- I'm not soliciting a sale, but just sharing my experience on price of hardware -

So it just happened that I was free, and decided to see what to do with my old computers. I have an Intel D945GCLF board (Intel original boards have a very long MTBF) with an embedded low power Atom 230, 2 GB RAM in mini-ITX form factor. Unfortunately it only has 10/100 networking, so I added a Gigabit network card. The board has 2 SATA ports.

I have run Xpenology (Synology DSM 6.1.7 update 3), and OpenMediaVault 5 on it, absolutely stable, and frankly, faster than the Synology "J" model I had before. At current prices, it should be about RM 200, without the hard drives. I think this is incredible value, for a NAS that does more than just file serving for me.

My current "production" NAS is also an older computer. Intel i3-2120 with 8 GB DDR3 RAM, 1 x SSD, 1 x HDD, in a tiny Jonsbo C2 case. It runs OMV5, and the power consumption is about 27W in normal usage. Again, incredible value at a price of maybe RM 400, bought as a second hand computer. Of course I didn't buy it, it is just hardware that was re-purposed because supposedly End-Of-Life.

I admit there is a bit of learning curve with setting up your own NAS, but it is not impossible to do once you start. Synology, and Qnap, and Asustor, and all the NAS manufacturers before have done a good job getting these units into the home, but here's the thing: I think the NAS landscape is going to change tremendously in the near future. Changes in storage technology and form factors, processor power and types, Single-Board-Computers with storage HATs are all going to be driving this change. Your next NAS, complete with storage, might be the size of a standard ATX power supply. It is for this reason I decided not to buy a ready-built NAS at RM 1.8k.

I'm not the smartest person around, but if I can set up a NAS, anyone could. And I think they should. Good luck.

How do you reconcile your statement about Gen8 processors, and the GTX1060, when the Synology DS418play from 2016, with a Celeron J3355 processor, supports 4k H.265 decoding (edited to add) in hardware?

This post has been edited by stormer.lyn: Sep 19 2021, 11:36 AM

QUOTE(xxboxx @ Sep 19 2021, 02:44 PM)

I said if I remember correctly. Earlier Intel iGPU support 4k x.265 transcode?

I'm surprised you can remember something that does not happen. For Intel, it is no where near Gen8 onwards

QUOTE

Synology DS418play from 2016, with a Celeron J3355 processor, supports 4k H.265 decoding in hardware

And I don't know any commercial NAS that requires GTX1060 level graphics, and then only it is able to decode H.265.

I'm seriously curious to know how you came up with this advice

QUOTE

If you want it to transcode video too then need more latest CPU or GPU. Intel 8th gen IINM start to support x.265 or if use GPU, GTX1060.

Actually, forget about it. Doesn't matter to me what advice strangers on the internet give other strangers on the internet.