General help with orientation for buying a personal NAS to host a starbound server.

With the nearing release of Starbound beta somewhere this year I've been looking for a way to host a small server for about 5-10 man.
I can't do this on my desktop pc because that would consume way too much electricity so I'm thinking about purchasing a personal NAS for hosting and personal use (I’m a software engineering student, so I program websites and stuff.
Perhaps also a database) without my electricity bill exploding.


I thought this would be a nice place to ask because I bet there are more of you out there with similar thoughts or more experience with the NAS technology.
So is there someone out there that can point me in the right direction or documentation involving orientation/ purchase and setting up a server.

I'm also interested in running servers for games like Minecraft, Terraria or Cube World so any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

If this thread is in the wrong place, I'm sorry.

Edit: Broken fonds everywhere.

 

Ah... Sorry. I couldn't tell you anything you couldn't find with a google search.

Good luck though! Let us know how it goes, maybe I'll even join the server when it launches

 

Too much electricity? care to elaborate.

All we know is that starbound doesnt require much itself to run, so a server for 5 people wouldnt require much at all.

Think Terraria

 

Okey, I'll be abit more specific: Things to look for on the world wide web that help me pick the right NAS to buy

 

Well I'm a student living alone and I have to pay for gas, water and electricity.
I also run a heavy rig for programming and gaming about 8 to 10 hours a day.
So I am afraid I'll wasting too much money on electricity if I keep that pc running 24/7, for I still have to be able to buy games!

 

NAS is the wrong term to search for. nas devices are for networked file storage, and generally only possess a tiny bit of processing power using some cpu architecture that starbound won't even run on. Unless you can somehow get the sourcecode for starbound and recompile it for some random motorola processor or whatever.

You need something with either an intel or amd proccessor. An old laptop would work and be pretty low power, or if you are looking for one of those little book sized computers here is a good start: http://www.newegg.com/Mini-Booksize-Barebone-Systems/SubCategory/ID-309

 

While we're here, I've got some questions too.

Would hosting a server for 24 hours generally lag my internet? I ask because I live with roomates but I would like to make a Starbound server for my friends and I don't want my roomates to all suddenly get terrible internet forever.

 

Depends on where you live and your specific internet connection, but in almost all cases no it will have no effect. If you live somewhere where your bandwidth per month is limited, keep that in mind. Also realize it has zero impact on your internet when no one is online on the server.

Check your connection http://www.speedtest.net/ Pay closer attention to upload speeds then download.

 

sweet, thanks a bunch for lettin me know. I feel more confident about making my own server.

 

You are very much correct. A friends workplace was selling off their old laptops for next to nothing. Average to poor specs, but enough to run terraria. So I now host a 2~6 player terraria server on it. It lives next to my router screen off and battery out. Just silently running the server 24/7.

Look for places that sell ex-lease/insurance claimed/liquidated PCs.
I mean right now I am looking at a AMD Athlon II 2.6GHz, 8GB Ram, 1.5TB HDD, Gigabit ethernet, DVD Drive for $80. Its got no OS but the same guys are selling some legit copies of Win 8 Pro whose boxes are a bit smoke damaged for $120.

 

Say, if i were to buy a pre-configured barebone pc, how different is that in comparison to like a old laptop?
From what I have read pre-configured barebone computers usually come with no hard disc for storage so also no operating system.
Would that mean I have to use a separate and external hard disc ready with a booting partition?

PS. I am not talking about peripherals such as a keyboard, mouse and monitor.

 

Quick question - we still don't know the required specs for SB, do we? I would have thought this would be a better conversation to have when those specs have been nailed down.

 

True, but to not succum to my impatiance I'd like to go ahead and try this on games like Minecraft, Terraria(epic content patch coming 1 Oktober) or Cube World. Besides if it would run minecraft than SB would run as well I think.

 

my advice? don't put the cart in front of the horse.

Wait for full game specs then go from there.