Build a HTPC, laptop, and storage server

[dcjohnson3]

Hello All,

Long time reader first time poster.

I've worked in IT most of my life, but I'm a programmer / sys admin. Hardware has never been my specialty.

I'm looking to re-do all of my home computing. It's a joke right now.

I'm looking for a large network storage solution for all of my media, a powerful server that can encode/stream 1080p possibly 3D media to multiple devices at once through DLNA, could be same server as storage, can be big and loud I don't care.

A set-top like box for internet browsing / media access for one of my TVs, should be quiet and small.

And a laptop to be the main access point to the network, hopefully will be very powerful so I never experience any lag, but I love a good long battery life, it would primarily be from here that I would be doing all of my downloading to the network storage, doing the majority of my day to day stuff, etc.

I'm looking to build it all from the ground up to save some money and have some fun, but I'm all about overkill. I don't want anything to break a sweat, even say 2 operating systems in the future from now. So future-proof and over kill is the name on the game. I can't help myself but want the best, and not knowing what I don't know I just tend to lean towards bigger numbers, like i7 and 32GB RAM, I know I won't need all that so please advise on what would be a good fit.

I don't have anything really picked out yet and don't have my heart set on anything in particular. (expect my wife wants a multi-colored LED back lit keyboard for the laptop lol)

I've a budget of a few thousand for it all.

Any advice offered at all would be great.

Thanks

 

[kanewolf]

It isn't "build it yourself", but for your server, I really like the used HP ML350G6 market right now. Look around on E-Bay at the prices for used commercial true server equipment.

 

[dcjohnson3]

It isn't "build it yourself", but for your server, I really like the used HP ML350G6 market right now. Look around on E-Bay at the prices for used commercial true server equipment.

Thanks for the tip. Looks like there's a few thousand components / servers available on Ebay when searching HP ML350G6. Do you have any advice on what sort of configuration I should be keeping my eyes out for?

 

[Solandri]

It isn't "build it yourself", but for your server, I really like the used HP ML350G6 market right now. Look around on E-Bay at the prices for used commercial true server equipment.

Be aware that "real" server equipment comes with the added price tag of additional electricity burned. For equipment left on 24/7, if you pay the U.S. average of $0.12/kWh, each Watt translates into about $1 per year. So a server which draws 100 W will cost you about $80/yr more in electricity than a HTPC NUC that draws about 20 W. This is a trivial cost for a business, but for home use after 5 years you've basically paid enough for a new computer.

For my storage server (built in 2011), I used an i5-2400. I considered an S or T processor to reduce power consumption even more, but went with the regular desktop CPU since I wasn't able to find a low-power motherboard. (My initial plan was to go with something like a NUC which used laptop components). Added 4 Hitachi "green" drives for file storage, and a 512 GB SSD as a "boot" drive. Total system comes in at 35 Watts idle, which I figure is pretty good considering a laptop is probably around 8 Watts idle and each HDD draws about 3 Watts (I don't let them spin down since they're in the equivalent of a RAID-5). I've been toying with the idea of upgrading it to get ECC memory (I use ZFS, and the lack of ECC is the weak link in my chain). ECC RAM was ridiculously expensive when I built the system - like 4x more than regular RAM; but has since come down to about 1.5x in price.

I run VMWare ESXi (aka vSphere) as a hypervisor, and run multiple virtual machines on it including FreeNAS for my file server. It's less robust than a dedicated file server, but this was the first time I tried building something like this and it was more about the learning experience. Other VMs include several Windows installations (I set up and try out new software for clients, so I need to be able to test out stuff without having to reinstall Windows every time I'm finished), different Linux OSes, and at one point even an OS X hackintosh. BTW, the 35 W idle figure is with FreeNAS, a Linux VM, and 4 Windows VMs running simultaneously.

For laptop I went with a lightweight gaming laptop this round (Gigabyte P34W) which still gets 4+ hours battery life during regular use. But I am keeping a close eye on game streaming tech like Limelight and Steam In-home streaming. I'm thinking next round I maybe can get a laptop with 8+ hour battery life and a low-mid range GPU, and use it to stream games from a desktop GPU at home. The big question being if I'm at home, why not just play on the desktop...

Most of my work is done via VMs on my server since it has drive redundancy and I can take snapshots. I have one VM dedicated to running my business, so it can't be infected by anything I pick up via general web browsing or downloading. I just fire up Remote Desktop to access it. Off-site, I connect to my home network via a VPN and to allow Remote Desktop to connect.

I've played around with a few media servers in VMs, but I'm not that big a TV/movie watcher so I haven't gone whole hog on it. The new laptop freed up my old laptop for use as a HTPC though, so that will be one of my upcoming projects this year.

Anyways, not saying my setup is the best. Different things work for different people. But maybe it'll give you some ideas and things you want to try. It's definitely been great for learning.

 

[kanewolf]

You want to look for one that includes the P410i RAID controller. For you, since you want space, try to find one that has the 3.5in disk option (a lot have 2.5 inch disks). I would get one with both CPU sockets populated. I would want the redundant power supplies populated.

There aren't many that are on auction. A lot of buy now.

The ML 370 G6 is also an option. I don't think they sold as many 370s as the 350s.

If you don't have to have a graphics card, the ML 350 G5 is an option. It just doesn't have PCIe slots. PCI-X instead....

 

[dcjohnson3]

What do you guys think of this? Is it to much power for transcoding multiple 1080p videos at once? Other thoughts?

