E350 / E7200

[Ryan_]

I want to build a FreeNAS box as powerful as possible to stream movies to a HD TV / PC etc but also low power energy consumption as I moved to Brasil and at times the apartment I live in gets power cuts.
The new machine will be connected to a Backup UPS to keep it active in the event of a power cut but with power cuts going from anything from a split second to 5 hours in bad weather the energy this NAS draws or the limited amount of draw is quite important.

I have several Optiplex 755 SFF PC's, They are a good PC in general, they have a Core 2 Duo 2.53Ghz E7200 with 4GB of ram with max supported ram being 8GB and two on-board Sata ports.
So i was considering just putting one of these motherboards into a smaller tower with a silent 300W PSU and two 2TB Drives in Raid 1 as thats all i really need at this point.

Movie Steaming and data mirroring for backup purposes (family photos / apps / etc etc )

Second option was a Gigabyte E350 with 8 / 16GB of ram

My only concern is if the E350 can stream 1080p movies as the E7200 is far more powerful from what i can see.
Power drain on both is important but as the idle power drain i dont expect to be much on either its a lesser concern.

Any opinions or suggestions are appreciated as i really want to get this box built.

 

[cyberjock]

My advice is to give up trying to use hardware that is that old. FreeNAS needs 8GB of RAM, minimum. ECC RAM is also heavily recommended.

I realize saving power is important, but using old tech like a Core 2 Duo isn't "low power" in the slightest. I could probably build a brand new system with a full fledged Xeon that is lower power than the Core 2 Duo. The Pentium G2020 has a TDP of 55W(vice the E7200's 65W) and idle power is almost certainly lower.. probably by 50% or more.

Also, if your performance is too low, you won't be able to stream your videos with Plex. The lowest CPU we've recommended lately is a G2020. That CPU scores about 2800 CPU marks. The Core 2 Duo scores 1650, and the E350 scores 750. My 4 year old laptop scores almost 4000.

Hopefully those numbers put things in perspective.

 

[joelmusicman]

If you value data integrity (family photos!), you should add ECC as a requirement! 8GB is the minimum For low power, the Avoton series Atom processors are highly regarded, but a server board with a Pentium G3220 is also pretty efficient and lower $$. Most FreeNAS builds won't even break a sweat serving 1080P files unless you're talking about transcoding with Plex.