config ideas for MythBE/NAS + Myth/XBMC FE

[jalyst]

I think I'm going with an AIO, but with the FE I outlined as the platform base.

So that means I'll sell most of the parts outlined for my proposed back-end.
This will give me a little cash towards the new build, whilst allowing me to move to the newer/sexier Intel platform

It'd be cheaper to go with the BE as the base for an AIO (& it'd be plenty of horsepower), but I prefer this approach.
I'll outline the new machine I have in mind soon....

As figrin mentioned Core i3-xxx VA-API support for acceleration is getting there, but still pretty rough.
If I find it + sw acceleration is not quite enough after a few months, then I can always chuck in a GT220 to be used w/VDPAU.

I do have plans later this year to build a Core i7-based native VMM (baremetal hypervisor).
So this could become the BE & "jack of all" server, and the AIO could revert to a FE/occasional gaming machine.

In the meantime I'll have my XBOX360 & soon a PS3 which can be used as FE's of sorts.
PS3 in particular, now that it's "apparently" been fully hacked...

Thanks for your thoughts thus far, any further ideas greatly appreciated!

[the-enigma]

Originally Posted by jalyst

Here is the rough outline I have in mind

Guessing this is a combined FE/BE system, keep that in mind

Originally Posted by jalyst

Storage Sub-sys:
1x 30GB SSD? ................................... [boot/system volume]

Not required. Boot/system are largely untouched while running (I run a diskless frontend, runs over 100mbit ethernet and has zero issues).

Originally Posted by jalyst

1x 1TB WD Black ..............................[capture disk, can it handle 4 simultaneous HD streams?]

1080p HD streams tend to be around 10MBit/s (going from memory so may be wrong), which is a tad over 1 MB/s. Assuming your 1TB HDD can sustain a write speed of 10MB/s you should easily be fine. And any reasonable hard drive should have no worries about writing a measly 10MB/s.

[phreeky82]

IMO you're wasting a lot of money - wasting as in going over-spec, especially the SSD.

I have:
- $60 Asrock AM2 M/B with onboard nvidia 7050
- 5050e
- PCIe GB NIC (M/B only has 10/100, stupid me didn't check that)
- 4GB DDR2
- A pair of tuners (one PCI, one USB)
- A crappy old 40GB IDE drive for the OS
- A bunch of storage HDDs
- Some generic but seemingly stable PSU in a dodgy old modded case

I currently run vmware server. I have these VMs:
- squid (reverse proxy)
- apache/mysql/etc (web)
- postfix/courier (mail)
- various test VMs that are not normally running

That is on top of a Ubuntu Desktop setup. I sometimes surf the net on it using the TV, and rarely use it as a mythfrontend - normally a backend to another system in the house. It will merrily record a couple of streams, and play 1080i/720p as a frontend as well as on the other frontend system in the house, as well as streaming files to others (i.e. the GF watching some crappy TV series from it on her laptop).

Hints:
- Spend more time on the software side of things
- Focus on power efficient parts if it'll be on 24/7

[the-enigma]

Originally Posted by jalyst

Would you slot something different in? Can I get some thoughts please!

This has been commented on a bajillion times already, but why do you need the SSD, USB3, or SATA6G? Those are what's bringing the price up. If you want them for future upgradability, then cool, but you won't notice the difference between having them and not having them, in purely the "watching videos" context.

[core2dubious]

Originally Posted by jalyst

I think you may have misread my posts...
I have already eschewed SSD & accepted that there's not any (Intel) mATX board w/S6G & USB3 as yet.
Any comments on the actual final parts?

Thanks.

I think your backend is good except maybe overpowered with the cpu, and 2 gb ram would be enough and no need for a raptor.

Front end seems fine if your going to be gaming on it but will need a more powerful video card, depends on what games you play and at what res. Keep the ssd and put your os on there and use the raptor for the games and use the 1 tb for downloads, are you going to use ubuntu on your front end or windows with vmware with unbuntu to control your backend??? cause if you use myth frontend you need to use linux, don't know what your planning though...or putting myth on windows in the front end? I know it's the harder way but it's been done before. If your using a linux distro in your frontend don't know any games that you can play that needs that type of system.--realised you can use wine...but not all games work with it.

