[havardbe]

I am looking to build a new Mediaserver / player and need some help. Currently I am using a Boxee Box as a player and a HP Homeserver as the server. What I am looking to do now is to swap from Boxee to XBMC and to have room for enough discs to leave my Homeserver alone.

I have been looking at Fractal Design Node 304 initially and use a SSD for the OS and 5 large drives with a raid 5 setup (using a linux distro or Windows 8 probably with XBMC). The case has to be compact and look good (wife don't like having a computer in the living room..).

Basically I only play my own 1080p and 720p content. I don't need HBO or any other online content to work. All I want is to play my own movies, but scaling for 4K, 3d movies etc. would be nice. I don't mind paying for some extra performance (but its not going to be a gaming rig). I also need HDMI audio to my surround receiver 5.1 DTS, HD Master Audio, Dolby TrueHD, Bitstream etc.. The server will be running uTorrent and be online 24x7 pretty much.

So basically what I am wondering is:
- What kind of motherboard/cpu/memory/psu would you recommend for this (I have been looking at Asrock FM2A85X), it should be powerful enough for the above feature, but also run cool so I can turn the fans slow to eliminate as much noise as possible.
- What kind of hard drives would you recommend? 3TB or 4TB, will these large disks be supported on this system?
- Suggested raid level?
- Should I get a raid controller and would that even fit on the motherboard, or is the onboard controller good enough?
- I'm using a Logitech Harmony 600 remote currently, can I use that in XBMC or should I get a different remote (used to the Boxee Box Remote which is superb for its use).

Price isn't that big a deal, but I'm guessing most of the money will go into drives in a setup like this.

Am I just thinking about this entirely the wrong way, and do you have any better recommendations to solve my needs?

Been building a lot of gaming rigs etc. for the last 15 years, but never really looked at something like this so all input is welcome

[nchall]

So you want your server to be your player? Why not a central server and Android or other low power client players?

I am looking to do something similar and already using Windows 8 Storage Spaces in lieu of RAID. Just haven't settled on the clients yet.

Logitech Harmony remote should be fine and is more extensible than a Boxee type remote.

[havardbe]

So you want your server to be your player? Why not a central server and Android or other low power client players?

I am looking to do something similar and already using Windows 8 Storage Spaces in lieu of RAID. Just haven't settled on the clients yet.

Thank you for the reply.

The reason I want my server to be the player is that I don't have cabled network in most of my apartment, so the server will have to be located in my living room anyway. I have been reading a lot about android players and Raspberry Pi etc., but people never seem to be too happy with them. At least with a HTPC with a lot of local disk I should get the performance and the possibility to customize (which I really miss on my Boxee Box even with the Boxee+ stuff). SMB/NTFS shares there are some performance issues, so my thought was to just have local storage to get around that.

Storage Spaces might be an option, but what I want is hot-swap disk possibility as my movies/series/music is now around 7TB, and I really don't want to loose it all because a disk failes

[nchall]

You can hot swap disks. Parity mirroring in Storage Spaces should give you what you're looking for in Windows 8.

http://arstechnica.com/information-techn...-it-works/

Also, check out Jynxbox HD Mini for an Android stick with good N WiFi from an external antenna. I'm thinking about buying four as clients for my Storage Spaces server. I see the point of your setup as well. Shame that Boxee betrayed their XBMC roots so completely.

[awp0]

Careful with Android boxes. Very few of them support hardware decoding in XBMC and require an MX Player hack to get high-bitrate content to play smoothly. There are other random annoyances too like the Android menu always being on top, limited support from the vendor, spotty remote control support, etc.

Raspberry Pi is another option for a cheap client. It's main problem is that it's slow and skin support is limited. But it plays content very well and seems reliable.

[BORIStheBLADE]

Have any video cards been released with 4k support yet?

[nchall]

I thought if it had the amlogic M3 it could do HW decoding?

[awp0]

Someone else can chime in about this one. I looked at a couple of the youtube reviews of this box and they were using MX Player. But it may have been prior to the Amlogic support in XBMC. Not sure. Mine was meant to be more of a general warning. There are so many of these Android boxes around and most of them don't work very well for XBMC.

[havardbe]

I think that even though there are a lot of interesting things going for Android, and some of the small USB and other device media players, I want the flexibility a OS will give me because of the disappointment with the Boxee Box. I like the possibility of trying different themes/skins etc, and I want a solution that does not take long to scan for new movies/episodes and has a slow response menu etc. There is just so many things about the Boxee that isn't working as I want it too, and I need more storage space now as well, so I will in any case have to build a new server that "scales for the future".

[nchall]

If you build a server and keep your library in mysql on that server the library scans should go rather quickly. If I understand your particular use case though, I can see why you only have a need for one client as you are only serving one TV. Still, nice to have options.

[awp0]

Back to the original post: I also moved from Boxee Box to XBMC recently. I built my XBMC box with an Intel i3-3225 and the experience is so much better than Boxee Box. The i3 can easily handle any skin, any media, any feature that XBMC can throw at it, generally without going above about 15% CPU utilization. UI tansitions, list scrolling, and everything else is perfectly smooth. The i3 is probably overkill but it's just such a silky-smooth experience and I have plenty of horsepower for other stuff that I have running on the box (for example, I also run a Debian VM inside VirtualBox, and Plex, and iTunes, etc). I believe the current Intels also run a little cooler (and less wattage) compared to AMD's, but the Intels are also more expensive. Both integrated GPU's are more than enough for XBMC.

Your Harmony should work fine provided you can have a USB IR receiver. Most people would probably configure it as a MCE remote inside the Harmony software.

Good luck. Once you get a good XBMC config up and running, you'll never look back.

[BORIStheBLADE]

I would recommend Flirc for IR receiver. You can set up the controls any way you want with any remote.

[nchall]

Or you can just get a USB HP IR receiver off eBay and program your remote as MCE:

http://shop.mobileweb.ebay.com/searchres...NewKw=true

[havardbe]

Cheers guys, will probably give my old remote a go first.

Any recommendations about drives, memory, PSU etc. as well?

Will probably go for the i3 if it runs cool and silent.

[awp0]

The i3 won't run silent without a special cooler, like a heat pipe cooler. It's just a little cooler and more power efficient compared to the modern AMD (from my research anyway). There are some pretty cool cases out there that have built-in heat pipe CPU coolers, which are totally silent but they run upwards of $150. My i3 runs with the stock fan, but I have it powered way down in BIOS. It's quiet but not "silent". If I had the computer in the living room then I'd definitely look at a fanless heatpipe setup. However if you have a large number of drives then you may need a fan regardless. Unless they are are WD Green drives then they will generate a lot of heat. The Green drives are a pretty good choice if media serving is all you're doing. The're cheap, they run cool, use very little power, but they're fairly slow (easily fast enough for media).

I'd recommend a PicoPSU which has no fans and is very efficient. I think they go up to 160 watts now, which should be fine for an i3 and a healthy number of drives. Seasonic makes larger PSU's that have quiet fans, but not totally silent.

And a small SSD drive for the OS. Known to speed up XBMC.