Yeah, 4-core and 8GB is a bit overkill for a HTPC, but since I plan to also use it as an intranet/data/SMB server and possibly for some lower-end games, the extra oomph might come in handy. Besides, the price difference between dual and quad cores isn't really that big, and has room for me to scale up its usage as things progress.

HDD prices are higher to be sure. But when you get those DIY packages at newegg, you get a discount which helps offset that. This is also why I won't get the 2x2TB drives for a while until the prices drop back down.

Good point. Big thing for me right now is energy consumption. My Quad Core system pulls around 120 watts just piddling around on the internet, my laptop does the same thing at 10-12 watts. It runs $30-$40 per month just to leave my gaming system idling, if I could bring that down to $3-$4 that's a pretty significant savings in my book.

What do you think about this kit:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboB...t=Combo.752616

Should do HTPC, data, etc. for a handsome price point. Slap in some WD Caviar Green drives (unless you really need the speed of a 7200 RPM drive) and you're good to go. Home server for under $300 before OS isn't bad.

That looks like a decent kit. Actually, if I wasn't looking for something with a bit more power, that would do nicely.

As far as power-consumption goes, I'm not too worried. We still have a CRT (gasp!) in the living room, so replacing that with a ~32" LED TV and the HTPC I'm looking at will have about the same net power usage. Actually, even better since we now use the Wii for netflix.

Check out some of the Barebones kits on TigerDirect. They've usually got some deals, granted there's a lot of mail in rebates, but if you shop around a bit you can score a nice computer for cheap. If you're on a budget and want a quad core the AMD X3s usually unlock to an X4 with a compatible motherboard.

I've looked into TgerDirect before, but there's always other things I want to get at the same time which they don't carry, so I just end up going to Newegg who always have what I'm looking for at the same or better prices.

As far as O/C'ing or unlocking goes, I usually stay away from that for the most part for my main boxes. I value stability over anything, and I'd rather not take any chances that an O/C or other mod would compromise that.

No, HD prices are still up. I just had to order about 10 HD's of each type as spares for work. Prices were still sky high.

I thought I'd post an update on this.

First of all, I decided to make this more of an home theater media center that will sit next to the living room screen. But, I also want to have IIS running on it and transcode all the video for the web (home intranet, not public internet).

So, after shopping around for a good setup and came up with the following:

• Case. There are some decent HTPC cases around, but I feel they tend to be too cramped. So, I picked up a regular black Lian-Li case. I did some minor mods to it already:
  
  
  • Removed all fan grilles to make it quieter (less air turbulence) and more free-flowing.
    
    
  • Cut a hole out of the motherboard tray to allow me to add/change the heatsink without having to remove the motherboard.
    
    
  • Re-routed the front-panel USB/audio cables under the drive carriage. In stock form, those wires were bent rather harshely.
    
    
  • I'm not sure if I will have it standing up or lying down (like a normal stereo component), so I added some rubber feet to one side so I can go either way.
    
  
  Picture 1 and picture 2 of the case showing the mods. Nothing special.
  
  
• Motherboard. I opted for the P67 chipset, specifically the ASRock P67 EXTREME4 GEN3 mobo. I have an ASRock in my main rig and it works swimmingly. I am still a bit up in the air about the Z68 chipset. The only advantage to the Z68 is SSD caching (which I won't be using) and the ability to use Lucid Virtu (which would help video transcoding). But after reading about Virtu, it seems like it's still too new and needs to go through a revision or two to be truly ready for primetime. The P67 chipset is mature, so I expect fewer issues.
  
  
• Processor. I don't need a lot of power when it's being used to watch a video or playing basic games, but since I do plan to do some video transcoding over the "web", I wanted something with some oomph. My main rig has an i5-2500k not overclocked and when I did some test video conversions, CPU usage was pretty high. So, I'm going to go with an i7-2600k since it has Hyperthreading. The extra 4 logical cores should help, and I may overclock it a little, depending on how much the CPU is being worked during transcoding.
  
  
• Cooling. The case has a 120mm fan in the front and the rear. Like I said, I removed the fan grills for smoother airflow and less noise. For the CPU, I'll be using a COOLER MASTER GeminII S524 setup. I like this unit because it will help cool the CPU, RAM, and any other nearby components.
  
  
• Memory. 16GB (4x4GB) of G.Skill DDR3 PC12800 RAM. Should be enough. :smile:
  
  
• Video. Since we might play some games on this rig, I'm planning on a nVidia GTX560 video card. Not top-end, but should play any games I have at decent speed.
  
  
• Power supply. After reading some reviews (especially at hardwaresecrets), I opted for a mere 650w supply, the OCZ ZS Series. I don't plan to use SLI, so it should be plenty (uses a single 12v rail rated for 46A).
  
