Please help with Spec for TV Server/NAS

€>sense

Hi all,

I'm planning to build (or buy if reasonably priced) a server to be placed in my home office that has to perform 2 main functions:

1) have 2 satellite and 2 Terrestial HD TV receivers and be capable of streaming live TV around the house to 5 other rooms connected by gigabit wired Lan, and have a robust PVR functionality.

2) Act as a NAS/Media Server for the recorded TV shows/Music/Movies (including DNLA server functionality for mobiles/tablets connecting to network wirelessly if possible, and bittorrent). Initally i'm only thinking of 2 TB, but would like the ability to expand that by adding drives later, big cases allowing multiple drives would be OK. Not too hung up on Raid, think money might be better spent on backing this machine up as opposed to redundancy that Raid gives.

Case size is not really a constraint, so the only other criteria are that

a) it should be quiet enough for me to work in the home office with it on the floor uder the desk - I'm used to a certain bit of computer noise in there so it doesn't have to be HTPC quiet.

b) and as it will be on 24/7, that it should drain as little power as possible at all times, go to sleep when not streaming or recording, but wake rapidly when called.

I've not fully decided what OS to run on this, but am leaning strongly towards Win7 Media Center and using Xboxes as Media Center Extenders. I am open to persuasion on this, but the logic of this is the minimal cost of the 5 xboxes and the simplicity of the set-up as opposed to Media portal, XBMC or Linux options I'm not familiar with and the cost of putting 5 nettops under the 5 TVs.

Have built gaming rigs in the distant past, but am out of date entirely as regards hardware and was never familiar with low power components.

Thanks in advance to anyone taking the time to respond.

Serephucus

Budget?

For a case, I'd definitely recommend the Define R3 from Fractal Design. Designed to be a quiet case, and has room for ten (I think) hard drives.

You probably don't need anything too powerful, so I'd say maybe an i3 2100 / i5 2300 depending, 8GB RAM, and a cheap motherboard, should have you good to go.

As regards TV tuners, I haven't a clue. I've never used one, so I'll leave that to someone else. I assume once the motherboard has a few free PCI / PCIe-x1 slots you'd be fine.

MRTULES

Hi. I have been following your other thread in the Av/HTPC forum with great interest. I know even less about this then you but I am learning a lot. Any advice would be much appreciated and if you get feed back or PM's that you feel could be useful, please forward them on to me.
I will send on a few links to AVfourms website where a few threads go into great detail

aFlabbyPanda

Hi again, Regarding the RAM one thing to keep in mind is that the MCE run in 32bit and a lot of codecs are 32bit only. Installing these on 64bit can be a pain in the arse.

€>sense

Thanks Serephucus, Brian,

Budget is €400, but must include at least 2Tb to get me started. I'll grow it organically, so RAID etc. will come later.

Is there a response time benefit to a small SSD for the OS?

Love the case and not too expensive either.

I'm leaning towards the i3 myself - I've seen plenty of home server and HTPC recommendations that Atoms or celerons can do full HD, but I'm wary! Where is the heavy lifting done in my scenario - TV Signal tuning and media streaming to up to 5 clients (+DNLA)? Will the server be doing it or the client (Xbox)? If the server does it then do I need to add GPUs to the server?

As to Motherboards, most recommendations are for mini or micro atx. What do I need to consider here? Again I'd like enough sata connections for the 8 disks, but are there perfomacne issues here? Does a point come when I must add PCI sata controllers? How many PCI slots will I need then? 2 for tuners? 1-2 for Sata? 1-2 for RAID?

I'll also need a bit of help with the PSU? Internal or external? How many watts to cover all the drives? Should it be fanless or quiet?

8GB of ram sounds overkill, if I'm going 32 bit - most likely re codecs etc. - then teh other 4 will be wasted? or is it worth the codec pain for the 8GB Ram and 64-bit system.

Sounds like my budget could in trouble! Are the extra drives driving a lot of complexity + cost? might it be smarter to aim for 4-6 drives with an on-board Raid.

aFlabbyPanda

I've got the tbs 6981 (dual tuner) and an old hauppauge hvr-3000 which I started my rig with years ago (used to have 2 of them).

