[Living Legend]

I posted the Lime Tech forums but would like to hear what the XBMC community thinks of this possible build.

To quickly sum up, this will be a unRAID server which should be capable (in rare instances) to provide media to 2-3 locations simultaneous. It will typically be streaming to 1-2 locations. I will use XBMC on all clients, along with Plex for remote viewing. I also plan on using a few other add ons. I'm a fan of this setup because I can start off with 3 3TB HDs and expand to quite a bit more over time.

My big concern is that this may be overkill for my purposes. What do you guys think?

Case: $99.99
Antec Nine Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case with Upgraded USB 3.0

Motherboard: $84.99
GIGABYTE GA-F2A85X-D3H FM2 AMD A85X

CPU: $89.99
AMD A8-5600K Trinity 3.6GHz (3.9GHz Turbo) Socket FM2 100W Quad-Core Desktop APU (CPU + GPU) with DirectX 11 Graphic AMD Radeon HD 7560D

RAM: $69.99
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)

PSU: $59.99 ($39.99 after $20 Rebate)
CORSAIR Builder Series CX600 600W ATX12V v2.3 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC Power Supply

TOTAL
$404.95 ($384.95 after $20 Rebate)

[cwide]

Might try sticking with one thread to get help for your build. No need to create all these different threads.

[Living Legend]

Might try sticking with one thread to get help for your build. No need to create all these different threads.

Sorry. I'll keep things neater in the future. I haven't created a thread about a specific build yet so I didn't think it was an issue to do so. If I threw it at the end of another thread figured it would probably get overlooked since the title of the thread wasn't "help with build".

[cwide]

Just get more help if people see one thread with many replies.

I don't think it's overkill. I would personally go with Intel for a server, but AMD is also fine if you aren't too concerned about power consumption.

[Dougie Fresh]

For what you describe in the other thread, an A8-5600K is definitely overkill and so is a 600W power supply.

[tantal]

This build is way overkill. Way too much power. keep in mind that folks run 12 disk servers with single core chips.

I would recommend something equivalent to the last gen intel celeron G5xx or G6xx - these are still more than you need. how many drives?

My server uses a G650 with 4 GB of slowish ram, a 550 W power supply, with 13 disks, and I have room with this PS for at least 3 more drives. I serve as many as 5 different pc's simultaneously - the only hiccup is if you try to stream the same file to multiple devices at the same time; as you might imagine.

A 600 W ps would be good for a 24 disk array, iirc.

Keep it simple and small, remember you want this to run 24/7/52.

good luck. You might check out the unraid compulsive design thread over at the unraid forum, too.

[wsume99]

I would recommend something equivalent to the last gen intel celeron G5xx or G6xx

+1

Intel SB Celerons are perfect for media servers

[Dougie Fresh]

Already recommended the G1610 in the other thread.

Since you're getting a big ATX case, this motherboard has 10 x SATAIII ports: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6813157371

[cwide]

Already recommended the G1610 in the other thread.

Since you're getting a big ATX case, this motherboard has 10 x SATAIII ports: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6813157371

Thats a 1150 mobo though Dougie...

[Living Legend]

Dougie Fresh - I'm going to start looking into the Intel stuff you've been recommending. A few people over at the unRAID forums keep mentioning AMD but I'll look at Intel. An Intel advocate over there showed me a neat comparison between an AMD Quad core vs the Intel Dual core and Intel Dual core was more powerful. Pretty clear we're not comparing apples to apples when it's AMD vs Intel.

wsume99 - I'm gonna look into the celerons and put together another config.

tantal - I don't' see the G650 for sale anywhere, but the G550 and as Dougie Fresh recommended, the G1610 are easily found. Also, I keep reading that it's optimal to run the PSU at 50-70% capacity. Do you disagree with this?

---

Already recommended the G1610 in the other thread.

Since you're getting a big ATX case, this motherboard has 10 x SATAIII ports: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6813157371

Thats a 1150 mobo though Dougie...

