HTPC/server or NAS

[eschulz1]

Hey everyone I am looking for/would greatly appreciate some help building a PC. I am looking to build a PC that I can put all of my movies/music/photos on (600 SD dvds, 75 HD dvds 3000 songs and 1000 photos and will continue growing) My problems are I do not even know where to start, I don't even know if this would be considered an HTPC or a Server.

When coming up with any ideas here are the things that I am looking to accomplish with this PC

- My desire is to build this PC and stream the movies using multiple xbox360's connected to TV's around my house from this one PC
- I would like 0 lag and would like it to remain lag free even if I am ripping a dvd along with streaming to 2 devices at the same time
- It will be on 24/7/365 I would like it to be as quiet/efficient as possible, it will not be visible in the house so look is not a factor
- I will not be gaming on it at all I have built my gaming rig and I do not host any games on PC

Some quick questions I have are:

- Should I just go with a NAS set up?
- Is going with a RAID config the best bet?
- Is windows server the only/best thing that is going to be compatible with the Xbox360s?
- What is more important than other parts? ie is RAM the most important are HDD speeds important at all? do I need a multicore processor, I shouldn't need a video card should I onboard should be enough?

If it matters to anyone I will be buying my components from tigerdirect or Newegg but if you have another site that has better deals or service I have no problems ordering it from somewhere else.

So fire away I honestly dont know where to start, it was by pure luck I stumbled onto this website as I have been doing random searches just to try to find out anything that I can, thanx to everyone in advance

 

[zhihao50]

NAS is storage only, you would still need a computer to do other stuff such as rip DVD.

I don't think harddrive speed is going to be a problem with just simple playing movie. RAID 1 or 5 if you want some sort of redundancy.

An Intel i3 CPU would be a good start for a HTPC. Or AMD llano.

 

[eschulz1]

Couldn't I use my gaming rig attached via network to rip the dvds or add things to the NAS or is the NAS merely a storage only device that wont stream the movies/music/pics through the xboxes? Thank you for getting me started, but what do more or less cores actually affect in this process? are they just allowing me to multi-task at a higher rate.. do the cores actually have any affect on the streaming aspect?

 

[zhihao50]

yep you can attach NAS to your home network and connect to xbox.

 

[serialkiller]

hello op ur trying to build a nas

a nas is a device which can even run on a pentium 4 and 512 mb ram. It dosnt need much power.

But it is found out that if a dual core is used then the speed increase

if u want to add movies or songs etc then u can by the help of local machines attached to the local area network

so u can rip movies from ur other pc . It is just like a hard drive which can be access from numerious simultaneous.

I dont know that windows server is best for xbox but there is a free nas os like ubuntu that i dont remember.

This is not the right time to make nas as hdd is costly .

How much is ur budget and how much do u storage do u want.

Raid is very complex and every raid array has some big problem

like
raid 0 - u get nearly twice as speed if using identical hdds.the bad thing is if even 1 drive fails then all of ur data on the array gets lost.

Like this other raids have problem like less storage and slower speeds etc
the main problem is that if u have made the array u cant add any hdd again and to do that u will have to break the array.





Actually u should have posted in storage section as those people know more about nas




please can one(moderators) move this to thread to storage section

 

[eschulz1]

thanks for the additional info, so it sounds like a nas is the way to go. As far as my budget was concerned I was trying to keep it in the 600-800 dollar range but if I had to go over to get what I wanted I wasnt going to stop a few dollars short. I was looking for enough storage to at least store every thing I currently have with some room to spare as I am constantly buying movies/music. Do you know off hand if by going with the NAS is it like doing double duty when you are ripping from another machine ie will it be taking twice as long ripping on one machine and transfering to another as opposed to just ripping on the same machine?

RAID was sounding like the way to go because I was going to be keeping important photos that I do not want to lose, so probably something like the RAID5 for the insurance, again unless there is something better for my situation.

I apologize if I put this thread in the wrong forum I just thought this was where you could ask for build advice and that is what I needed. I will look through the storage section and see if I can find more info on a NAS specifically what I need in order to stream seemlessly with my xbox since that is the route i am going.

