MY DIY Home NAS/BT/Emule/Treadmill Media PC

[bigclaw]

I have a DNS-323 but have been investigating a DIY NAS solution for a while because of its limitations. Then it occurred to me that I could repurpose the same Shuttle KPC K45 box that I built just a couple of months ago as a BT/eMule client. It turns out that the KPC NAS was not an original idea, and many people have actually gone the same route.

Detailed config of the existing box:

1) Shuttle KPC K45 Cube PC, 945GC chipset, integrated audio, video, and gigabit LAN
2) Intel Celeron Dual Core E1200 1.6GHz processor w/ EIST
3) 2GB DDR2-667 RAM

The above config draws about 45W idle, thanks to the power-hungry, dinosaur 945GC chipset.

I'm going to migrate the two WD 750GB GP drives from the current NAS to this box. I'm still considering adding a little notebook hard drive as the OS drive (have an 40GB IDE 2.5" HDD from a defunct notebook), but I may also just create a separate partition on one of the WD drives for OS if I feel lazy. I don't need RAID.

Initially, I'll probably use Vista SP1 as the OS just because all my other PCs are Vista anyway.

This setup will allow me to have a little box that's NAS, a BT/eMule client, as well as a media PC for my treadmill. It can be any number of other things too. I will no longer agonize over firmware bugs, limited feature sets, slow file transfer speeds, etc.

The biggest concern is the 45W idle power consumption compared to 8W of the DNS-323. Greener boards already exist today, but it's not cost-effective to get one right now since I already have the KPC. Since I only use my NAS during non-work hours, I may choose to implement a power down scheme where the NAS is not running 24/7.

 

[bliko]

Have you tried the transmission bt client? - works like a charm on the dns-323 .... even with all its problems the dns-323 is an amazing unit... for its price it does more than enough.

Anyway...45W is not exactly 'high' power usage ... so you might aswell just go for windows on ur kpc if that makes your life easier. Also u may want to consider an ssd as the boot drive? I'm guessing you'll need less than 16GB or perhaps even less than 8GB for windows + a couple of utilities.

 

[bigclaw]

Have you tried the transmission bt client? - works like a charm on the dns-323 .... even with all its problems the dns-323 is an amazing unit... for its price it does more than enough.

The biggest issue I had with the DNS-323 is that it formatted the wrong drive when I added a second drive. Before that happened, I had been a staunch DNS-323 supporter.

 

[bigclaw]

Update: I could not stand the "high" 48-50W idle power consumption of this NAS box once I put two 750GB drives in. So I passed the KPC to the in-laws as a perfectly capable PC for their everyday use. Then, inspired by this silentpcreview article, I built the following box as my new NAS:

$55 CPU: AMD 64 X2 2.6GHz 5050e 45W
$46 Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-MA74GM-S2, AMD 740G, 6 SATA 3Gb/s ports
$80 Case: Antec NSK1380 mATX
PSU: Antec AR-350 80+ certified 350W (comes with the case)
RAM: 2x1 GB Corsair DD2-800 SDRAM (already had some spare)
HDDs: 2 x WD Green Power 750GB (old drives from the KPC)

I'm seriously impressed that this box draws 30W at full idle; that's a 40% reduction from the KPC while packing more firepower should I need it.

 

[LMS]

Where did you find the NSK1380 for $80?

LMS

 

[bigclaw]

Where did you find the NSK1380 for $80?
LMS

It was on sale at Frys.com a couple of weeks ago. I'd narrowed down the case choices for some time and jumped on the first one on sale.

 

[LMS]

Bigclaw: Nicely done...