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-5820K 3.3GHz 6-Core Processor ($299.99 @ Micro Center)
CPU Cooler: Corsair H100i 77.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler ($99.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Asus X99-DELUXE ATX LGA2011-3 Motherboard ($372.98 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR4-2666 Memory ($209.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Samsung 840 Pro Series 256GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($199.89 @ OutletPC)
Storage: Western Digital Red 3TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive ($113.98 @ OutletPC)
Storage: Western Digital Red 3TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive ($113.98 @ OutletPC)
Storage: Western Digital Red 3TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive ($113.98 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 970 4GB ACX 2.0 Video Card ($329.99 @ Amazon)
Case: Fractal Design Define R4 w/Window (Titanium Grey) ATX Mid Tower Case ($112.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Power Supply: Corsair 760W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($168.98 @ Newegg)
Optical Drive: LG WH16NS40 Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Writer ($55.98 @ Newegg)
Total: $2192.72
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-02-27 11:31 EST-0500

 

[Solandri]

What do you guys think of this? Is it to much power for transcoding multiple 1080p videos at once? Other thoughts?

CPU: Intel Core i7-5820K 3.3GHz 6-Core Processor ($299.99 @ Micro Center)

Plex recommends a Passmark score of roughly 2000 per stream to be transcoded. That particular CPU scores over 12,000 before overclocking, so it may be a bit overkill. But it'll definitely do the job.
https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/201774043-What-kind-of-CPU-do-I-need-for-my-Server-computer-

Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR4-2666 Memory ($209.99 @ Amazon)

Are you sure you don't want to go with 2x8GB, just in case you find you need to bump it up to 32GB in the future? The VMs I run eat RAM like candy, and it's a tight squeeze in 16GB.

Storage: Samsung 840 Pro Series 256GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($199.89 @ OutletPC)

That's overpriced for a 840 Pro. MicroCenter has it for $139. It's harder to find since it's being discontinued for the 850 Pro, and some retailers take advantage of that to crank up the price in hopes you won't notice or are desperate to get exactly that model. Amazon has the newer 850 Pro 256GB for $159.

Storage: Western Digital Red 3TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive ($113.98 @ OutletPC)
Storage: Western Digital Red 3TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive ($113.98 @ OutletPC)
Storage: Western Digital Red 3TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive ($113.98 @ OutletPC)

If you're planning to RAID 5 these, RAID 5 space efficiency is n-1 drives. So with 3 drives you're getting 2/3 = 67% of the space you're buying is usable. With 4 drives you'd get 3/4 = 75% of the space you're buying is usable. So most people going for RAID 5 get at least 4 drives.

If you're not planning to RAID 5 these, you're going to be in for a world of hurt when one of them dies and takes 1/3rd of your media (JBOD) or all of your media (RAID 0) with it.

Even with RAID 5, 3x3TB is pushing right up against the reliability limit for HDDs. That is, if a drive should die and you have to replace it, there's a high chance of another read error during the ~24-48 hours it takes to rebuild. And if that happens, your entire RAID array is gone. People recommend you move up to RAID 6 (2 drive redundancy) at that point.
http://www.zdnet.com/article/why-raid-5-stops-working-in-2009/

That's part of the reason I went with FreeBSD and ZFS. RAID-Z1 on ZFS provides one-drive redundancy, but operates on a per file basis. If a drive fails and there's another read error during rebuild, it only marks the single file as failed instead of the entire drive. RAID-Z1 has slightly odd space efficiency, so 3 or 5 drives ends up getting closer to the n-1 ideal space efficiency than 4 drives.

Regardless, even if you run RAID, you still need to back it up. RAID is not a backup. RAID is for redundancy - so if a drive fails your server can keep chugging along serving up media files without any downtime. If you should accidentally delete a file, RAID isn't going to save you because it will faithfully delete the file + the parity data for the file. So you still need a backup. I just bought Sans Digital external RAID enclosure, configured it as JBOD, threw a bunch of my old drives into it, and used that as a 7TB external backup drive. I recently upgraded drives on my server recently (4x4TB, or ~12TB of usable space), and will be moving the old drives into the RAID enclosure for backups.

A cheaper (but less reliable) way to get around the backup requirement is to use a filesystem which supports snapshots. A snapshot doesn't require any more space to store a file if it's already been stored in another snapshot. So you can snapshot every hour and it won't take up much more space than snapshotting every week. And if you accidentally delete a file, you can just roll back to a snapshot before you deleted it. (OTOH, if you regularly copy/delete/move lots of files, the snapshots will balloon in size. They work best when you put a file somewhere and never move or delete it.)

Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 970 4GB ACX 2.0 Video Card ($329.99 @ Amazon)

Are you planning to game on this too? Because AFAIK, transcoding doesn't use the video card. My understanding is that while GPU features like Quick Sync help speed up video encoding, transcoding already prioritizes speed over video quality. So GPU assist ends up not speeding things up much more, so the media server programmers don't bother supporting it.

 

[dcjohnson3]

Thanks so much for the input!

Would you say that this would be a better fit?

New processor has a passmark score of 8840, I added an extra 3TB drive, switched to 8x2 RAM, and downgraded the video card.

Also I switched to a 850 Pro.

Do you think I still have too beefy of a GPU?

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2rYgNG

I was hoping to get nice dual monitors and another old IBM model M keyboard, and still manage to keep the whole thing under 2K because I want a nice new laptop too so I think I still need to cut back somewhere.

 

[dcjohnson3]

Here is another build I've put together. Getting closer in price. Anyone have a suggestion on where I can cut back and still retain my overkillness?

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/kYPVRB