[bman9915]

I have been using WMC for a long time but am making the jump to XBMC. My pervious HTPCs have been prebuilt PCs, So this is my first build. I am a little stuck on the processor. I am leaning toward AMD due to cost savings and better onboard graphics (hopefully saving from having to get a discreet graphics card). I know the A6-6400 is recommended a lot but I want to make sure I don't have an underpowered machine. Here is what I would be asking it to do.

Run XBMC
Webpage video streaming (HULU, CBS.com, MTV.com, etc)
File / Back up server
Surveillance Server & DVR - (recommendations on software welcome)
Other small services (teamviewer, gyration remote, etc)
Always on / Low power

Once I decide on processor. other parts to follow

Thanks for the help and glad to join the community.

[calev]

Do you want it to wash your car and give sound relationship advise to?

[bman9915]

HAHA the car washing sounds nice.

I know its a lot to ask. Some of these are not going to be happening at the same time but Id rater have one multi function box then several boxes. I should clarify the file backup server. I m not looking for a" server function" in its typical sense. Just basic Win 7 & Win at access to files for the other computers and Xbox's. And a destination for the other computers (2 to back up too)

[calev]

I would probably throw out the low power option since your probably going to need a few hard drives. Having a surveillance system running all the time might make feel like it gets in the way of xbmc. But any high end desktop cpu should do fine. An I7 without a dedicated gpu would do everything you need it to. Im an intel fan, but an A8 should be enough. A lot of people run dvr, file servers, and xbmc on one box.

[awp0]

Regarding the surveillance system, I'm a big fan of Zoneminder. It takes a bit of configuration and some Linux know-how, but it's quite powerful and full featured. I run mine in a Debian VM on my Windows7 machine and it runs perfectly in the background. My i3-3225 processor rarely rises above 20% with XBMC, Virtualbox, Mediabrowser3, and a host of other services. It basically only goes above 20% when MB3 is transcoding a video.

Surveillance is something that could take significant computing power depending on your requirements. Mine is a single camera running 5 frames/second in lower resolution (640x480). If you get more cameras, faster framerates, and higher resolution and you're performing motion analysis on each frame then you could be looking at a lot of computing power.

For DVR, if you're running Windows 7 then you should start with pvr.wmc (Windows Media Center integration). I've tried most of the Windows PVR solutions and IMO this one is far and away the best.

[bman9915]

Calev
Cams will be set to only record when motion is detected. But that means they will be monitored 24/7 I was going to have multiple drives probably at least 3. 1 SS for the OS and apps. 1 internal for the media and files. 1 external (hopefully hidden / protected) for the Cam files

awp0
Zoneminder looks interesting thanks for the recommendation. I will probably have 3-4 cams.