I was considering making a home media server, and I just found some stuff, and was wondering if/how it would work. The components are as follows:

Intel BOXD945GCLF MINI-ITX 945GC Atom 230 1.6GHZ DDR2 1PCI SATA Video Sound LAN Motherboard Retail
http://www.ncix.com/products/index [...] ture=Intel

Crucial Ballistix PC2-6400 1GB DDR2-800 CL4-4-4-12 240PIN DIMM Memory Module
http://www.ncix.com/products/index [...] TECHNOLOGY

Apex MI-100 MINI-ITX Case Black 1X5.25 1X3.5 1X3.5INT Sfx 250W Front Audio USB
http://www.ncix.com/products/index [...] Technology

Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 3.5IN 500GB SATA2 8.5MS 7200RPM 32MB Cache NCQ Hard Drive
http://www.ncix.com/products/index [...] re=Seagate

The total comes to $255.95 CDN + Taxes/Shipping. It's fairly cheap, and it's small. Opinions/Suggestions? Anything else I need? Thanks.

Should work, i have run media files of slower machines without issues. Just remember it will not have allot of power(so its file server only[no encoding] and you may as well fold on it ).

Also the 100megabit lan will be a bit of a bottle neck.

Just make sure you have enough cooling for your hard drive in that small case. 24/7 operation can get warm.

For the price i almost want to try one of those, but no TV out makes it less useful for me.

Alright. It was pretty much just gonna be for Storing Music/Movies, and I'm sure I can make something work for the output.

Would I be able to get like, a Gigabit LAN card for it? And would that help?

Alright, thanks for the tip. Fans solve everything!

Faster LAN will help you transfer to the machine faster. its an extra cost that is only worth it if you find it takes too long to send files to it. This is your call, if you do, look for Intel's Pro low profile card.

http://www.ncix.com/products/index [...] ture=Intel

the normal lan(100 megabits/sec. closer to 80 in reality most of the time) will be ok as long as you are not streaming multiple HD streams(ripped blueray 30+ megabit per stream). if you just watch DivX/XviD they only use 0.5-2megabit per second. MCE recordings and DVD's take 4-10megabits per sec.

As i said, i did do the same thing with a slower machine and it worked ok. you should have no problems.

What OS are you going to run on this?

I was thinking of running Ubuntu Server, but am not sure how that will work out. What is your suggestion?

OS is a personal choice. I had a copy of XP Pro laying around so i used that. In my case being able to install other software i use on there worked for me(I also later upgraded it to Media Center Edition and more hard drive space + new cpu). but with linux being as free as it is, i can see many reasons to use it.

What your building will be essentially a NAS(Network attached storage)

I did a quick look for a linux distro with that in mind and found this. May be worth a look.

http://www.freenas.org/