Pentium/Celeron enough for NAS?

[Hudzy]

I will possibly be building an unraid server soon, but just need some reassurance on the CPU choice.

 

The server will exist to share large 4K and 1080p video files to an nVidia Shield running Kodi. It will not transcode as currently Kodi accesses these files from an SMB share on a desktop and there are no playback issues on a 4K TV.

 

It will likely need to be able to serve files to up to three users simultaneously, but I don't think this should change the processing requirement significantly?

 

I don't imagine it would ever need to run VMs.

 

Am I right that as the server is just sharing video, it doesn't need an i3 or greater, and a Celeron or Pentium would suffice? Does the CPU choice affect anything else I've missed? I am considering a G4900, or maybe a G5400 if hyperthreading would be worth having on a dual core.

 

Bonus question, how much memory should this server need? Does unraid require a ratio of memory to disk capacity?

 

I need to be budget conscious, but will spend more if it's needed.

[ashman70]

I stream HD content from my unRAID TV NAS and it has a  Intel® Celeron® CPU G1840 @ 2.80GHz

CPU so sure, you can definitely run your NAS on a lower end CPU if CPU power is not required for any heavy lifting. You can get by with 4GB of RAM and you should be fine, that's how much my TV NAS has and I've never had a problem.

[Vr2Io]

G4900, G5400 enough for such application share large video files to an nVidia Shield running Kodi.

Those are LGA1151 CPU, if need upgrade also a easy job.

 

2 hours ago, Hudzy said:

It will likely need to be able to serve files to up to three users simultaneously, but I don't think this should change the processing requirement significantly?

Yes, but you should aware Unraid not stripe file / file block, so simultaneously access sometimes could be terrible.

 

For memory need, at least 8GB. 

But mine have 48GB, the reason was I like cache whole large file(s) in memory. So playback / processing on file may happen in cache instead physical disk.

Edited September 25, 2018 by Benson