The SSD does allow the system to boot, wake & connect a little faster (about 5 or 6 seconds in my own experience) but that would have cost me around 250 euro alone but I got it for free from a buddy. I wouldnt have paid my own money for it!

yes if you put 8gb in a 32bit system then the other 4gb is wasted. With the storage you want I dont think you'll do it for under 400€.

CPU is a bigger draw than RAM when the clients connect. I've got 2 xbox' connected and am about to add a 3rd but I think thats the limit for my spec before I have problems. I'll need to upgrade the CPU otherwise.

marco_polo

€>sense wrote: »

Thanks Serephucus, Brian,

Budget is €400, but must include at least 2Tb to get me started. I'll grow it organically, so RAID etc. will come later.

Is there a response time benefit to a small SSD for the OS?

Not really, faster boot/load/wake time and it is more power efficent than a regular HDD. But once it everything is up and running already it wouldn't have any real performance impact.

Love the case and not too expensive either.

I'm leaning towards the i3 myself - I've seen plenty of home server and HTPC recommendations that Atoms or celerons can do full HD, but I'm wary! Where is the heavy lifting done in my scenario - TV Signal tuning and media streaming to up to 5 clients (+DNLA)? Will the server be doing it or the client (Xbox)? If the server does it then do I need to add GPUs to the server?

As you will likely be streaming MPEG-2/4 content to the Xbox clients, so in terms of decoding these for viewing the Xboxs CPU/GPU should be doing all of the work.

What you mostly you need to think about in terms of the server load is what if any processing you will be doing with the input signals. If the incoming signals are unencrypted digital already MPEG-2 (DVB-T,DVB-S) or MPEG-4 (DVB-T2 etc), then the CPU probably won't really have to do much processing on the input signals at all, apart for any recording and routing of the streams that your chosen media software is doing, which I wouldn't think should be overly taxing on the i3 compared to if there was any decoding/decryption of signals required.

Processing analogue signals can be CPU heavy but many TV tuners have hardware acceleration to take the load off the CPU (and it doesn't sound like you will be using analogue signals anyway).

Not an expert in this stuff so there may be things I am overlooking, the HTPC forum is probably the best place for answers on this score.

As to Motherboards, most recommendations are for mini or micro atx. What do I need to consider here? Again I'd like enough sata connections for the 8 disks, but are there perfomacne issues here? Does a point come when I must add PCI sata controllers? How many PCI slots will I need then? 2 for tuners? 1-2 for Sata? 1-2 for RAID?

Since size doesn't matter no need to limit yourself with mATX/Itx boards, just get a full ATX board with as many PCI / PCIeX1 / Sata ports as you need.

I'll also need a bit of help with the PSU? Internal or external? How many watts to cover all the drives? Should it be fanless or quiet?

In a full ATX case it will be internal anyway. Hard drive do not use a whole lot of power so as you only have to power an i3 and some drives a fairly low wattage (300-350W) will be fine. As you don't need a dead silence rig a good PSU with a fan will be almost inaudible in a low powered system such as this.

8GB of ram sounds overkill, if I'm going 32 bit - most likely re codecs etc. - then teh other 4 will be wasted? or is it worth the codec pain for the 8GB Ram and 64-bit system.

It is so cheap you may as well . But you are correct that any more than 4GB is a waste unless you go 64bit.

Would 8Gb be overkill? I really couldn't even hazzard a guess at potential peak ram usage to answer the question I'm afraid.

Sounds like my budget could in trouble! Are the extra drives driving a lot of complexity + cost? might it be smarter to aim for 4-6 drives with an on-board Raid.

Complextity not really, but HDDs are really expensive at the moment so best to get only what is nescessary for the next few months.

marco_polo

You don't have an existing copy of windows or any HDD by any chance? Also what type of tuner cards are/will you be using.

Even without an OS you are looking at about 420 delivered for a barebones i3-2100 build (€103), with a solid budget case and psu (€80), H61 full ATX motherboard with 3-4 PCI slots (€65-70), 4GB Ram (€20) and a 2TB HDD (€125).

€>sense

marco_polo wrote: »

Not really, faster boot/load/wake time and it is more power efficent than a regular HDD. But once it everything is up and running already it wouldn't have any real performance impact.

