Home Media Server Build Help

[ral8088]

I want to build a home media server for my home network. I want the ability to stream DVDs, music, photos to various clients in my house. The clients include: xbox, roku box, win7 laptop, imac, ipad. Might need to stream to 2-3 clients simultaneously. Since I have a variety of clients, I put together a list of components so far that can handle on the fly transcoding. I reaize my list of parts is overkill otherwise. My other requirement for the server is that it be a mini-itx form factor. I want a smaller unit so that I can place it in my entertainment center connected to by main HDTV and my Asus RT-N56U router which is there. I want to start with 6TB of storage with the ability to add more down the road. I think I may run this machine as a PLEX server to handle the variety of clients I have. I am intrigued with putting Ubuntu on the machine as oppose to Win7 or Win8 in order to save some money on the OS.

I originally was leaning towards a synology ds413 NAS instead of building a unit but I learned that they are not adequate to do transcoding if that is needed. My budget is around $800.

My list so far is at:
http://pcpartpicker.com/user/robalan88/saved/1uex

Any feedback would be appreciated. Thanks

Rob

 

[Ken g6]

I think you missed a few [thread=80121]questions[/thread]. Like when do you want to build it? If you can wait a couple of months you might be able to get a Haswell, which should be able to encode videos faster with AVX2 - once software supports it.

In your current parts list, you don't need a Z77 mobo unless you plan to overclock - H77 or B75 would be fine. Not that they're much less expensive. Without a gaming video card, you could get a cheaper PSU, though you might want to pay more for a quieter PSU of similar power.

The ideal pre-Haswell CPU for you, if you can afford it, is probably the Xeon e3-1230 V2. It doesn't have onboard graphics, but you can get a cheap, silent graphics card for less than the cost of upgrading to the e3-1245 V2. That makes $260 total. But any current CPU will have a hard time reencoding 3 HD streams at once.

 

[mfenn]

I think you missed a few [thread=80121]questions[/thread]. Like when do you want to build it? If you can wait a couple of months you might be able to get a Haswell, which should be able to encode videos faster with AVX2 - once software supports it.

In your current parts list, you don't need a Z77 mobo unless you plan to overclock - H77 or B75 would be fine. Not that they're much less expensive. Without a gaming video card, you could get a cheaper PSU, though you might want to pay more for a quieter PSU of similar power.

The ideal pre-Haswell CPU for you, if you can afford it, is probably the Xeon e3-1230 V2. It doesn't have onboard graphics, but you can get a cheap, silent graphics card for less than the cost of upgrading to the e3-1245 V2. That makes $260 total. But any current CPU will have a hard time reencoding 3 HD streams at once.

Agree.

As for software, Plex will do the transcoding that you want (and has nice iOS and Android apps), has lots of codecs built in, and will run on Linux no problem.