be to get a lite version of XP running on that. Time to research. ;) Wait a second are you running unraid in a windows environment or windows on a linux environment? LOL

 

I was thinking a lot of folks on here seem to be running VMWare Server on unRAID, so that might be an idea for you. I have a pair of dedicated ESXi servers hooked up via fiber channel to an OpenFiler SAN.  :)

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Like I said I want a PC because I run a few small things in XP and without XP I can't run the small things that I run to support my torrents and things. For instance I run SCRU which auto unrars, I run thetvrenamer for titles, uTorrent for my RSS feeds. Also I run a few small batch scripts that do various things like launch MIP (MediaInPlus) that scrapes my TV images also when I do some movie ripping I use Ember for movie images.

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