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James

Buying or building a PC

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Actually, it was a kind of funny coincidence for me that the Tested article was written when it was, considering the fact that I had built my own home server PC a couple weeks before.

The main distinction that I kind of see between the HTPC vs file server is performance, considering the fact that a home server doesn't really necessitate anything powerful, while a DVR/HTPC requires a decent video card for 1080p output and a solid processor for transcoding. And then when you start to delve into those things, power consumption ramps up as does cost, which is kind of unappealing in a minimalist home server box.

I currently used my home server machine for very little, as it's gaining prominence as I put more stuff on it. But to get into it, the best purpose it's serving for me right now is backup, which is great for me as I've got six computers, I live in power outage-prone Florida, and I have very few UPS units lying around.

Besides that, it's holding about 100gb of ripped TV and movies that I had sitting on my shelf gathering dust. I'm currently working on ripping my music at a consistent quality and file format (AAC, 196 kbps) and ripping the rest of my video collection (mostly The Wire, which is kinda cumbersome). After that, I'll finally work on compiling all of the photos I have on several different cameras and spread among multiple "My Photos" folders on several computers.

Edited by JonCole

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The main distinction that I kind of see between the HTCP vs file server is performance, considering the fact that a home server doesn't really necessitate anything powerful, while a DVR/HTCP requires a decent video card for 1080p output and a solid processor for transcoding. And then when you start to delve into those things, power consumption ramps up as does cost, which is kind of unappealing in a minimalist home server box.

That really shouldn't be the case. According to various reviews from tech sites a Atom 330 with nVidia ION chipset should be good enough for HD output, not sure if also include proper 1080p. A prebuild system using that config is the Asrock 330ION which is only 300 euros or something.

Anyway, I recently bought the Asrock motherboard used in their prebuild system and build the system yesterday, but I still have to install the OS (going for GNU/Linux, Ubuntu 10.4 to be exact) and test if it works.

If this configuration isn't good enough to handle the video I will simply use XBMC and watch it through my PS3.

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I've been keeping my eye on this thread at SA forums for a while, it's a frequently updated parts guide and I'll be at least using it as a place to start when I finally get around to building a new rig. So yeah I'd recommend anyone check it out.

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That really shouldn't be the case. According to various reviews from tech sites a Atom 330 with nVidia ION chipset should be good enough for HD output, not sure if also include proper 1080p. A prebuild system using that config is the Asrock 330ION which is only 300 euros or something.

Anyway, I recently bought the Asrock motherboard used in their prebuild system and build the system yesterday, but I still have to install the OS (going for GNU/Linux, Ubuntu 10.4 to be exact) and test if it works.

If this configuration isn't good enough to handle the video I will simply use XBMC and watch it through my PS3.

I dunno, I feel there's a pretty distinct difference between "good enough" and "something you want to actually own". In my personal experience, ION isn't all that it's cracked up to be (or in other words, it's basically just getting the job done on netbooks with barely any room to spare).

I'll concede to you that if you want just an HTPC, Atom/ION should be good enough. But if you want that box to double as anything else, like a file server or you want it to serve up streaming content to remote devices, you can easily bump up performance at little cost and save yourself some trouble in the future.

Edited by JonCole

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Yeah, one of the reasons the prospect is appealing is that it would presumably be a good way for me to back things up sensibly rather than copying files haphazardly onto an external hard disk with copious duplication. I guess I could just use some proper software for that instead, though. I've only got one computer with anything vital on it (my netbook is pretty much just for fiddling about in Linux, which I don't do a great deal of). I'll be moving into a flat with a friend soon, so I guess there would be the potential for a certain degree of shared usage there, but I'm not really sure if he's at all bothered by any of that stuff. He is much more into ripping DVDs than I am, though, so perhaps he'd like having them available on all devices rather than just his PS3. Or maybe as long as it's all accessible from the main TV it doesn't really matter. Dammit, I'm no closer to any conclusions.

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What kind of expectations do you even have for your file server?

That barely needs any CPU time... just disk space. And the tests I saw places the 330ION on barely 33% CPU time during playback of some stuff.

Anyway,... I bought it... and build it... and almost configured it. No way back now.

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What kind of expectations do you even have for your file server?

That barely needs any CPU time... just disk space. And the tests I saw places the 330ION on barely 33% CPU time during playback of some stuff.

No, if you want to have a proper file server you'll be running RAID, ZFS, etc. and unless you get a proper hardware controller (which would be kind of stupid) the CPU will limit the throughput. That said, my file server is running ZFS on an Atom 330, and I'm quite happy with it. I highly recommend going the FreeNAS route.

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Not sure if anyone has pointed this out or not, but presumably that extra motherboard stand-off was causing a short circuit. What an incredibly long winded way to discover that, though!

I take it that it's all working fine now, then?

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Hopefully. If the computer is still running when I get in tomorrow I'll consider the experiment a success.

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Beyond the stuff that Toblix said, if you ever plan on serving up streaming content to multiple devices a la PS3 Media Server, AirVideo, or Orb, it might be a good idea to have a CPU capable to quickly transcoding video files on the fly. It's not like there's a universal video format that runs optimally on all systems, the closest thing to that is H.264 and that doesn't even take into account aspect ratio. Additionally, if you plan on streaming DTS audio as well, a barebones CPU isn't going to do you any favors.

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meh.. I'll see what happens. It'll either be directly from my HTPC to my AVR or through my PS3 to my AVR. So far I'm been using PS3 Media Server on my Dell XPS420 and it worked quite well, except for certain 1080p scenes, but that was probably due to the 100mbit/s network as it didn't need transcoding as far as I know.

