Need opinions on server
ryanjoachim
Posts: 2,046
I'm looking to build an HTPC/media server (I have around 100 HD movies stored right now, and I want to back up the rest of my blu-ray collection as well as my SD collection).
There's 2 things that really stump me when trying to build a pc for this purpose...the proper cpu that can handle blu-ray playback at 1080p, and the best way to connect all these hard drives.
With the onboard sata ports of my current server's mobo, I sometimes get 2-5 seconds of "freeze" time when accessing a hard drive for the first time in a while. I'm not running in RAID at all, just as separate drives. Would a pci raid card be a better option?
It would be real nice if hard drives over 2TB became more common and affordable...to hold my entire collection of movies (just the SD, as I don't have a blu-ray burner right now) i'm looking at another 2 2TB drives minimum(i already have 4TB worth of space right now)...and that's not counting any movies I buy in the future.
CURSE YOU HOLLYWOOD!
There's 2 things that really stump me when trying to build a pc for this purpose...the proper cpu that can handle blu-ray playback at 1080p, and the best way to connect all these hard drives.
With the onboard sata ports of my current server's mobo, I sometimes get 2-5 seconds of "freeze" time when accessing a hard drive for the first time in a while. I'm not running in RAID at all, just as separate drives. Would a pci raid card be a better option?
It would be real nice if hard drives over 2TB became more common and affordable...to hold my entire collection of movies (just the SD, as I don't have a blu-ray burner right now) i'm looking at another 2 2TB drives minimum(i already have 4TB worth of space right now)...and that's not counting any movies I buy in the future.
CURSE YOU HOLLYWOOD!
"Dr Dunn admitted that his research could also be interpreted as evidence that women are shallower than men. He said: "Let's face it - there's evidence to support it."
My System:Best Buy is for people who don't know any better. Magnolia is for people who don't know any better and have more money to spend.
TV: SAMSUNG UN55B7000 55" 1080p LED HDTV
HTPC: Chromecast w/ Plex Media Server. Media streamed from Media Server.
Post edited by ryanjoachim on
Comments
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First I am getting ready to build a HT pc soon. The thing is my fight is between the intel i5 or the i7 for cpu. Three things you need for smooth HD playback. Fast cpu, fast HD graphics card and a lot of ram. The HD is not really going to slow you down that much but a raid will help. Also why rip all your hd movies to your ht? Why not buy a external drive and put them all on there such as a usb 3.0 drive "as long as your mb can accept it"HT setup
Panasonic 50" TH-50PZ80U
Denon DBP-1610
Monster HTS 1650
Carver A400X :cool:
MIT Exp 3 Speaker Wire
Kef 104/2
URC MX-780 Remote
Sonos Play 1
Living Room
63 inch Samsung PN63C800YF
Polk Surroundbar 3000
Samsung BD-C7900 -
Well, while an external drive is always an option, I prefer to have my movies safe in a larger enclosure (tower). My wife accidentally knocked over my old Seagate 1TB external drive (it took around a 12" fall), and it was toast after that.
I plan on having at least 4GB of ram and an ATI 5000 series card (I prefer ATI for this purpose, as they are the only ones who allow 7.1 audio and 1080p picture through the HDMI slot on the card).
I've never really considered RAID before...when I RAID drives, do they show up as 1 large drive in Windows? Or do they still show up as 6 different drives in My Computer?"Dr Dunn admitted that his research could also be interpreted as evidence that women are shallower than men. He said: "Let's face it - there's evidence to support it."
My System:Best Buy is for people who don't know any better. Magnolia is for people who don't know any better and have more money to spend.
TV: SAMSUNG UN55B7000 55" 1080p LED HDTV
HTPC: Chromecast w/ Plex Media Server. Media streamed from Media Server. -
The delay is because of disk windup after they have been turned off from inactivity. There are settings to keep the disks from winding down, but at the expense of energy consumption from them constantly running. Cpu is not really that important for video playback.Parasound C1, T3, HCA-3500, HCA-2205A, P/DD1550, Pioneer DV-79avi, Oppo BDP-83, WD Media Server W/HDD,
Dynaudio Contour 3.3, Dynaudio Contour T2.1, Polk OWM3, Polk DSW micropro 1000 (x2),
Pioneer Kuro 50" Plasma, Phillips Pronto Control w/Niles HT-MSU. -
A Raid Array of drives is the way to go for gigantic storage needs.
