Help required in choosing system to use as media server 24/7

[firebelly]

My old computer being used as media server died after 9 years so am in the market to buy one. The previous one was Dell Optiplex GX640.

I am looking to buy this one OptiPlex 390. Right now it will cost me approximately $260 with taxes.

Would like to get the opinion whether it will do for the next couple of years or not.

[Som]

this is what I use Zyxel NAS 320, I also have a raspberry pi set up as a SQL Server, works well with Kodi on two other raspberry pi's I have.  Although I would recommend an updated model

[Aergan]

Dual core or better, any CPU with NX bit support and north of 3GB RAM would last for the majority of media server applications.

Core count and RAM size seem to fair better over time than raw performance.

I would not entertain a single core solution as a media server to "forget about" hardware wise as things progress.

[binaryzero]

4GB RAM, half decent CPU, you'll be fine. 

 

 

[firebelly]

I am planning on putting 8GB of ram. I think it would be fine. Upgrade to Windows 10 plus put Plex on it. Hopefully will serve me for next 4 years atleast

[Jim K Global Moderator]

My old computer being used as media server died after 9 years so am in the market to buy one. The previous one was Dell Optiplex GX640.

I am looking to buy this one OptiPlex 390. Right now it will cost me approximately $260 with taxes.

Would like to get the opinion whether it will do for the next couple of years or not.

You can only have one hard drive in that thing...right?  Not sure if that is something that'll last four years or be future proof?

Of course I guess it depends on how much media you have (or will have). 

[firebelly]

can always have external HDDs or upgrade the HDD

[Mando]

I support 200+ of the newer model of the 390 (opti 7010 and 7020) at work. 1 year down the line and no major flaws or issues to report from the fleet.

TBH decent enough bits of kit, except the psu is a custom dell job, apart from that they are a decently built Dell. quite power efficient and run relatively quiet.

Only downside is the small aperture bay for pci-e card (if you go that route, all slots are half height) weedy 135W psu and no room for another drive, optical bay is slimline laptop job. 7010s and 7020s have the HD4600s iirc and dual Display port on backplane.

Heavy metal case though and out of the box they are decent. (ours are Core i5s 3.2s, 4Gb ddr3 (2x2Gb) only 2 dimm slots 500Gb platter.) My end users heaviest workload is Outlook 2010 open all day and excel/ERP thats about it!

they would run W10 quite nicely tbh, prepping one this week to see just how well 10 would run on the 7010s.

 

Edited August 2, 2015 by Mando