I want to add more storage on my home network, but I'm debating whether a dedicated NAS box is worth it, rather than just gutting an old PC I have laying around, tossing in a couple new hard drives, and configuring it as a media server.

 

The "old PC" question is always difficult to answer, we need to know what you already have, and what do you want in terms of performance and storage capabilities.

 

A dedicated NAS has it's pros, like low power consumption and it is an out-of-the-box solution, and cons, such as limited expandability. unRAID as a custom NAS solution need custom setup, but can be much more flexible with non storage services, many users have Crashplan for backup, usenet and torrent for downloads, media stream server for uPnP devices, etc.

 

The choice is always based on your usage pattern.