[Dougie Fresh]

Thanks for the facts - I'll go with the P8H77-I. Any suggestion for the CPU?

Besides 1080p, anything else that you'd like to do with your HTPC/server?

[Kieron]

Thanks for the facts - I'll go with the P8H77-I. Any suggestion for the CPU?

Besides 1080p, anything else that you'd like to do with your HTPC/server?

I only use XBMC, rtorrent (a few thousand torrents seeding), SickBeard, CouchPotato, a light cherokee webserver.... that's all I think.

[jammyb]

I googled and came to the conclusion that there is little real-world difference between SATAII and SATAIII, well at least for now

For me SATAII and SATAIII is night and day! 80MB/s versus 135MB/s for me with WD RED!

SATAIII and WD RED is awesome!

[Kieron]

I googled and came to the conclusion that there is little real-world difference between SATAII and SATAIII, well at least for now

For me SATAII and SATAIII is night and day! 80MB/s versus 135MB/s for me with WD RED!

SATAIII and WD RED is awesome!

Thanks for chiming in, gah, looks like the FM2A85X-ITX is a bad idea after all...

[jammyb]

Sucks to be you!

[Dougie Fresh]

I googled and came to the conclusion that there is little real-world difference between SATAII and SATAIII, well at least for now

For me SATAII and SATAIII is night and day! 80MB/s versus 135MB/s for me with WD RED!

SATAIII and WD RED is awesome!

These numbers only matter in the context of what you're doing. Watching a 1080p movie, 80MB/s vs 135MB/s is going to make absolutely no difference. Is the only thing this server is going to be doing transferring files between disks? Is your network fast enough to saturate a SATAII connection? Doubtful...

[jammyb]

Agreed. The only way to get max it out would be gigabit at both ends. But even that won't max out a SATA connection. For me to achieve those speeds internally was restoring a WD RED over SATAIII. I get similar speed with USB3. But as you said. For network HD steaming, IDE over megabit is no different to SATAIII over gigabit.

But. If he wants to transcode.....? Would better drives and SATAIII help or is it all down to the CPU/GPU?

[Dougie Fresh]

Transcoding will likely be CPU-bound -- depends on the software and the encoding algorithm(s).

[cwide]

Agreed. The only way to get max it out would be gigabit at both ends. But even that won't max out a SATA connection. For me to achieve those speeds internally was restoring a WD RED over SATAIII. I get similar speed with USB3. But as you said. For network HD steaming, IDE over megabit is no different to SATAIII over gigabit.

But. If he wants to transcode.....? Would better drives and SATAIII help or is it all down to the CPU/GPU?

If you are talking about Plex transcoding it is all CPU bound, but even the Celeron G1610 is enough for multiple HD transcoded streams.

[Kieron]

You're right, in my case the disk speed is fairly negligible. I won't be doing any transcoding at all, aside from Headphones FLAC>v0. I'm going to go with the Asus board, G1610, and 16GB Kingston RAM.

Thanks for all the advice guys.

[Kieron]

Hi all. I've bought the G1610 but it's still boxed and sealed - I'm thinking about returning it for something else...

I've decided I might do some light gaming on this server, mostly old games/emulators and perhaps a few Steam linux games. Will this processor sans graphics card suffice? My problem is the board I've bought only has 6 ports and I will be needing 7, so my only PCI slot will have to serve as a SATA controller - no space for a graphics card, not to mention heat.

Thanks in advance!

[Dougie Fresh]

i3-3225 would be the next best bet. It's more expensive of course but reported (here and on AVSForums) to run emulators quite well. Anything else Celeron/Pentium/i3 will have pretty much the same GPU so not worth it.

[cwide]

Hi all. I've bought the G1610 but it's still boxed and sealed - I'm thinking about returning it for something else...

I've decided I might do some light gaming on this server, mostly old games/emulators and perhaps a few Steam linux games. Will this processor sans graphics card suffice? My problem is the board I've bought only has 6 ports and I will be needing 7, so my only PCI slot will have to serve as a SATA controller - no space for a graphics card, not to mention heat.

Thanks in advance!

My i3-3225 was not quite good enough for some steam games I tried. Should work well with emulators though.

If you wanted to do some real gaming (medium settings) I would have went with the AMD FM2 option... much better GPU (although you say linux... not sure on driver support for that).

[Kieron]

I'm going to return the Intel motherboard/cpu (when they arrive!) and get the FM2 instead. I'm looking at the A10-5800K at the moment - is going for a higher-end CPU really going to output that much more heat? I suppose underclocking is an option if it proves to be too hot (especially with all those drives?!)

[nooryani84]

I googled and came to the conclusion that there is little real-world difference between SATAII and SATAIII, well at least for now

For me SATAII and SATAIII is night and day! 80MB/s versus 135MB/s for me with WD RED!

SATAIII and WD RED is awesome!

Thanks for chiming in, gah, looks like the FM2A85X-ITX is a bad idea after all...

Look, don't be swayed by everyone elses opinion. Before you make any final decisions be sure that the build fits YOUR needs, not everyone elses. So don't get something TOO overpowered and certainly don't get something that will create bottlenecks. Do you plan on upgrading with more disks in the future, or would you want the option to do so? Build a server with something like this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6811352020 and then use an Intel NUC to play the actual content. I don't know what kind of budget you're working with, though I'm in the process of finding the right build for my own fileserver with couchpotato/sickbeard etc: http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=163432

If you're not in a rush then I would wait for the next Intel Atom chips, they're going to be closer to Intel Core in terms of processing power and 2-3 times the GPU power of last gen Atom CPU's.

http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/29/intel...ap-leaked/ Ivy Brige gfx

http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/07/intel...bay-trail/