[baldmosher]

Just wondering if it might be worth putting all my very small eggs in one very cheap basket.

Current minimum requirements:
gigabit ethernet
1 x 500GB 3.5" SATA (I have an external SATA-USB2 caddy if it helps)
1 x 500GB 3.5" IDE
1 x 250GB 3.5" IDE
1 x 250GB 2.5" external USB2
USB2-flash
quiet (I'm already quite good at this part)
Linux (presumably SMB sharing, unless DLNA is possible?)
PCI (not PCI-E) DVB-T (single input) tuner card
MythTV (or similar)
Torrent client (e.g. Transmission)

What would you say is the bare minimum system needed to comfortably run all that lot? I would guess a 300W PSU bare minimum?

My dad is using my old Athlon XP 2000+ machine, 1GB RAM, with a passive ATI Radeon AGP (!) video card. It runs Windows XP and handles Office 2003 pretty well, but it grinds to a halt when the virus scanner runs. I'm trying to persuade him to upgrade but he likes it. Can't be sure of the mobo off the top of my head but as I recall it's an Asus A7V KT-133, I'm fairly sure it doesn't have SATA onboard and no PCI-E socket. But I wonder if something similar to that spec might be powerful enough for my needs, or whether I really need to go for a dual core machine?

Could I take the innards out of an old laptop and install those in a PC case for a seriously low powered option?

Potential upgrades:
PCI or PCI-E DVB-T2 (dual input) tuner card
a couple more larger (1TB+) hard disks

Would this require a hardware upgrade or will the same sort of spec handle this OK?

[Kirky99]

I would want a little more horsepower for a TV server. If that's where you're going. With a single core, as you see, when something else hits, things grind to a halt. You don't want that to happen when your'e streaming TV around the house.

I'm currently using a lowly Atlon II X2 240e processor in my TV server and it's proving adequate most of the time. I seldonsee any problems and when I do, it's after a SABnzbd+ download when it's unraring, PARing, or something similar. .

[branlr]

Well, it will work.

I have an athlon xp 3000+ running with 512 MB (needs more desperately) on ubuntu as my file server.

Personally, I would like to upgrade the processor to something dual core, and get at least 2 gigs of memory that is a faster speed. The lack of memory causes instability for me, as I am running flexraid, sabnzbd, utorrent server, sickbeard, headphones, couchpotato, subsonic, apache web server for mediafrontpage and some other things I am hosting for myself....what I have is not quite enough.

Video transncoding is impossible, and extracting rar sets takes FOREVER.

So, similar setup to what you are proposing--you have more memory, but a worse processor.

If you are just using it for a file server, what you have will work, but consider this:


Once you put your files on another machine, it is best to download directly through that machine via programs hosted on the machine itself, rather than running these programs on another computer and downloading over the network to your drive via samba.

And extracting rar's/transcoding video from a client machine hurts the entire networks performance.

Example... you download through utorrent on a client machine to the remote location on the server.... the traffic is now coming through your network once through the client, then out the client to the server... that's double use of you network bandwidth. Now consider, what you downloaded is a set of rars. Now you need to extract them. You can do it using the client computer, but now all that data is going to make the loop one more time. 4x's bandwidth usage... your family watching tv in another room won't be happy at all.


In conclusion:

Point 1: Whatever operations you think you might need to do to the files, you will want to do them on the server machine itself via SSL, VNC, or WebUI of various programs, because otherwise you are piping tons of data through the network unnecessarily.

Point 2: Old hardware=expensive hardware, unless you get lucky in finding a good source for it--which does happen, but you will have to wait until such a source appears on craigslist or wherever. I've been waiting for cheap memory to appear for my system for 2 months and I haven't found any yet at a price that beats me just replacing the mobo, processor, and memory altogether. If I'm paying 100 bucks for an entire system just to get at it's processor and memory, I feel that it is much better to put that towards a new system. It needs to be VERY cheap to justify the path of using old hardware.

Buying new processors and memory for old motherboards can cost a similar amount to just buying something new that will use less energy and outperform it BIG TIME.

[baldmosher]

Perhaps not so expensive as you might think.... there's a fully tested Athlon 2500+ on eBay that I just bought for my dad... cost £5 delivered....