Here's my proposed system: items in red means I have it already.
Celeron 440
2gb ram
gt 210 or 9500gt 512mb VDPAU-- is it overpowered? was thinking about going gt 220...
1gb samsung f3 -- might add some 1tb wd greens in raid 5 if I need more space later on.
asus 450 psu
g31 gigabyte motherboard
HVR2200 or asus u3100

I will be runing myth tv front and backend and have it as a diluge backend and maybe file server as well. Any suggestions?

[jalyst]

Looks good, I'd get a GT220 though, there is a notable difference between it and GT210 (cant recall right now), & the GT2xx series is markedly better w/VDPAU than 9500xx.

Also if it's to be an AIO with flagging, transcoding, capturing, playing, NAS, torrent/web servers etc. it may benefit from a slightly better CPU & 4GB RAM.

For FE software I'm going with stripped down Ubuntu + MythFE + XBMC + Boxee (maybe)
There is a port of Myth to Windows, I think it's fairly limited though, and XBMC/Boxee is available for Windows.
I'll prolly have Windows 7 on another partition.....

I think you misread the entire thread though, as I've moved to an AIO and am going for the newer architecture, so will sell most of my originally proposed BE. Gaming on it is possibility down-the-track, but I don't need a serious gaming card or a SSD just yet.

Just need to work-out what I'm going to put the OS on now, guess it can go on the innermost sectors (15GB) of the 1TB WD Black. Which was meant to be the dedicated drive for capturing.

Just looking for thoughts on posts #17 & #20, thanks...

[core2dubious]

Originally Posted by jalyst

Looks good, I'd get a GT220 though, there is a notable difference between it and GT210 (cant recall right now), & the GT2xx series is markedly better w/VDPAU than 9500xx.

Also if it's to be an AIO with flagging, transcoding, capturing, playing, NAS, torrent/web servers etc. it may benefit from a slightly better CPU & 4GB RAM.

For FE software I'm going with stripped down Ubuntu + MythFE + XBMC + Boxee (maybe)
There is a port of Myth to Windows, I think it's fairly limited though, and XBMC/Boxee is available for Windows.
I'll prolly have Windows 7 on another partition.....

I think you misread the entire thread though, as I've moved to an AIO and am going for the newer architecture, so will sell most of my originally proposed BE. Gaming on it is possibility down-the-track, but I don't need a serious gaming card or a SSD just yet.

Just need to work out what I'm going to put OS on now, guess it can go on the innermost sectors (15GB) of the 1tb wd black, which was meant to be the dedicated drive for capturing. Just looking for thoughts on posts #17 & #20...

oh ok , I didn't see the bit where you changed to an AIO system lol,
yeah I'm doing the same as well but no gaming. Won't be needing a powerful cpu or more ram, the box should be low power and it will just record channels, playback,torrent box and maybe fileserver. I'll be running a 47 inch 1080 p screen as well, will the gt 220 cut it with blue rays as well?
put the os on this, 1x 30GB OCZ Vertex SSD? .................. [best performer @30-40GB, don't need bigger for system drive] and check if it has a indillix controller and not the jmicrons, going to be a crazy AIO lol more like the main pc...

[jalyst]

Well if you have an e5200 & 2 extra GB just "lying around" I'd say use it!

You can't do BR in Linux, you can rip and convert to another format to be played, but whenever i want to play BR I'll prolly just switch to W7 or use PS3.

Your sys should easily play BR on that screen in W7 with a 220.
Not even sure if you'd "need" the 220 to play BR in W7...

Nah skipping the SSD for now, don't you sleep?

night.

[core2dubious]

Originally Posted by jalyst

Well if you have an e5200 & 2 extra GB just "lying around" I'd say use it!

You can't do BR in Linux, you can rip and convert to another format to be played, but whenever i want to play BR I'll prolly just switch to W7 or use PS3.

Your sys should easily play BR on that screen in W7 with a 220.
Not even sure if you'd "need" the 220 to play BR in W7...

Nah skipping the SSD for now, don't you sleep?

night.

I'll scratch the BR, I won't need it anyways and it will mean purchasing a blue ray player, if I ever do I'll create a win 7 partition and upgrade accordingly.
Still deciding on whether to get the gt 210 or gt 220...
There's a good article here, click me, the power draw on the gt210 is very nice.
I've decided to get the gt 220, can't find the gt 220 passive cooled so might settle with this. gt 220

Update, purchased a gt 210 from a fellow ocau member so plans have changed.

