My long-held, if somewhat forgotten, dream of setting up a home NAS was rekindled by a post from Tivasyk.
On top of that, since I’m a happy owner of a 15-inch laptop, I’ve been thinking for a while about buying a 19–25 inch monitor to watch movies on. Sometimes, in my rosier daydreams, the monitor turns into a projector — but that doesn’t really change the point.
So, inspired by the idea, I started doing the math:
- case: 800–1000 UAH
- mini-ITX motherboard: 600 UAH
- 1 GB RAM: 100 UAH
- 1 TB hard drive: 950 UAH
- Total: 800+600+100+950 = 2450 UAH.
Then I remembered that there are devices called nettops — though I always want to call them eeebox, because that’s what Asus calls them.
Among the variety of these eeeboxes, I found a model without a hard drive or RAM for 1600 UAH. Without — because they typically cram in 2 GB of RAM but only a 160–250 GB drive. Our goals are a bit different.
Let’s do the math:
- case + motherboard + CPU: 1600 UAH
- 1 GB RAM: 100 UAH
- 1 TB hard drive (2.5"): 1000 UAH
- Total: 2700 UAH.
For those extra 300 UAH we get these perks:
- card reader
- Wi-Fi
- 40 W power consumption
- 6 USB ports
- microphone + audio input
- eSATA
- HDMI
And the downsides:
- only one hard drive
- well, that’s about it…
On top of that, such an eeebox attaches nicely to a monitor and can also serve as a media center — download a movie and watch it right there.
I’ll keep thinking, but I’m increasingly leaning toward this little box…
Besides, my home router has started acting up, so maybe I could replace it with this thing too.