First off, thumbs up to cyberjock and his PPT, I spent the whole afternoon reading it at work and did jack all. :)
I have a N40L at home which is running 3x3TB in Z1. I'm probably going to have to give it away end of the year so I'm planning on a replacement to move the data out. I use this mainly for saving movies, music, photos and archiving of my work. Concurrent users: prob me and maybe another person at home. The box has to sit in the living room (next to the TV) as the gigabit router is there. So it has to be something nice looking. After looking at the various ITX boards. I realise I would not be able to reach the price point of the HP microserver. I'm wondering if the N54L is a decent/usable (prob for the next 5 years) considering my low usage/demand? I'm asking this because I might be able to get a N54L at around $200+ while the HP Gen8 is going around 300-400. A SFF build using a fractal 304 case would probably set me back close to $400 (excluding ram and disk). The only spare part I have lying around is a seasonic gold which I could slot it in.
I have a N40L at home which is running 3x3TB in Z1. I'm probably going to have to give it away end of the year so I'm planning on a replacement to move the data out. I use this mainly for saving movies, music, photos and archiving of my work. Concurrent users: prob me and maybe another person at home. The box has to sit in the living room (next to the TV) as the gigabit router is there. So it has to be something nice looking. After looking at the various ITX boards. I realise I would not be able to reach the price point of the HP microserver. I'm wondering if the N54L is a decent/usable (prob for the next 5 years) considering my low usage/demand? I'm asking this because I might be able to get a N54L at around $200+ while the HP Gen8 is going around 300-400. A SFF build using a fractal 304 case would probably set me back close to $400 (excluding ram and disk). The only spare part I have lying around is a seasonic gold which I could slot it in.