Chapter 4 PC Hardware

Slimserver has modest hardware requirements. The minimum is listed as a Pentium 733 Mhz with 256 MB of RAM. Any reasonable PC you have lying around will probably work.

Most of the time the PC will be streaming encoded data to the network, which is not very CPU intensive. The CPU will be taxed during encoding, importing, and transcoding. Transcoding occurs when converting from one encoding format to another. An example of transcoding is when slimserver converts a lossless format like FLAC into mp3 when you stream music from a dedicated music server to another computer.

Most people use a PC to store their music and run slimserver. Whether you use a dedicated PC or your general-purpose computer is a personal decision.

On the high end, some Network Attached Storage devices will run slimserver natively. This means a disk enclosure connected to the network is all you need (reference).

No. The encoded audio data travels digitally from the hard drive to the DAC. Traditional problems like interference from the power supply within the case and jitter from the CD-ROM drive are eliminated.