No transcoding needet...
Another NAS is another device that is drawing power.
I was locking at Odroid HC1/HC2 but they are expensive and why not just use the Tvheadend box that is running 24/7 anyways.
The 6TB drive is not running 24/7? If you don't access files your drives go to sleep?
I have a Windows PC with StableBit DrivePool and multiple drives where i have all the movies and backups.
There the drives sleep and i only power it up if i watch a movie because of power consumption.
And airflow: Just mount a fan or use a HDD case with one.
This one is just for music, music videos, eBooks and stuff like that.
I'm not a fan of USB connected HDDs (beside portable). Its another unnecessary layer if you have SATA ports.
I have Raspberry Pi's, a Banana Pi and Odroid's and none of this devices are really useful as a NAS in my opinion.
The seller did open one t620 and it has mSATA. So i can tell him to make sure to send me one with mSATA.
Only efficient if mostly idle? I thought they do not pull more than 11 to 15W if under full load?
Since the GPU is not used here, TV watching is only ~4 hours a day and serving files is also not that much...
A t630 costs 4 to 6 times more (~$300) here in Germany.
Also the HP QuickSpecs says for the 630 "11.5 W" and for the 620 "8.99 W".
I don't get this HP idle specs anyways. If you search around people say they have 5 watts.
Yeah, but do you only measure power on the APU? On the power lead? Or off the outlet (which is what I do)? It's not just the APU, it's the APU, the RAM (some difference between DDR3 and DDR3L and whether you opt for large RAM units or stick with the default 2GB DIMMs), the fan, the power conversion logic, the M.2 SATA boot drive (the default, is, what, 16GB?), the power draw from the USB ports (if anything is plugged into it), the NIC, the audio (unless you specifically compile it out) and whatever is being consumed by the power brick, offset by whatever C and P states your APU is being set to, and whether idle/deep sleep policy.
The HP numbers are a bit optimistic (in my opinion) - and it also depends one whether you are looking at the quoted figures for the dualcore t620, the quadcore t620, or the quadcore t620 plus.
if you look at their quoted numbers for a t730 (a more powerful machine) they'll quote about 20 Watts idle with a video card + a fiber NIC - looking at the numbers on my Elekcity Voltson smart plug, it's drawing nearly 40 watts off the taps. Either the enclosed 90w power brick eats an extra 6W and my smart plug is being pessimistic and adds a few watts (could be...?), ESXi is being especially power hungry, or HP are quoting numbers off the lead plugging into the device after the power brick...who knows.
Either ways, I will take those numbers with a grain of salt.