HTPC with built in NAS with light gaming capabilities

rowanh

I would like to build a pc for,

Work as a NAS for backing up video/audio/photos etc
Be able to stream video in 5.1 to my av receiver
Be able to play racing simulators on my tv if possible

Fit in a small sitting room friendly case
Work with an IR remote
Be as silent as possible
Cheap as possible

Just wondering if anyone could suggest specific parts and where to buy them?


I am thinking

i3 processor
Mini ITX MB with HDMI output
SSD for operating system
4 X 3.5" hdd for nas part
Someone suggested 1050 graphics card though this may be to big/loud? Maybe there is a Mb that would not require a graphics card..
Micro ITX case that will fit 4 3.5" drives if this is possible, I am not familiar with the min atx /micro itx etc cases.
some kind of larger quieter fans?

No idea where to buy stuff these days, its 15 years since I built a pc..

ED E

rowanh wrote: »

Be able to play racing simulators on my tv if possible

Maybe there is a Mb that would not require a graphics card..

One or the other.


You can have 3 of 4:
Small
Quiet
Cheap
Powerful

Which you want to skip is up to you.

TerrorFirmer

A Ryzen 1200 setup with a GTX1050 will be ideal as racing games are typically not hugely demanding. Not sure what sort of Ryzen mITX boards are available though. Generally you will pay a lot more for an ITX build as the motherboards tend to be expensive.

Might be easier just to get a very compact Micro ATX setup rather than Mini ITX. Especially if you want it for gaming as well. The GTX1050 is not a loud nor power hungry card and it's likely the processor fan will be as loud as the card would be.

Integrated graphics are pretty useless for modern gaming apart from indie or older games - eg you would get away with Dirt 4 at 720p low settings somewhat OK on an i3 using the built in graphics.

rowanh

ED E wrote: »

One or the other.


You can have 3 of 4:
Small
Quiet
Cheap
Powerful

Honesltly I am not too sure.

I have no idea how big or small it can be for a specific price. It needs to fit somewhere around the tv and not look like a big ugly pc. If it was the size of a games console that would be ideal.

I don't know how loud a fairly quiet computer is. It doesn't need to be silent but I don't want it making loud fan noises while watching movies.

I have no idea what the price range is, I would prefer to keep it on the low side while doing what I want it to completely smoothly. If it can play games thats ideal, if they need to be a few years ago so be it.

Really I am just looking for what the best compromise or size/volume/price/power is for my needs.

ED E

How much do you have to spend? 4x4TB Reds are €540 alone, so at a minimum you'll be talking a grand to do anything significant.

rowanh

Say the budget is 600 euro, what can i get?

rowanh

Something like this?

AMD - Ryzen 3 1200 3.1GHz Quad-Core Processor
£86.99


Asus - PRIME A320M-K Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard
£51.94

Corsair - Vengeance LPX 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR4-2666 Memory
£82.44

Case with psu £100

GTX 1050 £100


4 x 1tb hdd £100

Ssd £50

£520


If i buy four 1tb drives and have them in raid 5, is there a way to later on buy four larger drives and swap them one at a time or do you need to transfer everything from the old four to the new four at the same time?


Also I have a broken primare amp, If I could use it as a case that would be great, perhaps this would be more trouble than its worth with mounting things etc?

ED E

4 x 1tb hdd £100

€25 drives wont have TLER so aren't good for arrays.

rowanh wrote: »

If i buy four 1tb drives and have them in raid 5, is there a way to later on buy four larger drives and swap them one at a time or do you need to transfer everything from the old four to the new four at the same time?

RAID5 is dead. RAID6 is viable for smaller arrays (that would give you 50% usable though....). Cheap raid cards(mobo raid) wont offer flexible expansion. That good ones are $200+ though.


EDIT:
Maybe you should buy a cheapish off the shelf NAS and a Steam Link or Android set top box.

rowanh

Haha, back to square one..

I was originally looking at buying a NAS and a Nvidia Sheild/Fire TV/Mi box but the NAS boxes seemed to be pretty expensive, even without disks. I was then thinking I would build one using a Banana Pi (like a Rasberry Pi)as it seemed like a fun project but this does not seem reliable at all or straight forward. Then I read about building a NAS out of a PC and thats when I thought building a HTPC/NAS that can run some racing sim would be ideal as it would tick all the boxes. I have wanted to be able to play racing sims for the last few years but never had a good place to set it up, I dug my G25 wheel out of storage recently to play a bit of GT6 on the PS3 and it made me think it would be nice to try playing something like Assetocorsa or Iracing, these have been around for a good few years so I doubt you need a very high spec machine to play them on medium settings..

I have been reading about raid for the last couple hours, it seems it is a lot more complicated than I thought and perhaps a better solution would be to just have a backup.

So I would like to figure out the cost of building a budget HTPC with NAS and being able to play some racing sim and see how this stacks up to the other options.