  
• TV Tuner card. I decided on a Hauppauge Win TVR-2250. It has dual tuners and hardware mpeg encoding to reduce CPU usage when recording shows.
  
  
• Storage. The main drive is a 1TB SATA drive. I'll allocate ~500GB for recorded TV programs. I was going to spring for an SSD, but I really don't need super fast loading of programs or fast booting.
  
  For the media storage (DVD iso's and MP3s), I'm thinking a 3TB SATA drive which should be good for ~700 DVD5 iso's. I was going to do a 3TB RAID1 setup, but after thinking about it, I really don't need/want a real-time backup. Besides, if something electrical goes wrong, both drives could be wrecked. So, I opted for an external 3TB drive for emergency backup. I'll come up with an automated script to make sure the external and internal drives are synced.
  
  
• DVD drive. We don't have/rent very many Blue-Ray discs, but just in case, I opted to get a BR drive. A bit more expensive, but it'll be there just in case.
  
  
• OS. Going to use the OEM verison of Windows7 Professional 64-bit. It has IIS 6 built-in, so all I need to get the web service up and running is to download and configure MySQL for the database.
  

I already got the case, power supply, TV tuner card, and external 3TB drive, but am waiting for tax returns to get everything else. Plus, I notice prices on my Newegg wish list tend to drop by a few dollars daily, so hopefully prices will keep falling before I make the final purchase.

With that motherboard, you might as well overclock, as much as you can without gaining any temperature increases.

AS for the power, I'd go with something SeaSonic rebranded, mainly because I just love them so dearly.
I've heard a few OCZ flame-ups, but nothing huge.
Might be better suited with a ~550-600 Antec/Corsair/Seasonic/PC&C.. etc.

My opinions entirely.
Your HTPC is going to be a faster build than my main gaming rid... sad. :no:

You should look into Robocopy, or RSync for the mirroring purposes.

For Rsync the command would be:
This would perfectly create a mirror of the drive onto the destination. It will also intelligently update the destination drive so you aren't copying files that are already there. I used this to mirror my photo library, iTunes, and Movies folders.

If you run a scheduled task, it could probably run the batch file containing RSync.

For Robocopy you would use this command:
/zb : copies all files in restartable backup mode.
/mir : mirrors source to destination, removes files that don't exist in source and updates altered files.

Well, I did quite a bit of reading before I got the PS and the model I got tested very favorably and maintained good efficiency. Some others didn't do so well (when pushed, they would shut down or whatever).

And don't feel bad, the HTPC if going to be faster than my main rig as well. But since it will be used for so many things, I felt the power is necessary. About the overclocking: I may or may not. At least I got the hardware so I can if I want. If I do, it won't be extreme - maybe something like a 5% O/C just for a little extra power.


Thanks, I'll keep those in mind. I've heard of Robocopy before but not Rsync. In the past, I just build my own batch files and schedule them as tasks. But it would be nice to have a more intelligent syncing function so I'm not copying things that haven't changed needlessly. My external drive uses USB3, but even so, transferring multi-GB takes a while.

I've already ripped around 70 DVDs, but man, this takes a while! I use DVDFab which is the easiest method I've found that rips only the main movies while being able to bypass all the encryption methods - event the newer ones. I used to use DVDDecryptor and DVDShrink, but they are getting long in the tooth and there are more and more DVDs they can't handle.

Not in all cases!
In gaming, the i5-2500k is the clear winner over the 2700k.
But encoding, maybe not. :whistle:

Yeah, that's why my gaming rig uses the i5-2500k. Most games don't even use all 4 cores fully, so anything more is overkill. I was reading about someone who got one of the extreme 6 core (12 with HT) i7's to play Minecraft! My son plays that game on a Core 2 quad CPU and it barely hits the CPU. Talk about a waste of over $1000 for a CPU!

But, in video encoding, even those logical hyperthreading "cores" make a substantial difference, hence the choice.

:lol: Linc? Mr. Lincpimp? Bueller? Bueller?:whistle:


:intello:

It's ok, you can go to bed now and let the grownups talk. :na:

Been quietly watching this thread as I have been contemplating a home media server myself. Been thinking of getting off cable for a while since almost everything I watch is via DVR and 99% of it available through the web. Also want to put my movie collection on hard drives so it's easier to pull up.

I think between Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, and all the free crap on the web plus what I have in hand I am well covered in the media arena.

My only concern is that I put the time in effort getting it all setup then some genius comes out with an all in one package that does it better and cheaper. Not that I am seeing it on the near horizon though, just that nagging thought.

I assume you are still going with Windows Media Center Brian? Also which internet TV plugin are you using? I was looking at SecondRun.tv which looked very nice for although it costs 4 bucks and many are free.