Media Center PC help needed

[JustADude]

Nah, for just straight playback you should be fine with on-board graphics and sound, if the thing comes with its own D-Audio jack. You might want to consider looking at some of the HD cards, though, to see if you can't get one that will do some really fancy audio- and video-out stuff for your TV in one package.

[MadMike]

Thanks, I'll start looking at RAID cards.

A couple more questions, if you don't mind. And anyone else who can help is free to jump in as well.

Going back to the media center PC, would there be anything wrong with using onboard sound? The only reason I went with a card at all is because I want to connect to my stereo's optical connector. However, I've found a board that I think will work with the processor I picked, and also has a built-in optical connector. It also seems to have some better reviews than the original one I picked. Most of the cons are about things I don't intend to do, like overclocking.

Here is the board: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813135208

I'm not going to change my wish list just yet until I'm sure this one would be OK.


And another question: Since I'm not going to be using the server for anything intense graphics-wise, would it be OK to get a board with onboard video and use that, or would that eat up too much memory? I'm hoping to put together a list for that soon.

Oh, FYI, I think I'm going to get 750GB drives for that. It sucks that it's twice what the 500GB drives cost, but I want to make sure I have enough capacity, and the terrabyte drives are still around $400, and last time I checked, they're only allowing one per customer.

[JustADude]

I was looking at this board, and I thought it looked good. It has 10 SATA connectors, and I figured that would be enough, with a few to spare, just in case.

But then I saw something in one of the reviews that said it actually has 2 RAID controllers, 6 on the one and 4 on the other. Is there a way to use all of them for one, or no?

Things are getting a little confusing here. Would I maybe be better of getting just a basic board and a RAID card?

Not sure, since I don't have experience with Gigabyte parts, but I wouldn't think so. If you want to do more than 6 drives (which would be either 2.5TB or 5TB after losing one for the RAID checksum) you'd be best off to go ahead and get a separate PCI card to do array.

[MadMike]

I was looking at this board, and I thought it looked good. It has 10 SATA connectors, and I figured that would be enough, with a few to spare, just in case.

But then I saw something in one of the reviews that said it actually has 2 RAID controllers, 6 on the one and 4 on the other. Is there a way to use all of them for one, or no?

Things are getting a little confusing here. Would I maybe be better of getting just a basic board and a RAID card?

[MadMike]

Thanks. I'll see if I can put together a parts list for the server, and let you and anyone else who may be knowledgeable have a look.

[JustADude]

I think it had 10 SATA connectors. How do I know which ones can be used for the array?

If it works like the board I have they ALL can. The controller looks at all the SATA drives plugged into the board and says "Hey, which ones do you want to hook up and how?"

[MadMike]

OK, I'm getting confused again. I know you advised me not to use the board I linked to, so I'll just use it as an example.

I think it had 10 SATA connectors. How do I know which ones can be used for the array?

[JustADude]

How would I exclude one of the drives from the array if I'm using a motherboard that supports it, rather than a RAID card? With the card, I assume that all I'd have to do would be to hook one drive up directly to the board and not the card.

As RichS said, there'll be a separate place to plug the drives in, plus you'll have to go in and build the array once the physical drives are installed. It'll either be done in the BIOS setup, or during another setup screen that comes up during boot.

I, personally, would avoid that ABIT board, since the reviews seem to indicate it's got some issues. Otherwise, the specs on it look great, though.

[RichS]

How would I exclude one of the drives from the array if I'm using a motherboard that supports it, rather than a RAID card? With the card, I assume that all I'd have to do would be to hook one drive up directly to the board and not the card.

With the motherboards I've seen that have onboard RAID, they have separate SATA or IDE adapters for RAID, so it's almost the same as a separate card - just attach the separate drive to the normal SATA or IDE adapter on the board.

I do separate drives on my HTPC also - one smaller main drive for the OS & downloaded Internet TV, and one separate drive for recording. Another good reason for this is if the OS has a problem, I can just format & reload without losing my recorded content.

I've updated my wish list recently.

Looks good to me - the 7800GS card will be more than enough to do the job, and I like the upgrades both to the Hauppauge TV card and the Corsair memory.

[MadMike]

I'll also once more recommend getting a small, separate physical drive for the OS, so you don't have R/W bottlenecks if the system has to do something during playback.

Understood, and that brings me to another question...

How would I exclude one of the drives from the array if I'm using a motherboard that supports it, rather than a RAID card? With the card, I assume that all I'd have to do would be to hook one drive up directly to the board and not the card.

I've updated my wish list recently. On the recommendations I've received so far, I've doubled the RAM, switched to a Haupage TV card, and added a video card (I could have sworn I had one listed, but there didn't seem to be one when I checked.)

If this looks OK, I guess the next thing to do would be to put together a server. I've seen some motherboards that handle a large number of drives, but I also noticed that some of them have dual LAN ports. How would you use something like that?


EDIT: How does this motherboard look for the server?