Decided against then - cost a lot and would be something I could add later to improve wake times.

marco_polo wrote: »

As you will likely be streaming MPEG-2/4 content to the Xbox clients, so in terms of decoding these for viewing the Xboxs CPU/GPU should be doing all of the work.

What you mostly you need to think about in terms of the server load is what if any processing you will be doing with the input signals. If the incoming signals are unencrypted digital already MPEG-2 (DVB-T,DVB-S) or MPEG-4 (DVB-T2 etc), then the CPU probably won't really have to do much processing on the input signals at all, apart for any recording and routing of the streams that your chosen media software is doing, which I wouldn't think should be overly taxing on the i3 compared to if there was any decoding/decryption of signals required.

Processing analogue signals can be CPU heavy but many TV tuners have hardware acceleration to take the load off the CPU (and it doesn't sound like you will be using analogue signals anyway).

Not an expert in this stuff so there may be things I am overlooking, the HTPC forum is probably the best place for answers on this score.

Definitely only Digital signal. I hadn't understood this stuff so puts my mind at ease. No graphic card then - integrated will be fine. Is there an argument then for a quadcore? Don't AMD do a low power quadcore that might be better for handling multiple streams?

marco_polo wrote: »

Since size doesn't matter no need to limit yourself with mATX/Itx boards, just get a full ATX board with as many PCI / PCIeX1 / Sata ports as you need.

OK started looking for ATX do mbs come with 8-9 sata connections? are the eSata connections included in this count? if I get a mb with less sata connections than the case can hold, can I get a plugin card to deal with them? Would that be PCI or PCIe? are there bandwith issues anywhere with this approach? Is it worth lookign for a mb with a RAID controller, or is that something to be plugged in later?

I'm likely to be runnign out of PCIe slots with the tuners - is PCI fast enough for disk controllers/raid?

marco_polo wrote: »

In a full ATX case it will be internal anyway. Hard drive do not use a whole lot of power so as you only have to power an i3 and some drives a fairly low wattage (300-350W) will be fine. As you don't need a dead silence rig a good PSU with a fan will be almost inaudible in a low powered system such as this.

300-350watts sounds high? Is that just a potential wattage if you have a whole host of demands? I was hoping to have the system use way less than that.

marco_polo wrote: »

It is so cheap you may as well . But you are correct that any more than 4GB is a waste unless you go 64bit.

Would 8Gb be overkill? I really couldn't even hazzard a guess at potential peak ram usage to answer the question I'm afraid.

Decided on 4GB for now? DDR3? Any other considerations?

marco_polo wrote: »

Complextity not really, but HDDs are really expensive at the moment so best to get only what is nescessary for the next few months.

Yes couldn't believe the cost of drives now! It will be 1 2TB drive - should I go for "green/eco" branded stuff or go for speed?

marco_polo wrote: »

You don't have an existing copy of windows or any HDD by any chance? Also what type of tuner cards are/will you be using.

Budget is malleable - TVs, xboxes, software are excluded from the €400. Was planning to use old HD for system drive, have a selection under 150GB. But everything does hinge on this box delivering, so if compelling arguments for extending it I will and just drop a room or two for now.

marco_polo wrote: »

Even without an OS you are looking at about 420 delivered for a barebones i3-2100 build (€103), with a solid budget case and psu (€80), H61 full ATX motherboard with 3-4 PCI slots (€65-70), 4GB Ram (€20) and a 2TB HDD (€125).

Where are you getting those prices? I'm struggling to get a mb under €130.

A big thanks marco_polo, this was really useful.

€>sense

marco_polo wrote: »

Also what type of tuner cards are/will you be using.

http://shop.blackgold.tv/epages/BT3159.sf/en_GB/?ObjectPath=/Shops/BT3159/Products/BGT3600

Tuner card I'm thinking of €144 but should do both Freesat and Saorview.

Serephucus

€>sense wrote: »

Where are you getting those prices? I'm struggling to get a mb under €130.

http://www.dabs.ie/products/asus-p8h61-pro-rev-3-0-lga1155-intel-h61-ddr3-atx--b3-stepping--7GBQ.html?q=H61&src=16