[Jason.Bourne]

I don't know whether it was timing or just dumb luck, but recently a power spike toasted the motherboard on my hp envy system I was using as a dedicated media pc, and unfortunately fortunately, I found myself in a forced position to finally build a dedicated htpc. I ordered the parts at various times over the past couple of weeks and two weeks ago I finally have a dedicated htpc built. I'd appreciate any feedback. I've listed the parts for the build below.

I have an extensive nedia collection. Exactly 3160 movies (65% 1080p dts 5.1-7.1 bluray rips, 25% mixture of various 720p encodings, and the remaining as dvd-rips) and 294 tv shows spanning several (11) various external hard drives. I intend on slowly replacing them with internal drives and using the externals as backup as funding becomes available. This system serves the purpose as PLEX media server for remote streaming, dedicated ftp server, and last but certainly not least local kodi server.

Total External Storage Capacity: 35TB
Total Used : 28 TB

The parts list.

1 x Seagate 6TB Desktop HDD 6Gb/s 128MB (First of many drives to be used to replace the external drives I mentioned)
4 x Scythe Slip Stream Slim 120mm Case Fan (Bought to replace the fans that came with the case)
2 x ARCTIC F8 PWM Rev. 2 Fluid Dynamic Bearing Case Fan, 80mm PWM Speed Control
5 x OKGear 18 inch Blue Premium SATA III Round Cable 6GB/s Straight to Right Angle w/latch (longer reach to allow for more choices in cable management)
1 x ASUS Computer International Direct Blu-Ray Writer BW-16D1HT
1 x EVGA Supernova 850 B2 Power Supply 80PLUS Bronze Certified 850W ATX Power Supply
1 x Noctua NH-L12 Low-profile Quiet CPU Cooler (CPU Temp Idles 43-45 C And has not passed 60C yet)
1 x VisionTek Products AMD Radeon 7750 SFF 1GB X16 PCIE Express Low Profile Graphics Card 900549 (I don't intend to do any gaming so this will work just fine)
1 x Corsair Force Series GS Red 240GB ( OS Drive )
1 x Corsair Force Series GS Red 128GB ( Old OS Drive from previous rig...will be using it as a User Data Cache Drive - Solely for Kodi & Plex User Data Folders using Symlinks)
1 x MSI Computer ATX DDR4 LGA 2011-3 Motherboard X99S SLI KRAIT EDITION
1 x Intel Core i7-5820K Haswell-E 6-Core 3.3GHz LGA 2011-v3 140W Desktop Processor (I know I know yes the issue of the PCI express lanes, but As I explained I won't be gaming)
1 x Silverstone Tek GD07B Aluminum Extended ATX / SSI-EEB / SSI-CEB HTPC Computer Case with Lockable Front Door (Ahh yes I fell in love the first time I saw it three years ago)
1 x Crucial Ballistix Sport 16GB Kit (4GBx4) DDR4 2400 MT/s (PC4-19200) CL16 SR x8 Unbuffered DIMM 288-Pin Memory
1 x WD Black 1TB Performance Desktop Hard Drive: 3.5-inch, SATA 6 Gb/s, 7200 RPM, 64MB Cache (Gonna use for downloads, and other files)
1 x WD Black 2TB Performance Desktop Hard Drive: 3.5-inch, SATA 6 Gb/s, 7200 RPM, 64MB Cache (Strictly for my music library which stands at a whopping 91,100 files and counting)

Total Build Price is just shy of $1900

All the parts together (Worth mentioning there's a Corsair Water Cooler in The Shot Below...I was originally going to use this but I could not get it to fit so returned and opted for the Noctua NH-L12)



Two shots of the final build.





The HTPC sitting next to my other rig. I originally planned to put it on the set with my tv but....it would not fit no matter what I tried.



This is where all the magic happens

[skylarking]

Your $1900 of hardware costs pails in comparison to the $15,800 that your BD/DVD disks must have cost (assuming $5 per DB/DVD which is a rather conservative estimate)

And considering just your movies, assuming a 90 minute average, thats 4740 hours of viewing pleasure or just over 1/2 year of 24x7 viewing.
Put another way, that's watching two films each and every day for more than 4 years which doesn't leave much time for socializing away from the screen

Guess it will come in handy when zombies finally take over the world or your the last survivor after a virus or some cancer cure wipes out most of the human race since there wont be much else to do

[zag]

Nice!

Love a large storage server!

[Dark_Slayer]

Take a look at Emby as a plex alternative. It's Kodi integration is much better, and remote streaming/transcoding is good

[Jason.Bourne]

Take a look at Emby as a plex alternative. It's Kodi integration is much better, and remote streaming/transcoding is good

I actually trialled emby for a bit but ultimately decided to go back to plex, partly because there's many more devices out there with native plex apps than there are for emby.

[Jason.Bourne]

Your $1900 of hardware costs pails in comparison to the $15,800 that your BD/DVD disks must have cost (assuming $5 per DB/DVD which is a rather conservative estimate)

And considering just your movies, assuming a 90 minute average, thats 4740 hours of viewing pleasure or just over 1/2 year of 24x7 viewing.
Put another way, that's watching two films each and every day for more than 4 years which doesn't leave much time for socializing away from the screen

Guess it will come in handy when zombies finally take over the world or your the last survivor after a virus or some cancer cure wipes out most of the human race since there wont be much else to do

Hahahahahahaha...actually you hit the nail on the head...that is the plan to survive a zombie apocalypse and not go stir crazy from boredom lol...jk, but you are right the collection did cost a whopping amount...your $15800 estimate is very very very conservative indeed. Which is why i have started investing in a reliable backup strategy.

[skylarking]

Your $1900 of hardware costs pails in comparison to the $15,800 that your BD/DVD disks must have cost (assuming $5 per DB/DVD which is a rather conservative estimate)

And considering just your movies, assuming a 90 minute average, thats 4740 hours of viewing pleasure or just over 1/2 year of 24x7 viewing.
Put another way, that's watching two films each and every day for more than 4 years which doesn't leave much time for socializing away from the screen

Guess it will come in handy when zombies finally take over the world or your the last survivor after a virus or some cancer cure wipes out most of the human race since there wont be much else to do

Hahahahahahaha...actually you hit the nail on the head...that is the plan to survive a zombie apocalypse and not go stir crazy from boredom lol...jk, but you are right the collection did cost a whopping amount...your $15800 estimate is very very very conservative indeed. Which is why i have started investing in a reliable backup strategy.

Yes my post was meant in jest but i wasn't sure the joke was received that way when i made it so long ago
Glad you found it ammusing

Like you, my BD collection keeps growing, and i don't even want to think how much i've spent.
My issue now is that the time taken to re-rip my collection means that the disks themselves can no longer be considered a backup. So i need some better backup solution since re-ripping will take so so long

What is your ripping and backup strategy?
Do you re-encode your rips to H.265 and use tape as your backup medium?

[Dark_Slayer]

Take a look at Emby as a plex alternative. It's Kodi integration is much better, and remote streaming/transcoding is good

I actually trialled emby for a bit but ultimately decided to go back to plex, partly because there's many more devices out there with native plex apps than there are for emby.

Yeah Plex has a lot of native apps, but for me those all pale in comparison to using Kodi. Emby nailed the kodi integration part such that you have a native library even outside the LAN. There's a plex thread now where they are driving the changes back into a Plex add-on, so something good is in the works. Plex is still behind IMO regarding disc art, trailers, actors, quick sync transcoding. Trailers and actors are available through Plex pass I think, not sure how that filters down to clients. QS may arrive around the same time for both, but Emby is already doing something with it and have it enabled in their beta