It depends on how you want to set the array up whether you see a single large disk or multiple smaller one's.Parasound C1, T3, HCA-3500, HCA-2205A, P/DD1550, Pioneer DV-79avi, Oppo BDP-83, WD Media Server W/HDD,
Dynaudio Contour 3.3, Dynaudio Contour T2.1, Polk OWM3, Polk DSW micropro 1000 (x2),
Pioneer Kuro 50" Plasma, Phillips Pronto Control w/Niles HT-MSU. -
The delay is because of disk windup after they have been turned off from inactivity. There are settings to keep the disks from winding down, but at the expense of energy consumption from them constantly running. Cpu is not really that important for video playback.
Actually, depending on what media player you prefer to use, the CPU is very important. But that's probably a discussion for a different thread.
Power consumption isn't a worry for me. Could you give me some tips on keeping the drives spinning?"Dr Dunn admitted that his research could also be interpreted as evidence that women are shallower than men. He said: "Let's face it - there's evidence to support it."
My System:Best Buy is for people who don't know any better. Magnolia is for people who don't know any better and have more money to spend.
TV: SAMSUNG UN55B7000 55" 1080p LED HDTV
HTPC: Chromecast w/ Plex Media Server. Media streamed from Media Server. -
ryanjoachim wrote: »Actually, depending on what media player you prefer to use, the CPU is very important. But that's probably a discussion for a different thread.
Power consumption isn't a worry for me. Could you give me some tips on keeping the drives spinning?
Sure, what is your OS? Are the drives connected directly to the motherboard?
No raid card,Right?Parasound C1, T3, HCA-3500, HCA-2205A, P/DD1550, Pioneer DV-79avi, Oppo BDP-83, WD Media Server W/HDD,
Dynaudio Contour 3.3, Dynaudio Contour T2.1, Polk OWM3, Polk DSW micropro 1000 (x2),
Pioneer Kuro 50" Plasma, Phillips Pronto Control w/Niles HT-MSU. -
ryanjoachim wrote: »Actually, depending on what media player you prefer to use, the CPU is very important.
I would say IF the codec supports multithreading, you could get by with any quad core, even with a dual. If the codec does not support multithreading then you need a very fast CPU for BD playback, unless it can get hardware support from GPU.
RAID will show up as one large drive. If you don't have RAID controller on your motherboard then you can run software RAID if your OS supports it (many Windows versions do not, especially Home editions).
3 1.5TB drives in RAID5 config will give you 3TB of storage. 4 drives 4.5TB. Get SATA hard drive dock bays for your drives so you can easily swap out a drive if it gets bad sectors. You can hot swap a damaged drive to a new one while the computer is running and it won't mind. You can also swap out the drives into bigger ones, just make sure you do it one at a time and monitor the status to make sure RAID has copied the information to your new drive before you swap another. (and hope you don't get a dead drive while doing so...
) -
My experience so YMMV.
I'm running an AMD 5050e (low power) cpu and an ATI 4760 graphics card. As long as the codec/software you're using to play back hi-def video (1080P) is set to use the video card, you don't need a powerful CPU. If you're using software rendering, a powerful CPU is a must.
*HOWEVER*
With a huge video library with lots of folder art, background art, and xml files (movie info), the cpu can get bogged down if you use a very low power cpu and something else is running in the background (e.g. updates). For me, this only affects navigation sometimes but has not cause any video or audio studdering during 1080P playback.
It's a balancing game trying to keep the power as low as possible and still be able to navigate and playback without lag time or studders. -
I've got a Core2Duo right now, running stock at 2.4Ghz with 2GB of ram. Occasionally (more often recently) I get what seem to be lag spikes, where the video will slow down or stop for a couple seconds then it'll "fast forward" and catch up with the audio.
Not sure if this is a RAM issue, a hard drive issue, or a CPU issue...
I'm running Win7 Ultimate right now."Dr Dunn admitted that his research could also be interpreted as evidence that women are shallower than men. He said: "Let's face it - there's evidence to support it."
