How to build a quiet and energy efficient NAS/Home server?

Question

linux

At one time I assembled a computer myself, now I want to assemble a NAS / Home server for a home with several screws in the raid, NAT WiFi, a torrent downloader and a movie player on TV via HDMI. Case I think to choose mini-ITX.
Questions related to this.
1. How to choose the components so that the device consumes minimal energy?
2. How to make it as quiet as possible?
3. How to choose a processor, taking into account the fact that it will be necessary to play HD (maybe 4K in the future) movies.
4. Is HDMI the best option for signal transmission to TV or is it better than DLNA or something else?

Answer 1

It’s hard to win everywhere here, something small and energy-saving won’t pull 4k, and a couple more or maybe more hards already clearly need a bigger PSU and it’s no longer energy-saving.
Silence is achieved by the absence of coolers or good 120mm low-speed coolers like Noctua or similar.
Therefore, if you collect something more powerful, then look in the direction of something like this configuration:
Coolerless PSU 400 watts such as Chieftec GPS-500C Motherboard type Supermicro
X10SBA
hard and Wi-Fi to your taste
, samba, transmission and other useful and tasty things, hards are collected in a raid to taste (1st 5th 10th depending on how many hards)
All of the above is just my opinion on the task, I do not pretend to be an ideal =)

Answer 2

horror. people... are you from the last century? yes, now on new processors celerons ... 4k on the mother is built-in pulls. what nafig i3 for an ever-threshing computer?)

Answer 3

also take a look at the HP microserver, it was on it that I assembled a machine for the same needs.

Answer 4

Personally collected / exploited a similar system. I did not set video playback as a task, there is an external media player with a network connection. Board on Intel Atom, built-in 4 SATA + expander card. I installed (were available) 3.5 "(WD Green) disks. The case for mini-ITX is specific - with places for installing 6 (six!) HDD 3.5" (otherwise, RAID makes no sense to fence).
At the beginning there was FreeNAS, then changed to Ubuntu Server. There are a number of problems:
1. Silence. There is one fan controller on the board, so the case and PSU fans make a noticeable noise. The location of the server is under the ceiling in the corridor, the noise does not annoy, but there is a dream to install water cooling. Do not forget about the cooling of disks - the more of them, the better the fans.
2. Power consumption (and silence). On FreeNAS, I hibernated disks, I haven’t figured it out on Linux yet, there was no time.
3. SSD. FreeNAS got up on the SSD as a native, Linux did not want to, it was too lazy to figure it out, it costs a regular HDD.
4.DLNA. It was not possible to lift on FreeNAS, they say this is a "sore" place. Worked very poorly. It started normally on Linux, but there is a "problem" (maybe my hands are crooked and I still need to adjust) - it does not perceive * .iso files as a media connection, I view them via smb.
5. UPS. Purchased by Powercom based on price/FreeNAS compatibility. It started up on FreeNAS without problems (when choosing, I was guided by the compatibility table). When switching to Linux, compatibility "disappeared". I need to adjust, I'm waiting for the "long winter evenings." The network writes about setting up APC,

Answer 5

I have an ancient, one of the first, atom 330 and 6 screws. Power supply 60 watts, external + PSU. The download is minimal.
Downloads torrents, stores files, caches DNS, used to give Wi-Fi to the phone.

Answer 6

Buy an Intel NUC or its Chinese clone. It will be easier and not much more expensive.
HDMI and DLNA are about different things. The division of TV connection options into better/worse is highly dependent on the use case and desired features.

Answer 7

MiniITX board without a cooler, PSU without a cooler, the largest possible case with a huge (single) fan at low speed.
FullHD now all modern cpu can on the built-in video. 4K - you need to watch, through VLC the last atoms and celerons are calm, through flash - with difficulty (although they play).
If there is a lot of money, you can do it in any case without fans at all, but the service life will decrease by 2 times.

Answer 8

I did something similar. But I solved the problem a little differently. I omitted the issue of energy efficiency and put capital cost savings first. Simply put, it was an old PC into which I plugged an old video card (relatively) with an HDMI port.
Next, the KODI distribution (XBMC) was installed. Torrents are set up and profit is received.

Answer 9

at home, for similar needs, I launched a raspberry pi 2 with a 100GB flash drive (the flash drive was bought in China, it’s cheap, it works properly, there are no problems)
I confess, I didn’t have a task to start video through it

Answer 10

Of the ready-made HP Microservers, there is nothing more worthy, my self-assembly in both apartments was made in Fractal Design Node 304, because I simply did not find other cases with 6 bays for HDD and at the same time for ITX and a normal PSU. The only difficulty is the cooler, few "towers" will fit in such a way that all 6 HDDs fit. In general, the maximum of this case is an ITX mother with K percent in overclocking and, if you donate 2 HDDs, then a two-slot normal video card, and with 6 disks, the video card should be very short, there are only 3 powerful ones on the market, these are 750s and 950s nvidia from zotak and some other radeon, like from sapphire.
So if it's just a server, then 6 HDDs, a larger cooler thread, so that it doesn't make noise, and there will be happiness.
A RAID array at home has little meaning, only lose a lot of disk space.