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New system setup


crashkelly

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crashkelly

Hi all,

 

So I think I am going to be in the market for a new system. Ultimately I want to go full on dual-processor server with at least 24 bays for media drives and all, for way more than just media browser, but the cost point for that server puts it out of reach at this moment so I am thinking of a new desktop box that will initially serve as only an mb3 server with 2 MediaSonic 8 bay towers attached to it for the media (already have those).

 

Since it will be sitting in the basement on my server rack and serving out media only over GB LAN I am thinking the focus should be on a good processor and lots of RAM. My question is what processor and how much RAM.

 

Media access is through an HTPC (direct), Samsung BD player (direct), Samsung TV with app (direct), 2 tablets (direct and transcoding), 4 smart phones (transcoding), and a partridge in a pear tree :)

 

My real intention is in about a year I would buy a real server, retire my current desktop, and move this new machine up to replace my old desktop so I would be putting a good video card and whatnot in it then and would only want to buy what is necessary for use as a media server right now.

 

Thoughts would be appreciated

 

Thanks

CrashKelly

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Xzener

I have an older, dedicated server. 2 Intel Xeon 3ghz, 16gig RAM, and many TB of HDD space. It uses only onboard video, don't use this PC as a client, I only remotely log in to it when I need to configure MBS. I also feed a house full of clients, as well as watch recorded TV at work. I am happy with the performance. I've had upwards of 5 devices connected at once. As long as your setup is similar to mine, I don't think you will have a problem.

 

Good luck.

Edited by Xzener
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shaefurr

If you plan on upgrading again soon anyway I would probably just go with an i5. They don't cost much more than i3's and they're quad core. Plus you can overclock the heck out of the K series processors if you want to do that at some point. While i7s are great i've never been able to justify the price difference since i5's handle everything so well. I don't buy AMD so have no opinions there.

 

I have 4 direct stream PCs and 2 tablets and 2 phones that mostly use transcoding and I haven't ran into any problems, my system can get pretty slow and be around 100% CPU usage when everything is going at once, but everything plays fine. I have 12GB of RAM in my system, but its so cheap nowadays anyway any future build will probably just have 16+ for me. I can't see building any current system nowadays and not getting at least 8GB.

 

I should add I'm using an older i5-750, stock @ 2.66 GHz.

Edited by shaefurr
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crashkelly

I have an older, dedicated server. 2 Intel Xeon 3ghz, 16gig RAM, and many TB of HDD space. It uses only onboard video, don't use this PC as a client, I only remotely log in to it when I need to configure MBS. I also feed a house full of clients, as well as watch recorded TV at work. I am happy with the performance. I've had upwards of 5 devices connected at once. As long as your setup is similar to mine, I don't think you will have a problem.

 

Good luck.

Ultimately I am going for the dual xeon processors, buckets of RAM and tons of storage for my server as I want it to serve the household and be the brains of the house. Just moved into a brand new build 6 months ago, lots of dreams but have to wait for the bank accounts to recover from the buy first.

 

 

If you plan on upgrading again soon anyway I would probably just go with an i5. They don't cost much more than i3's and they're quad core. Plus you can overclock the heck out of the K series processors if you want to do that at some point. While i7s are great i've never been able to justify the price difference since i5's handle everything so well. I don't buy AMD so have no opinions there.

 

I have 4 direct stream PCs and 2 tablets and 2 phones that mostly use transcoding and I haven't ran into any problems, my system can get pretty slow and be around 100% CPU usage when everything is going at once, but everything plays fine. I have 12GB of RAM in my system, but its so cheap nowadays anyway any future build will probably just have 16+ for me. I can't see building any current system nowadays and not getting at least 8GB.

 

I should add I'm using an older i5-750, stock @ 2.66 GHz.

That is interesting as the system I am using for MB3 now has a i5-3750K @ 3.4GHz with 16GB. My issue with it is not so much around performance as it seems to handle things quite well, but rather that it is my desktop computer and I am not doing the things I want to as much as I want to due to serving out media to the family with it and hearing the screams from all corners of the house when something I do interrupts that flow to te screens.

 

Thanks for the tips so far

 

Cheers

CrashKelly

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