[JustADude]

To answer your questions in order:

Yes, that means that the MoBo has a RAID controller built into it, so you wouldn't have to get a controller. Just be sure it's SATA 3GB/s standard, since that's the fastest out there.

The drives don't all HAVE to be the same size, but the array works most smoothly and efficiently if they all are. You'll need to add up however many you need to get the total storage, then add one more for the parity checking to get the total number of drives. I'll also once more recommend getting a small, separate physical drive for the OS, so you don't have R/W bottlenecks if the system has to do something during playback.

Just about any processor created since the birth of WinXP should do you just fine. You'd want to get at least 1Ghz, but I don't think you can find one under that these days anyway.

[MadMike]

Oh no, please tell me you aren't seriously thinking of setting up the P2 as a server.

Well, not anymore. I started to realize that as I was looking at parts. I guess there's no getting away from having a separate server. So I'll have to put together a wish list just for that. I guess I won't need speakers, and I have an old CRT sitting around. Maybe I can find space for it in the laundry/storage area. It's not like I'd need a comfortable place to sit at it and use it, unless the thing goes down and for initial setup, and even then I wouldn't have to be on it for long.

I've been looking at RAID cards. Looks like I'm going to have to go SATA, because the IDE ones I saw look like they can only handle four drives max.

I think I saw a couple that can handle 12 drives. I don't know that I'd need that many, but the more the better. I also saw some motherboards that say they're RAID-capable. Does that mean I wouldn't need the card?

I'm starting to get the idea, I think. Someone mentioned that RAID-5 would be the way to go. Just one question that I can't seem to find the answer to -- do all the drives have to be the same size? By the time I'd need to add to the thing, the bigger drives will probably come down in price, and I might want to add some of them. What I'd really like is to use some of the terrabyte drives I've seen on Newegg, but they're still hellishly expensive.

Any idea what type of processor would be good to go with? Maybe the one I have for the media center?

Personally, you can't go wrong with Hauppauge.

Thanx, I'll have a look at that one later. I'm sure that one would be good, I think I saw that one listed somewhere in the software I'm using.

[RichS]

Oops! I guess I didn't go over the previous posts completely...

Since you already have the MediaPortal software, I'd stick with XP Home then. Looks like MediaPortal has the same capabilities as XP MCE for free. If I didn't get XP MCE for free, I'd probably give that a try. If Microsoft pushes it's DRM further, I just might anyway, either that or Myth TV.

I don't know if that TV card's good or not either. Personally, you can't go wrong with Hauppauge. I use a Win-TV 150 MCE, and video quality is great! I found this on NewEgg - it's a little bit more $ than what you have listed, but I bet it'd be well worth it. As far as graphics, I didn't see one listed, but any good card with an S-Video output would do well.

Other than that, it looks like you'd be set with that system.

As far as servers, I haven't a clue. Only server I worked on was an ancient dual P166.

[Shabo]

Oh no, please tell me you aren't seriously thinking of setting up the P2 as a server. That would be heinously slow. There would be no way you could put anything greater then W98 on it (2k would take up too much system resources) and you probably wouldn't have a good playback rate. At all.

I was talking with one of my fellow techie geeks, and he was saying that for Raid arrays, you only need a raid controller, hard drives, and case, and that you could set one up for $800. He was also saying that the cheapest way to get the network to all of your tvs would be to buy original XBoxes, mod them out, then install windows media center on them and network them to the raid server. This could be easier said than done, but I'll see if I can find anything online that is a how-to kind of thing.

Ok, I found a nice article with step by step instructions on setting up a raid array on a regular PC. RAID

Here is another article of how someone created a setup with just raid controllers, drives, and a ps, and done as cheaply as possible. You might want to get bigger HDs though, lol. Poor Mans Raid

This is how to mod the Xbox to be able to play things on it from the network. Xbox Mod

[MadMike]

Looking over your list, I'd boost the RAM another 512MB for 1 GB. Just get another 512MB stick to take advantage of dual-channel.

Someone had mentioned that previously. I meant to add another stick, but forgot.

Are you thinking of doing more with it eventually than just media storage? If you want to do more, then maybe get WinXP MCE over WinXP Home.

The only other thing I'd want to do with it is record TV, hence the TV card. I know nothing about TV cards, so I have no idea if the one I picked is any good or not. What would be the advantages of MCE? The MediaPortal software I've chosen to use is free, and from what I've seen from the screen shots, looks a lot like MCE.

I didn't see a graphics card listed - what are you going to be using, and are you going to have this connected to a TV?

Hmm, I could have sworn I had one listed. My son has a spare one that I might be able to use, but I thought I added one just in case.

Yes, the whole idea is to hook it up to the TV thru S-video, and the stereo thru an optical connection. That's why I added a sound card, instead of just using the onboard sound that all motherboards have these days.

Another thought I had about a separate server -- how much of a machine do you need for a server? My son has quite a few computers just sitting around, although they're a bit old. I think the best one he had was something like a 300mhz Pentium 2.