 

[serialkiller]

no the mod will move in that section if informed

 

[Pyree]

The title of this topic has been edited by Pyree

 

[Pyree]

This topic has been moved from the section Systems to section Storage by Pyree

 

[serialkiller]

thank you pyree



@ OP for ur contents u will need cheap 1 tb drives in raid 5

and right now the hdd prices are sky high

 

[FireWire2]

Look at what I built...

It is VERY efficient 180W for 40TB
Move data fast
Expandable - each SATA port you can have up to 16TB data protected (RAID5)
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/265641-32-40tb-server-performance-issue

Use ITX from ASUS costs about $80.00 + 2GB RAM costs $30.00

 

[eschulz1]

thank you pyree



@ OP for ur contents u will need cheap 1 tb drives in raid 5

and right now the hdd prices are sky high

Is there a universal time of the year that HDD will be cheaper or are things just overinflated right now and everyone is waiting for prices to come back down to earth?

 

[eschulz1]

Look at what I built...

It is VERY efficient 180W for 40TB
Move data fast
Expandable - each SATA port you can have up to 16TB data protected (RAID5)
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/265641-32-40tb-server-performance-issue

Use ITX from ASUS costs about $80.00 + 2GB RAM costs $30.00

Wow very impressive setup indeed, and it appears you kind of have the same type of setup that I am looking for, great post with alot of info for me I really appreciate the forward.

 

[Danno100]

thanks for the additional info, so it sounds like a nas is the way to go. As far as my budget was concerned I was trying to keep it in the 600-800 dollar range but if I had to go over to get what I wanted I wasnt going to stop a few dollars short. I was looking for enough storage to at least store every thing I currently have with some room to spare as I am constantly buying movies/music. Do you know off hand if by going with the NAS is it like doing double duty when you are ripping from another machine ie will it be taking twice as long ripping on one machine and transfering to another as opposed to just ripping on the same machine?

RAID was sounding like the way to go because I was going to be keeping important photos that I do not want to lose, so probably something like the RAID5 for the insurance, again unless there is something better for my situation.

I apologize if I put this thread in the wrong forum I just thought this was where you could ask for build advice and that is what I needed. I will look through the storage section and see if I can find more info on a NAS specifically what I need in order to stream seemlessly with my xbox since that is the route i am going.

If you want to use XBOX 360's, you may really want to consider using them as extenders to a Win 7 Media Center system. You'll see exactly the same screen view on the XBOX as Win 7. Your Win 7 server will be much more powerful than a NAS. Your Win 7 box can have TV tuners and you could record TV and watch that or live TV on your extenders. Your Win 7 box can handle 5 extenders at a time. Your Win 7 box can transcode video, a typical NAS will not. Your PC will be faster than a NAS. The NAS will use less power than a PC.

 

[eschulz1]

If you want to use XBOX 360's, you may really want to consider using them as extenders to a Win 7 Media Center system. You'll see exactly the same screen view on the XBOX as Win 7. Your Win 7 server will be much more powerful than a NAS. Your Win 7 box can have TV tuners and you could record TV and watch that or live TV on your extenders. Your Win 7 box can handle 5 extenders at a time. Your Win 7 box can transcode video, a typical NAS will not. Your PC will be faster than a NAS. The NAS will use less power than a PC.

I do really want to use XBOX 360's as I have multiple spares. If you dont mind me asking what is the difference here, while I understand the NAS is basically a giant place to store/access everything what does the Win & box offer that would be different. Will it stream higher quality/faster? is it more user friendly? When building the Win 7 machine are there different components that I should put into it, ie a faster processor or more RAM or does it work/run the same as a NAS machine it just offers different usability? I will take some time to look into a Win 7 machine see if I can dig up some pros/cons between the Win 7 and the NAS, thank you for your info

 

[FireWire2]

Wow very impressive setup indeed, and it appears you kind of have the same type of setup that I am looking for, great post with alot of info for me I really appreciate the forward.

I have post a summarized of how to build the NAS start out as five drives and expand it as need. Which i think we will all need to in near future because BD.ISO is HUGE

 

[FireWire2]

Oppps sorry! here is the link:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/280930-32-storage