New sever build needs inspection

[jammydodger]

A friend of mine has asked me to build him a server that will convert MPEG2 streams to .flv in real time, I have no idea how much CPU power converting to .flv requires but he wants to do 8streams at once so I opted for 2 quad core Xeons (one core for each stream). What do people think of the setup? It's my first sever so Im not sure about everything, any comments/suggestions would be appreciated:


Asustek Server Ext ATX 2 x Dual Core X
http://www.dabs.com/productview.aspx?Quicklinx=4M8J&CategorySelectedId=11143&PageMode=1&NavigationKey=11143,404500000
£287.99

2xKingston ValueRAM 1GB PC2-5300 DDR2 Buffered ECC
http://www.dabs.com/productview.aspx?Quicklinx=4JC7&CategorySelectedId=11150&PageMode=1&NavigationKey=11150,4294954339,4294957152
2x£52.69 = £105.38

2xIntel Xeon 5345
http://www.it247.com/Product/30-BX80563E5345A/Intel_Quad_Core_Xeon_E5345_233_GHz_processor.htm
2x £309.33 = £618.66

Lian-Li PC V2100 PLUS
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-033-LL&groupid=701&catid=7&subcat=
£205.61

Corsair Memory 620 Watt
http://www.dabs.com/productview.aspx?Quicklinx=4B0R&CategorySelectedId=11259&PageMode=1&NavigationKey=11259,49450000
£99.87

Hauppauge WinTV PVR 500 MCE - OEM
http://www.dabs.com/productview.aspx?Quicklinx=3TLS&SearchType=1&SearchTerms=hauppauge+pvr+500&PageMode=3&SearchKey=All&SearchMode=All&NavigationKey=0
£99.20

Hauppauge WinTV Nova-T 500 Dual digital DVB-T
http://www.dabs.com/ProductView.aspx?Quicklinx=45KF&CategorySelectedId=11138&PageMode=1&NavigationKey=11138&InMerch=1
£54.94

3xSeagate Barracuda ES 500GB
http://www.dabs.com/productview.aspx?Quicklinx=4B0W&CategorySelectedId=11154&PageMode=1&NavigationKey=11154,370810000
3x£91.46 = £274.38

Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 80GB S300 8MB
http://www.dabs.com/productview.aspx?Quicklinx=4MRK&CategorySelectedId=11154&PageMode=1&NavigationKey=11154,45540000
£28.51

Samsung DVD16x CD48x IDE Black OEM
http://www.dabs.com/productview.aspx?Quicklinx=3Y9S&CategorySelectedId=11155&PageMode=1&NavigationKey=11155,42440000
£11.31

Total = £1740.92

 

[jammydodger]

this reply is mearly a shameless attempt to raise more interest in this topic

 

[bc4]

Here's a outside "bump" ---

I'd like to know how this setup would do - I know encoding is hard on resources so it would be interesting if any of the experts have any idea about this

ps. if no one here has any help for you, try asking your friend what software he is planning on using for this and contact the software company for specs or look it up on the web. ---> you might try logging into the adobe forums (as they now own Flash) and see if someone there has professional experience

 

[darkangelism]

its gonna need more ram 8GB would be good then 1GB per core, put server 2003 x64 on it, and i would get better hard drives, something like 4 raptors 2 raid 0s to maximize data throughput one for incoming stream and the other for writing the output files.

I personally am looking to build a server for dvd to h.264 conversion and was waiting til nov for the new quad xeons at 2.5Ghz and was gonna use 8GB memory and 15k SAS hard drives

 

[Joe_The_Dragon]

You will want a raid card and some MB have on board SAS hardware raid chips.

Also you can get a dual AMD Opteron system with cheaper DDR2 ECC ram and amd will have quad-cores out soon.
http://www.supermicro.com/Aplus/motherboard/Opteron2000/MCP55/H8DA3-2.cfm
http://www.tyan.com/product_board_detail.aspx?pid=163
http://www.tyan.com/produ ct_board_detail.aspx?pid=453

 

[jammydodger]

How long till the quad core AMD's come out? I think he wants the system pretty soon. I did suggest more RAM but I think the plan is to check out the system performance with 2gigs then buy more if necessary. Unfortunatly its actually my friends uncle that wants the system and I havent spoken directly too him so its kinda difficult to know exactly what he needs. I'm assuming that he is encoding at a fairly low bit rate, hense the lower emphasis on RAM size and hard disk speed.

 

[Joe_The_Dragon]

How long till the quad core AMD's come out? I think he wants the system pretty soon. I did suggest more RAM but I think the plan is to check out the system performance with 2gigs then buy more if necessary. Unfortunatly its actually my friends uncle that wants the system and I havent spoken directly too him so its kinda difficult to know exactly what he needs. I'm assuming that he is encoding at a fairly low bit rate, hense the lower emphasis on RAM size and hard disk speed.

for ram with FB-DIMMS you want 4 dimms for and full bandwidth and for Amd you want 2 dimms per cpu for full bandwidth.

amd Quad cores dual next month

 

[Joe_The_Dragon]

there are also intel xeon boards with on board sas raid.
http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon1333/5000P/X7DB3.cfm
http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon1333/5000X/X7DA3+.cfm
http:/ /www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon1333/5000X/X7DA3.cfm