Here's my proposed system: items in red means I have it already.
Celeron 440
2gb ram
asus low profile gt 210
HDD -- might get a smaller samsung harddrive for the os. and 1tb samsung greens first for storage then raid 5 if I get 2 or more.
asus 450 psu
g31 gigabyte motherboard
HVR2200 or asus u3100 -- have a spare twainhan tv card so I'll try that out for and see how it goes.
Accent black httpc case

[jalyst]

Here is the rough outline I have in mind...
Underlined = I've decided on the part, bold = I own it.

1x Intel Core i3-530
1x Corsair H50 (or cousin) or CoolIT Eco (waiting on reviews)
1x mATX H57 or Q57 mobo?
2x 2GB DDR3?
1x Asus Xonar Essence ST (PCI)
1x Asus H6 (Essence daughterboard)
1x Hauppauge HVR-2200
1x Antec True Power 3.0 650W
1x 1TB WD Black ..............................[OS/capture disk, should handle 4+ simultaneous HD streams]
3x 1/1.5TB 7.2k HDD? .........................[For content storage & BU, may not bother w/RAID]
_________
Low priority (won't buy this time round, but suggestions welcome!)
*********
1x 30GB OCZ Vertex SSD? .................. [best performer @30-40GB, don't need bigger for system drive]
1x nV GT220? .................................... [only if IGP+CPU proves to be insufficient]
1x HTPC Case? ................................... [Have old Lian-Li (PC-60?) mid-tower & case fans]

Make/model recommendations greatly appreciated!

[jalyst]

Alas there's no Q5x/H5x mATX mobo's with SATA6G & USB3.
So it comes down to these three:

GA-H57M-USB3 $174.0 [may be able to get for this price]
P7H55D-M EVO $179.3 [definitely can get for this price]
P7H57D-V EVO $292.6 [definitely can get for this price]

The last is ATX....
It does have SATA6G & USB3 but is substantially more than the other two.

I've realised that SATAII's "real world" limit is about 300MB/s anyway.
I'm not aware of any 30-40GB SSD's that could reach that limit, even at sustained read speeds.
So it's no big loss, when S6G does filter-down to H5x mATX boards, I can always sell & upgrade.

I'm leaving SSD's for now, there's so much happening in the next 9mth, there'll be far better options later.
And there's the fact that I don't hugely benefit from SSD for the intended application.

So these are my finalist parts:
************************
approx $154 1x Intel Core i3-530
approx $179 1x GA-H57M-USB3 or P7H55D-M EVO
approx $127 2x 2GB Corsair DDR3 1333Mhz (PC-10600)
Storage Sub-sys:
approx $312 3x 1TB Samsung F3
___________
Total = $772
---------------

Would you slot something different in, is there anything I'm missing?
Can I get some thoughts please.

Hopefully I'll be happy with all parts by this weekend...
I will then place orders, followed shortly afterwards by a build log.

[jalyst]

Almost have a completed product (it's a doozey)
"May" post a build log, but in a new thread I think.

[jalyst]

Meh don't think I'll share....
Hardly any have shown interest or helped, so why should I contribute.
Good-luck anyone with similar projects, adios.

[FiShy]

Originally Posted by jalyst

Meh don't think I'll share....
Hardly any have shown interest or helped, so why should I contribute.
Good-luck anyone with similar projects, adios.

People did share, stating your pc was overspec'ed. All you did was shoot them down. hence people dont care.

[jalyst]

Originally Posted by FiShy

People did share, stating your pc was overspec'ed. All you did was shoot them down. hence people dont care.

I admit my wording was inflammatory, I should've said:
Meh can't be bothered....
Good-luck anyone with similar projects, adios.
I was a little frustrated at the lack of useful feedback after the briefest of engagements.
But in hindsight perhaps my frustration was somewhat unwarranted as....

Some did offer useful advice very early on, & what was sound I took on board.
As evidenced by the fact that I entirely reshaped my configuration.
I "shot them all down", LOL, what a load of crap!

*edit*
I could've sworn I responded to phreeky82 and the-enigma, then I remembered...
I deleted a few of my own posts on the 2nd page in an attempt to keep the thread shorter.
Then I got core2dubious's posts that were mainly asking questions....
So I and especially you, lose some context coming along and reading it now.
But the progression and advice taken on board, is still pretty clear looking at the 1st and final posts.