About a month ago I started running an old HP DL380 G5 Server running windows server 2008. Just found out it runs at around 130W at idle  So time for an  upgrade of hardware and to start running unRAID.

 

I have 3 main criteria:

 

1. Be power efficient.

2. Central storage of media (films/music/TV Shows)

3. Be able to run plex media server and stream to multiple 3-4 devices at once. (Xbox 360, PS3, raspberry pi running rasplex, Ipads, Macbook.

 

So looking for some advice on weather this hardware list will meet my requirements.

 

Mobo - Gigabyte GA-H97N-WIFI

CPU - Intel Core i5 4570 3.20GHz

Case - Fractal Design Arc Mini Pc Case

Drives - WD 3TB Green Desktop Drive (Parity, data)

SSD - Sandisk 64GB Pulse SSD (Cache)

RAM - Corsair 8GB DDR3 1600MHz XMS3 Memory

Power - Coolermaster Elite Power 500W Fully Wired Efficient Power Supply

Cooling - Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro rev 2

 

http://www.ebuyer.com/lists/list/408527

 

Happy to take advice on weather there are better options for my money.

 

Thanks in advance

 

Russell

 

 

 

 

You have spec'ed  the Coolermaster Elite Power 500W Fully Wired Efficient Power Supply.  The picker site says this PS has dual 12v rails.  You want a supply with a single 12v rail because most of the 12v load will be your disk drives--- not a high power GPU card.

 

The SSD may be a bit small for a cache drive (if you are caching writes).  BluRay movies average about 25GB apiece with out special features. 

Frank1940 thanks for pointing out about the dual rail and only needing a single rail. Something I had totally overlooked.

 

For the small additional cost I think I will up the size of the SSD.

 

Is the i5 going to be over kill for streaming/trans-coding multiple films at once?

Is the i5 going to be over kill for streaming/trans-coding multiple films at once?

 

I am not an expert on this but consensus seems to be that the i3 is good for 1 or 2 streams.  i5 is generally recommended for more than 2.