Low Cost High Power Efficiency J1900 Plex Server/NAS

I took the plunge and built a server/NAS based on the J1900

Motherboard: ASRock Q1900-ITX Intel Celeron J1900 Motherboard
Case: Thermaltake SD101 VP11821N2U Black Steel Mini-ITX
Memory: Kingston 4GB 1600MHz KVR16LS11/4
SSD (os): SAMSUNG 830 MZ-7PC128B/WW 2.5" 128GB SSD (old)
HDD (data): Western Digital WD40EFRX 4 TB WD Red
OS: Windows 8.1 Pro System Builder OEM DVD 64-Bit

All total with tax and shipping $488.65 (using an old SSD as boot drive) if you remove the HDD you come to $299.66. So if I add in $75 for a SSD that is $375, which is cheaper then Synology DS414($475) or DS414j($415) but more then a DS214($300) or DS214+($350). Instead of dual core Marvell ARM CPU you get a quad core X86 part that is running full Windows. As for the case it is 8.25 liters in volume and would be easy to fit one more 3.5 inch drive and with some light modding I could fit 2 more. Or if you wanted to use 2.5 inch drive you could fit 4-5 more easy.

I was finally able to get the system on the Kill-A-Watt last night and at idle I am pulling 16 watts.

This will primarily be a File server, Plex server, and torrent box. Those 3 things can be done by both QNAP and Synology, but I think they will be even easier to set them up the way I want in windows.

Also there are things I can do with a full computer that can't be done by a retail NAS(in my price range).

For the Plex portion this machine will actually be able to transcode where as the other NASs I mentioned cannot and I don't want to use a proprietary Qnap/Synology app that is ugly and sucks on just a few specific NAS models just so the NAS can actually transcode.

This will all so serve is as a remote computer using Chrome Remote Desktop from my Chromebook if I ever need a windows app, or if I need full access to a computer on a trusted network rather then work on a computer in a public network.

If you have any questions let me know

Did you try installing any linux or freebsd based systems on it? It seems there's a lot of people with issues trying to install freebsd on a lot of the boards with the new celerons.

Linux 'requires' a newer kernel than provided by the *buntus on Bay Trail Celerons. It's not a big deal, though: I was able to boot Xubuntu and update the kernel without much difficulty at all (one command, one reboot and you're done). Fedora and others may work fine without kernel updates.

I have not mostly because I wanted to play with Windows 8