Why would DTS be a problem? My AVR eats most of those audio formats, doesn't the PS3 simply pass through the audio stream through HDMI to my AVR?

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Does anyone know how to make my Gigabyte motherboard stop beeping at me?! It's this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128397

It's so obnoxious. I guess I could read the manual for it and look at the junk on the CD, but I only familiarized myself with the apps that came with it, and yet it still beeps. I can't seem to figure out why it is doing this. If I check the alarms for the motherboard, neither the CPU chip is overheating or the fans stopped blowing.

It really only seems to happen if I have too much shit running at one time, like bittorent, Soulseek, Firefox, and one or two Adobe programs. Virus scanning always makes the motherboard beep constantly, no matter what's running, until it finishes. If I export a movie in Premiere or After Effects, it will beep until it is done. Is this a memory problem? I do only have 4GB of RAM on a computer that probably needs 8GB. I just keep putting off buying more.

This is sort of related to the thread because I bought the Frankenstein PC parts, but my dad put it all together since I don't really know what I'm doing... I think. I could probably figure it out if I tried.

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Does anyone know how to make my Gigabyte motherboard stop beeping at me?! It's this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128397

It's so obnoxious. I guess I could read the manual for it and look at the junk on the CD, but I only familiarized myself with the apps that came with it, and yet it still beeps. I can't seem to figure out why it is doing this. If I check the alarms for the motherboard, neither the CPU chip is overheating or the fans stopped blowing.

It really only seems to happen if I have too much shit running at one time, like bittorent, Soulseek, Firefox, and one or two Adobe programs. Virus scanning always makes the motherboard beep constantly, no matter what's running, until it finishes. If I export a movie in Premiere or After Effects, it will beep until it is done. Is this a memory problem? I do only have 4GB of RAM on a computer that probably needs 8GB. I just keep putting off buying more.

This is sort of related to the thread because I bought the Frankenstein PC parts, but my dad put it all together since I don't really know what I'm doing... I think. I could probably figure it out if I tried.

Possibly it's a temperature warning, with a lot of load you might be cooking the CPU a little. Do you have any system monitoring software installed?

When my pc starts smelling hot I open the side panel and let some of the smoke out, it seems a little happier after that. :yep:

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Possibly it's a temperature warning, with a lot of load you might be cooking the CPU a little. Do you have any system monitoring software installed?

When my pc starts smelling hot I open the side panel and let some of the smoke out, it seems a little happier after that. :yep:

Yeah, that's the strange thing, the CPU chip monitor that was installed as part of the motherboard has it set at 50°C and then an alarm will go off, but it never goes past that point. There's a little bar that turns red on the monitor if it does. When I check while it's doing a bunch of junk, the little bar is always in the blue (which is good).

I've tried leaving the panel open, but it doesn't seem to make a difference. I can close every program possible besides the Adobe Movie Encoder one, and it still always beeps every time. Usually I just leave the room and let it do it's thing, but it seems odd to me I can't encode or export a movie without the motherboard freaking out, when I was able to do everything just fine with the same programs on the machine I had that was built in 2005.

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Synth, have you checked your BIOS settings for the temperature thing? There may be some stupidly low temp alarm setting for the CPU or something. Gigabyte boards can be a bit frustrating.

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Ah, no, I haven't Armchair. Great idea, though, I'll check that tonight. It would make sense the BIOS settings override the Gigabyte application. I don't know why I didn't mess with that earlier.

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Question regarding computer cases.

I have had for the past 5 years a Nexus Breeze case and have been pretty happy with it, but I have noticed the need for a new case. Something that has more room inside to work with when doing upgrades etc. and preferably more places for extra fans.

Do you guys have any recommendations about good new cases that stay cool and help keeping the computer running silently?

I have no idea about the current market situation for cases.

There is really no need to change the PSU as that is good enough for now, the only bad thing about is the cables are not detachable like I would've wanted originally.

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Alright I'll check there.

I've been doing some initial check ups on sites like Tom's Hardware.

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I can wholeheartedly recommend the Silverstone Fortress II. I built my current computer in it, and unless I find something even more awesome, I'll keep using it. It looks really good, not full of cheap plastic shit like most cases seem to be these days, it's easy to work with and really well ventilated with plenty of fans, all of which have filters on them. The rotated layout is pretty weird, but I'm very happy with it.

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I'd agree with Toblix about Silverstone cases. I went with the Temjin TJ07 when I built my current PC a few years back and I doubt I'll change the case for a long time. There's a ridiculous amount of space to work with and tons of ventilation. The cases are made to a high quality and don't have any nasty plastic bits.

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I usually stick with Rosewill cases, personally. They tend to be pretty well made, the company has great support, and they don't charge you out the ass for their products.

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I wholeheartedly recommend Lian Li cases. They have fantastic build quality. Some of them are completely featureless black brushed aluminum box that has that "space odyssey" beauty to it. Most of their models are also upside down - unlike most cases, the power supply is at the bottom and the GPU goes at the top. Some argue that it's better for airflow and overall heat distribution but I don't think it matters either way.

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I've been keeping my eye on this thread at SA forums for a while, it's a frequently updated parts guide and I'll be at least using it as a place to start when I finally get around to building a new rig. So yeah I'd recommend anyone check it out.

This is a very nice thread, thanks for the information!

As for cases, NZXT has some really beautiful (and somewhat expensive) cases. I'm not a fan of 23090239 LEDs with clear panels, so I am personally going with the sexy Antec P183 for my next case: http://www.antec.com/Believe_it/product.php?id=MTgwOA==

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