NAS or PC

[colmas]

Hi All

I am not sure if this question has been posted before, as I cannot get a clear answer.

I was in the market for a NAS device, in particular the QNAP 219P+. For the past 4 years or so I have been using my 7y old PC to steam videos, photos and music to my TVIX 4130SH or N1 using NFS or SAMBA. In general no issues.

The question I have is, rather than buying a NAS device, why not upgrade my PC (which I need to do), set up 2x2TB drives in a RAID 1 confuguration, another maybe SSD for the operating sytsem etc and use that PC to stream to my devices. From what I understand, it would have a much faster cpu and considerably more RAM than the QNAP 219P+.

BTW I am not interested in buildin a PCNAS from leftovers and using say FREENAS. I am talking about a general purpose new PC to stream amongst many other duities.

The question I have is what are the disadvantages? I realise that it will use more power, but what else. I do not intend to have either a PC or NAS running 24/7.

I would much appreciate yor views, as I cannot make a decision, although I am now leaning to a new PC.

Thanks and Cheers

COLMAS

[GTunney]

I found having all my stuff on my PC slightly worrying and it was a bit annoying. I get bored very easily at work and like to maintain my NAS as best as possible. Being a NAS and having FTP i am able to do this from anywhere in the world. You could also set a PC up to do this but it would mean leaving your PC on 24/7 or using Wake on Lan which from my experience was causing my PC to wake up randomly. With my PC being a gaming machine this thing eats power like no tomorrow. With most NAs you can choose to power down after 5 mins of inactivity allowing minimum power consumption.

A PC has does have advantages like cpu and ram but this is always going to be limited by your hdd speeds and also your networks speeds. No point in having a 4Ghz CPU if your transferring over wireless.

I know my comment has probably not been much help but a NAS is designed to do a specific job and it does that job well. I'd rather have a dedicated NAS doing what it's supposed to do then a multi tasking PC which is running numerous things.