I was thinking of begging most of it anyway, but I take your points about needing dual core and maybe having difficulties sourcing memory..... even if I buy the cheapest mobo/CPU I can possibly find new it's still gonna cost £100+ surely? I'll have a look around, and I suppose the other bonus is that a newer CPU would be more power efficient anyway?

Does my theory about cracking open a laptop hold any water? Well, not literally

[PANiCnz]

Why don't you consolidate all those hard-drives into one 2tb or 3tb drive?

[baldmosher]

Because that would cost £100+ and I've only got 450MB of data.

Once I get the TV card I'll probably be needing a bigger drive but at the moment one of the 500GB is redundant and used for backups. The only thing I really wouldn't want to lose is my MP3 collection (about 200GB)

[baldmosher]

OK, OK, so maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree as regards case size, but one of these little HP desktop machines would do the trick for under £100, surely? And then I could drop the innards into any old large ATX case with more space for drives......?

Just an example anyway, literally the first thing I found on eBay searching for "dual core PC" under £99

EDIT:
hold the front page
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Dell-Precision...2c612d9edc

Is it just me or is that a LOT of machine for £70? I think this is a dual core Xeon.... even if this is a single core Xeon, stick in another matching Xeon (£5 delivered from eBay....!) and HSF and I'm dancin' right? Anyone got any idea of the power consumption of these Xeon beasts?

EDIT:
Could be quite a lot http://i.dell.com/sites/content/business...arison.pdf about 380W... but that's running 31 VMs I think this may well be overkill for my needs. I bet it'll be fun though. And it'll eat WinRAR for breakfast.

[problaze]

Well in the UK you can get a HP microserver in the UK for about 119£ which is pretty good, mines really quiet too. CCL do them

[baldmosher]

Yeah I've seen a review of those... they come highly recommended and I suppose for not much extra cash cf. second hand Xeon that appears to require its own nuclear power station under heavy load... is that £100 cashback offer still available?

PS noise would only be an issue for a small microserver... I have a massive concrete cupboard/wallspace that I can use if a full size beast would be a better value option.


I'm just getting a bit excited about all this. The Wife™ told me I needed a hobby, don't think she had this in mind but I just love hardware. Maybe I should take up PC building in my spare time, and let other people spend their money on my dreams LOL


EDIT:
cripes, I just used this calculator and it reckons I'm looking at £15-20 a month just to run a Poweredge server!!! (300W x 600hrs x 13p/kWh) That is a very expensive hobby Compared to £3 a month for the Microserver (35W). No brainer - that pays for itself in a year and I'll save about that much if the HTPC doesn't need to be permanently up and running - although the thought of learning how to run VMs is getting me a bit moist.

[problaze]

I think you can run VMs quite well on the microserver too...I think it has AMD's equivalent to VT-x on it? (google is your friend here)

Yeah I love mine! I'm sure that promotion is still on it was a steal and kept getting extended :O!

There are some tricks too like adding a fifth drive bay etc which works great too, I recommend. It's really quiet too as there is just one big fan at the back... I have found however that it should be placed off the ground as it attracts (dog) hair like a pro onto (but not in) to it's forward fan grill!

Honnestly for cheap and good you can't beat it! ->it takes cheap ddr3 non ecc ram too

[baldmosher]

The first blog review I read mentioned he was running VMs without any trouble, but he did have 4GB RAM installed and didn't try transcoding - I've since read another review that had it "successfully transcoding at 1.25x realtime" - so I wonder if running MythTV and a tuner card on the server would push it over the limit? Would a discrete GPU card help with that? If so, can you actually get any half-length half-height GPU cards?? (Max length 175mm) Certainly the BG3620 tuner would fit (length 135mm) but not found a GPU card small enough to fit yet

Passmark rates the new Turion Microserver CPU at 935 - compared to the Xeon 2.8GHz I was looking at in the Poweredge that seems quite impressive indeed (although not possible to upgrade) - and a small step up from the Athlon II used in the N36L Microserver

I'm starting to think that spending £140 (after rebate) on a Microserver will keep me busy, and buy me a few extra months of "me time" stopping my fingers getting itchy to spend another £200 and build the HTPC.... although not too much longer than that as the laptop is PAINFUL to use as a HTPC, let alone for other apps....