Yeah, the 1155 for the Celeron G1610 wouldn't fit that board, right?

And for these purposes, does Sata 3Gb/s vs SATA 6Gb/s matter?

[Living Legend]

I have other people telling me that this PSU may be UNDER powered. With 46A at the 12V rail, if the motherboard is taking up 5A we're left with 41. If each HDD takes up let's say 3 (depends on 5400 vs 7200 RPM), we'll be running at max capacity with 13, and to the best of my knowledge, isn't 50-70% capacity ideal?

[Living Legend]

So after taking some suggestions from fellow posters I've made some modifications to the build. Besides my uncertainty on the motherboard, I'm starting to think this will very reasonably fit my needs. Thoughts?

Case: $99.99
Antec Nine Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case with Upgraded USB 3.0

PSU $69.99 (49.99 after $20 Rebate)
CORSAIR CX750M 750W ATX12V v2.3 SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply New 4th Gen CPU Certified Haswell Ready

Motherboard: $62.99
ASRock B75M R2.0 LGA 1155 Intel B75 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard with UEFI BIOS

CPU: $67.99
Intel Pentium G2020 Ivy Bridge 2.9GHz LGA 1155 55W Dual-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics BX80637G2020

RAM: $69.99
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)

$350.95 ($330.95 After $20 Rebate)

[Dougie Fresh]

I run 7 HDDs and an SSD with a 300W PSU. When measured with a Kill-a-Watt, start up max'd out at 150W and settled down to 50W. I am using an ASUS E35M1-I motherboard with PCI-e SATAIII card and 4GB running WHS2011 and FlexRAID.

FSP 80 PLUS Certified 300-Watt Micro ATX/SFX Power Supply FSP300-60GHS-R

[Living Legend]

I run 7 HDDs and an SSD with a 300W PSU. When measured with a Kill-a-Watt, start up max'd out at 150W and settled down to 50W. I am using an ASUS E35M1-I motherboard with PCI-e SATAIII card and 4GB running WHS2011 and FlexRAID.

FSP 80 PLUS Certified 300-Watt Micro ATX/SFX Power Supply FSP300-60GHS-R

That has 2 12v Rails which according to the people over at Lime-Tech is the ultimate no-no for setting up the PSU in the unRAID server. Apparently there's a lot of risk when trying to balance loads over mutliple rails instead of being able to plug all of the drives into the same single 12V rail.

I'm certainly not a pro, just going through the process and trying to do some research.
http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/PSU

[wsume99]

I'm on the limetech forums also and I know exactly what you are referring to. The key point in Dougie's setup is that he has 7 HDDs. When I first built my server I followed the limetech advice and got a 650w single rail PSU ... which was way overkill for my 3 disk array. Since then I've added two more drives and it's still way overkill. I have since replaced it with a 300w Seasonic PSU that has two 12v rails. IMO if you buy a quality PSU and you're not going overboard with your number of disks (like say less than 8 - maybe 10) then a dual rail PSU is more than adequate. So the suggestion to get a single rail PSU is a valid one and is essentially foolproof however it's not correct to say that you should not get a dual rail PSU - they can be just fine but that depends on your setup so you have to actually do some thinking to make sure you're ok.

So to sum things up ...
Single rail = what you tell someone who has no clue about building a PC to use so you NEVER have to worry about them saying you told them to buy something that didn't work
Dual rail = can be recommended but requires some thinking before determining if it's ok

So after all that why not just go with a single rail? Because if you're looking for the most efficient PSU possible then you'll probably end up getting one in the 200-300w range (unless you have a ton of disks) and it is hard to find a single rail PSU in that wattage range. Remember once you go below 20% capacity on your PSU the efficiency drops off really fast. So for your PSU 20% load is 150w. Now if you go with the intel chip then your server will be drawing less than 50w pretty much all the time except during bootup and parity checks.