Building a new HTPC, ideas on some guts for it

[techywarrior 688]

I stayed cheep and didn't put in an msata drive for the OS drive but it has the space for one. I may upgrade it later on, and move to Win8/9 but I had a Win7 license for this machine and didn't want to spend $140 for Win8 Pro and another $100+ for the msata drive. Also, with the way I use the machine I wouldn't see as great a benefit on the msata drive.

[TolkienBard 54]

I find myself a t a bit of a crossroads and know too little about how the various ratings of PCs and so forth work to make an informed choice. Here’s what I am facing.

I’m working on a whole home streaming system. Originally, I had planned on attaching a NUC running Media Browser + XBMC on a Windows 8.1 platform to my disk farm acting as the server. However, my layout “needs” have changed since this project began a few months ago. I have gained some flexibility with locating my server.

As a result, I’m not certain that a NUC is the best way to go anymore (if it ever was). I could still go with the i5 NUC, but given that I want the server to support a minimum of three (3) simultaneous 1080p streams, I was considering abandoning the NUC for an i7 desktop PC. Given the price of a NUC, I’m fairly certain I could find an i7 desktop PC for a comparable cost.

Here’s what I’m not sure about though. Am I doing myself any favors moving up to an i7 machine? Or is that just plain overkill with no appreciable upside?

 

Since the server will be running 24/7/365, my biggest concerns are as follows:

Power consumption – I have read some NUCs, especially when spun down, are insanely power efficient. But if NUCs can do it, I would assume desktops could as well.

Temperature – I don’t want to fry my components, nor do I want to heat the room (especially living in the Arizona desert

Fan noise – regardless of where the PC goes, it will almost certainly still be in an area where people either gather or sleep. I’d rather not have the jet engine fan noise issue going, especially if I wind up putting the PC in the rear of the TV room.

 

This is pretty much the sort of i7 I would be looking at off the shelf. I could then make minor alterations as needed to address the above issues. As listed, the PC is very close in price to the i5 NUC

Case: Mid Tower

Processor: Intel i7-4770 3.40GHz Quad Core

Installed Memory: 32GB

Max Memory: 32GB DDR3-1333/PC3-10600

Graphics: Intel® HD Graphics 4600

Hard Drive: 2TB SATA

Optical Drive: Super-Multi-DVDRW Burner

Wireless 802.11N

Ethernet Type: Gigabit 10/100/1000

USB Ports (2.0): 4

USB Ports (3.0): 2

HDMI

[techywarrior 688]

32GB is going to be overkill because I have yet to see my server even reach 3GB usage with MB3.

 

The NUC can reach crazy low power consumption numbers because it uses a laptop chip. No desktop you build will reach those numbers.

 

When you say 3 simultaneous 1080 streams do you mean you will be transcoding 3 streams or you are playing 1080 content on 3 devices at the same time? If it's the latter then you may not need that much power because they might be direct played and not transcoded. What devices are you going to be streaming to? Are they on the LAN or remote?

[TolkienBard 54]

32GB is going to be overkill because I have yet to see my server even reach 3GB usage with MB3.

 

The NUC can reach crazy low power consumption numbers because it uses a laptop chip. No desktop you build will reach those numbers.

 

When you say 3 simultaneous 1080 streams do you mean you will be transcoding 3 streams or you are playing 1080 content on 3 devices at the same time? If it's the latter then you may not need that much power because they might be direct played and not transcoded. What devices are you going to be streaming to? Are they on the LAN or remote?

 

The only reason I was going with the 32 GB of RAM is because I scored a deal which basically made the RAM free. I don't turn down "free upgrades". Originally, I was just going to run with 8 GB of RAM, as that seems to be pretty standard for running a Windows 8.1 machine.

 

As for the streams, one stream would eventually be a HTPC running MBT hooked up to a Samsung plasma. Right now the plasma has the MB app on it, but there will be times where I will want to take advantage of the sound system, so the HTPC will come into play. The second stream will either a small HTPC (like a Revo with MBT) or a tablet throwing to Chromecast plugged into a Panasonic plasma. The third stream would probably be to an android device. Usually, the streams will all be on the home network. There will be some rare occasions when we will be travelling and want to access the media remotely.

 

I just spent the last 3 months converting all the VIDEO_TS folders and BR ISOs to mkv files to make streaming easier, but I expect tehre will still be times where the server will need to do some of the heavy lifting.  

[techywarrior 688]

Well, not going to argue against lots of free memory

 

It sounds like you probably aren't actually going to need a lot of power for the server. Since 2/3 of the streams will most likely be direct play the server won't be doing anything for those.

 

I can transcode 2 simultaneous streams on my i5 NUC (although I almost always direct play) so if you wanted to keep the power/heat down you probably will be fine with a NUC.

 

What you could do is get the NUC, and if you find that it's not performing how you want use it for the HTPC you mentioned. Of course if you are more worried with expansion and future power then with heat and power consumption you could do the desktop build you are talking about. The i7 will transcode faster then an i5. Depending on the cost difference tho it may not be worth it.

 

There is also the possibility that QuickSync support will be coming to ffmpeg (and therefore MB3). If that happens the NUC will have no problem doing 3 streams (and most certainly the i7 as well)

[FlyGuyAZ 5]

Cheap, quiet, sips power, will get the job done. The new AMD Kabini CPUs aren't much for real work but they rock for HTPC duties. I just put something similar together: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/QsyC4D