[Churada]

Hi guys, I'd love if you could take a quick look at my proposed build below and give me some feedback.

Budget : approximately 600 euro

OS: Windows 7

Usage : XBMC, Sickbeard, Couchpotato, internet browsing and streaming. Not interested in gaming. Have had bad experienced with Realtek and Broadcom nics in the past so must be Intel. Have an old
HP N36L Proliant acting as a fileserve currently. Would be nice to have expandability in the HTPC to stick in newer, faster and greater capacity disks in the future to take over when Proliant dies.

Case :- BitFenix Prodigy Mini-ITX



PSU: Corsair Builder Series CXM 500W



CPU : Intel BX80637G2020 Pentium G2020 Dual Core CPU (CPU mark 2833)

Motherboard: Asus P8Z77-I Deluxe Motherboard



Memory : Crucial BLT2CP4G3D1608DT1TX0CEU 8GB (2x 4GB) Ballistix Tactical Memory



HDD : Crucial M500 240GB 2.5-inch Internal SSD



Total cost is coming in at just under £500, €580 or about $775 USD

I'm a little concerned the CPU chosen might not cut it.
- Can sabnzbd fix parity and unrar at the same time I'm watching a 1080 mkv movie in XBMC running Windows 7 on this without dropping frames?
Any comments, recommendations or your nuts that doesn't fit into that all welcome!

[solamnic]

Since you dont want a Intel Nuc let me comment your built ...

I do own a bitfenix prodigy and i must say is a great case...
also i own the Asus P8Z77-I Deluxe Motherboard which is a great MB ..

but i use
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Seasonic-M12II-5...s=seasonic
that totally silent and semi modular and really helps since you wont use many of supplied cables for now...

also get this
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Zalman-ZM-MC1-Mu...+connector
it will lower the rpm of the bitfenix fans and will make the case virtually silent...

any reason to have 240gb SSD...?

64 or 128 gb is a safe choice for win7...
and i would spent the rest of my money to get an i3...

and if you want to make your case beautiful inside
get a set of Bitfenix Alchemy cables...

and of course for sata cables, any black round cable
http://www.amazon.co.uk/SATA-LOCKING-Spe...und+cables

(in my build i replaced the front bitfenix fan with a bitfenix spectre 23' with led, but i dont know if this will fit with the hdd bay on)
Enjoy...

[joelbaby]

Nice computer, but completely not what you need.

Looks like you want to download, and for that you want storage space.
You have a Proliant doing this job, which you say might eventually die. When that time comes, replace it with a Synology 2/4 Bay NAS and some new 2,3, or 4Tb Drives. Will be awesome for your streaming needs, and has low power consumption. You can make it download torrents, and manage it from a separate PC.

Problem with your PC
The box you chose is nice and shiny, and does have a nice plastic badge on it, but it is not small in real life. You say you want to have room to upgrade ... but the fact is there is no point storing movies on the PC itself. Put them on the NAS. One large PC always on acting as a fileserver is going to use 10x more electricity than a NAS doing the same job.

I'm guessing you're in the UK, because you mentioned pricing in Pounds and Euros. The £500 on the PC is money wasted.
You've got a PC with the engine of a Mini Metro, and put go faster stripes, a spoiler, alloy wheels, and a fat exhaust.

In particular
- There is no point in having a 240Gb SSD (I love SSD's and put them in all my PCs). 120Gb is ample. There is no benefit in having movies stored on the SSD.
- 8Gb RAM for couchpotato ? Waste of money. 4Gb is plenty and just get standard RAM, no need for the fancy stuff painted yellow. The yellow paint will not make your PC run faster.

£250 PC:
Consider building something based on a Celeron 847. You say you wanted an Intel NIC (Network Interface Card), and not Realtek. This is the hard part to find, because all the Celeron motherboards from Asus, Gigabyte, MSI use Realtek NICs. The Intel NUC (Next Unit Computing), does come with an Intel Gigabit LAN port. I used Amazon to get some rough prices:

Celeron NUC BOXDCCP847DYE - £140
mSata SSD - Crucial CT064M4SSD3 64GB - £80
4Gb RAM - £30.
You can get an HDMI to DVI converter if your monitor doesn't have HDMI input for a tenner.

Total £250, and you could do it cheaper. Will be awesome for your needs, and boot into Win7 within 30 seconds.

Also, you could try one of the PCs from www.ecosmartpc.com. I'm pretty sure that all their barebones PC builds use Intel LAN ports. Cost would be about £350 including an SSD.

£250 NAS
If you need 8TB or Less space:
Synology DS213j - £170
2Tb Western Digital Drive - £80. (just an example to get you started).
Or a QNAP TS-412, TS-219P - and then add drives later (or start off with drives from the Proliant).
A NAS uses less than 20W of power.

Sorry for pissing on your parade... but I just think you could spend the money less wastefully, and have an awesome solution.

[Churada]

Thanks guys, I totally take onboard the suggestions about the ssd size and using the money saved for a faster CPU.
I was mainly thinking about having a single drive initially for sickbeard and couchpotato to store stuff i want to watch soon and the rest goes off to the nas for longer term storage and future recall.
I suppose a 120GB would suffice for that too so I will definitely take that onboard.

I suspected as much about the ram joelbaby , sometimes it helps to hear someone else say it!! I'll save a few quid there too!

The N36L is currently running sickbeard etc, just about, the CPU is maxed out a lot of the time but it gets the job done I suppose. I am looking for somthing can run these without breaking a sweat while watching movies at highest possible resolution. 3D is not an interest so I guess HD4000 should be ok for the job I think?

Thanks for the suggestions about the builds, I think I might change the case as while it looks amazing,you are right, it may be too big and look out of place in the livingroom.

I do think maybe I over specced for my needs. The cpu needs upgrading I think and probably the rest downgrading.
I guess I better start reading up again!

Thanks very much for the suggestions.

[cwide]

Like joelbaby said...

If your HTPC/NAS is serving more than itself... then you are MUCH, MUCH better off separating your machines.

I believe a Celeron G1610 is the perfect CPU for a DIY NAS. I used this on my NAS and it breezes through almost everything I throw at it... including multiple concurrent HD transcoding jobs in Plex. My case is a Fractal Design Node 304. Much smaller than the Bitfenix and holds more drives.

I also think the Celeron 847 is the perfect CPU for an Openelec client. Runs any skin (get a small SSD), plays all 2D video files, and the boards are super cheap. If you have no interest in 3D then it is a great choice.