Yo.

I’m new to the game. Like 2h fresh. I’m fairly technical, being a millennial and a programmer.

What I want to do, is to have a NAS server I can host movies from and watch them on my phone in my bed - or on my projector.

Extra points if I could host my ebooks and music there and run a torrent client. Extra extra points if I could connect to it from outside my home network (and stream)

I’ve read about about Plex and Jellyfin.

I’m here to ask you about hardware advice.

Will QNAP or Synology be enough for my needs and can I install custom software there? I don’t really want to create hardware from scratch.

Google says yes, but I trust reddit and random articles like I trust a fox not to eat chickens.

Edit: preferably something with WOL that goes silent and fanless when not in use, or something I can shut down with a button

Edit: thanks everyone, right now I’m thinking of using GMKTec or QNAP and am comparing options, prices and number of issues people have on the internet. I’m not a hobbyist and the less I have to work on it the better.

Edit: I’ve ordered GMKTec NucBox G3 Plus 16 GB 1T for 195$ from their site as my starter kit. Should work for my needs.

  • ThirdConsul@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
    3·
    17 hours ago

    Thank you, but I don’t want to keep my desktop running. The cooling noise, the electricity. Did I mentioned the fans? They are quiet but I can hear them, I want something that goes silent and wakes up when needed.

    • mbirth@lemmy.mlEnglish
      3·
      11 hours ago

      There are some passively cooled (i.e. no spinning fan) SFF Desktops (HP, DELL, etc.) or you could get a Raspberry Pi 5 and stick it into a Geekworm case. Power consumption with these devices should hover around 5W, maybe slightly higher under load. The Desktops most probably support WoL. The Raspberry Pi doesn’t.

      • Scrath@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        2·
        5 hours ago

        Also in my experience the raspberry pi isn’t all that great for a NAS considering you are reliant on using USB hard drives and also need a separate powered USB hub for them

          • Scrath@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            1·
            2 hours ago

            I think I used a Pi 4B, either the 8 or 2 GiB model because that’s what I had lying around.

            I never tried a compute module but instead upgraded to a lenovo tiny pc.

    • BombOmOm@lemmy.worldEnglish
      21·
      16 hours ago

      A note on the fans specifically, you can buy quiet fans. In general, the larger the fan, the lower the speed you can run it and the quieter it is. You can also setup fan curves so they are only doing anything of note when the computer is pumping out heat (given your statements, that would be basically never).

      The electricity usage is a pretty notable thing. Though, if you take the graphics card out of a desktop (use integrated graphics, a dedicated graphics card in a server is just wasted electricity) and set the OS to power saver (this mostly means it won’t boost the CPU to higher clocks), it really won’t use much power. Compared to buying dedicated NAS hardware, you may never recoup the energy costs between the hardware you have and the lower-power hardware you need to buy.

      If you don’t already own one, a Kill-A-Watt is a great tool to have. Tells you how much energy a device is using. Biggest thing I found was my TV had a vampire draw of 15W. Literally draws 15W while off. This got the TV put on a power strip I turn off when I’m not using it.

      Now, with all that said, sometimes you just want what you want. And there is nothing wrong with that. My goal here is to make sure you don’t feel you have to pick one option over the other.