My System:Best Buy is for people who don't know any better. Magnolia is for people who don't know any better and have more money to spend.
TV: SAMSUNG UN55B7000 55" 1080p LED HDTV
HTPC: Chromecast w/ Plex Media Server. Media streamed from Media Server. -
1) Disable all services that you don't need
2) Log CPU and RAM usage
3) Set your media players priority to Realtime
4) Test what happens -
1) Disable all services that you don't need
2) Log CPU and RAM usage
3) Set your media players priority to Realtime
4) Test what happens
Will do when I get home today. Thanks for the tips."Dr Dunn admitted that his research could also be interpreted as evidence that women are shallower than men. He said: "Let's face it - there's evidence to support it."
My System:Best Buy is for people who don't know any better. Magnolia is for people who don't know any better and have more money to spend.
TV: SAMSUNG UN55B7000 55" 1080p LED HDTV
HTPC: Chromecast w/ Plex Media Server. Media streamed from Media Server. -
ryanjoachim wrote: »I'm looking to build an HTPC/media server (I have around 100 HD movies stored right now, and I want to back up the rest of my blu-ray collection as well as my SD collection).
There's 2 things that really stump me when trying to build a pc for this purpose...the proper cpu that can handle blu-ray playback at 1080p, and the best way to connect all these hard drives.
With the onboard sata ports of my current server's mobo, I sometimes get 2-5 seconds of "freeze" time when accessing a hard drive for the first time in a while. I'm not running in RAID at all, just as separate drives. Would a pci raid card be a better option?
It would be real nice if hard drives over 2TB became more common and affordable...to hold my entire collection of movies (just the SD, as I don't have a blu-ray burner right now) i'm looking at another 2 2TB drives minimum(i already have 4TB worth of space right now)...and that's not counting any movies I buy in the future.
CURSE YOU HOLLYWOOD!
I recently built a new computer for home entertainment. I bought an i7 860 and it runs video renderring almost effortlessly. For example I can encode a 700 meg avi to dvd in 6 minutes. It can also encode a 9 gig mkv file down to a dvd in around 50 minutes on average. The great thing,is that I can do other things while encoding with ease and the encode always turns out. I use convertex to dvd to encode and find it very acceptable for it purpose. Lots of hard drive is a must, especially if your going to be ripping blueray.
Good Luck"They're always talking about my drinking, but never mention my thirst" Oscar Wilde
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renowilliams wrote: »I recently built a new computer for home entertainment. I bought an i7 860 and it runs video renderring almost effortlessly. For example I can encode a 700 meg avi to dvd in 6 minutes. It can also encode a 9 gig mkv file down to a dvd in around 50 minutes on average. The great thing,is that I can do other things while encoding with ease and the encode always turns out. I use convertex to dvd to encode and find it very acceptable for it purpose. Lots of hard drive is a must, especially if your going to be ripping blueray.
Good Luck
I agree that one of the i5 of i7 cpu's would be a great idea, however my motherboard is an older socket 775 which means my upgrade possibilities are very limited. I can't afford to replace both the mobo and cpu+memory, otherwise i'd upgrade my gaming pc and use my old gaming parts to upgrade the server."Dr Dunn admitted that his research could also be interpreted as evidence that women are shallower than men. He said: "Let's face it - there's evidence to support it."
My System:Best Buy is for people who don't know any better. Magnolia is for people who don't know any better and have more money to spend.
TV: SAMSUNG UN55B7000 55" 1080p LED HDTV
HTPC: Chromecast w/ Plex Media Server. Media streamed from Media Server. -
ryanjoachim wrote: »I agree that one of the i5 of i7 cpu's would be a great idea, however my motherboard is an older socket 775 which means my upgrade possibilities are very limited. I can't afford to replace both the mobo and cpu+memory, otherwise i'd upgrade my gaming pc and use my old gaming parts to upgrade the server.
I am fairly certain a Q8300 will do the job easily: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115207&cm_re=core_2_quad-_-19-115-207-_-Product
Since you're using Windows, using threaded codec and GPU acceleration should not be an issue. Just make sure you gut out the unnecessary stuff and run your media player at high priority to prevent interruptions.
