Mini ITX media machines/ servers

[david1701]

Hi Guys,

I'm looking to upgrade my home server as its big and hot and power hungry (well it was a gaming machine once....) so I can pull it out tweak it and make it into a photoshop monster instead.

Thinking I need a sexy little case with 4 2 tb drives raided up in there to basically allow maybe 1tb for media another for personal images and 2 for whatever I'm working on atm all raided up, does that seem reasonable? It's gonna be hooked up to a gigabit switch running to both ports on my desk and the wireless router downstairs. It will also be talking to my vps over the internet but afaik that shouldn't be an issue as the vps does a lot of the heavy lifting.

For media I'm hoping to go silent/fanless so I guess a small sexy case, low powered atom and either a flashdrive running linux and xbmc or a small ssd and windows so it can be used for work/school stuff by whoever wants to. I'm stuck here on whether wireless N is enough to stream tv sensibly (I think the most data heavy things I run are 1520kbps so I know the numbers work out but its the practicality). I really don't want to run network cables around the house where they aren't already. Need vga and if poss hdmi on the mobo as well as wifi/audio.

I'm stuck on specific component choices, been wandering around mini-itx.com and I'm happy on cases (aesthetic choice basically for the media one and cheap/well equipped for the server) and hdd/ram choices, but which mobo/processor loses me, the last time I specced a pc from scratch its e6850 was hardcore and with my laptop it was just picking the best I could afford (i7mkI at the time) I hear good things about atoms and that the nsecond gen of i series processors are very very energy efficient (going for smooth, cool and quiet as a priority here).

Basically who's brains can I pick?

 

[Acyclo]

I have an Intel D510MO motherboard/CPU combo unit with 1G of ram running freeNAS 0.7.1 and I'm very happy with it. Fanless and very cool running, it might be the perfect solution BUT it only has two SATA sockets. It does however have a PCI slot.

 

[Dan B]

At the risk of complicating the issue further ... if you don't want to run ethernet cables everywhere and are unsure whether wireless will meet your needs, look at Ethernet Over Mains ("Homeplug"). We're using it here - not so much for bandwidth concerns as because it means the media PC (actually an old laptop) can be entirely diskless and boot over the network - it's pretty much fit and forget

 

[Acyclo]

@Dan B

At this risk of topic drift can I ask what OS you PXE boot, and how you set up the TFTP server etc?

 

[david1701]

I've moved over to wireless N so now pretty happy as sd streams over it great as long as you got more than 2 bars.

xbmc can be bootable Acyclo or put on a very very light linux distro, my friend runs it on his server attached to his house's tv

 

[david1701]

At the risk of complicating the issue further ... if you don't want to run ethernet cables everywhere and are unsure whether wireless will meet your needs, look at Ethernet Over Mains ("Homeplug"). We're using it here - not so much for bandwidth concerns as because it means the media PC (actually an old laptop) can be entirely diskless and boot over the network - it's pretty much fit and forget

what range do you have these on, I'm tempted to try a set to get network to my workshop, runs off its own circuit though so would need creative wiring I think

 

[Downward]

Not sure if it suits but the HP Proliant Microserver is £229.99 with £100 Cashback,

 

[twowheelsgood]

I scrapped my media server PC and replaced it with a NAS (network attached storage). I got a 3TB Western Digital Mybook pro, which simply plugs into the wireless access point.

This is actually a small Linux machine on which you can get root install anything. For example a bittorrent client and a small webserver. Best of all, it uses about 12W in use and 5W when the disk is spun-down. It runs 24/7 and I rsync it weekly to another PC for backup.

The best thing is it cost only £20 more than buying a 3TB disk on it's own. It's absolutely the most useful bit of tech I've bought in years.

As for media playback the secret is hardware acceleration which XBMC supports really well. I use an old 45W althon dual core, but with a new, low end (6450) radeon dedicated graphics card which supports UDV3. I believe the latest low-end cpus from AMD have graphics built in which just as capable (http://techreport.com/articles.x/19937). Forget atom, intel graphics suck.

Your playback machine isn't going to be too efficient with conventional ATX power supplies, most just don't work well with very low loads, even good ones. The only way around this is to use PICO PSUs (google it) with a power brick. But as it'll only be on when viewing then I wouldn't worry about it, it just won't add up to all that much.

Passive cooling? Absolute waste of time and you'll be very unlikely to pull it off completely without random overheating and crashing. Use large heatsinks and 12cm fans and run them at 600rpm (around 7-8 volts) - 50p worth of terminal block and some 1W diodes will do this. With everything muted, I can hear the buzzing of my TV power supply but I can't hear my PC even with my ear against the case. Also remember putting your storage on the network means the rotating platters can be put in a cupboard somewhere which'll stop much of the noise.

Ultimately media PCs will become pretty much obsolete as modern TV integrate better media streaming tech. The NAS will still be useful here as it supports DLNA and other protocols.

Hope that helps. I wasted so many hours of my life doing this....

 

[david1701]

always good to know 2wheels thanks for writing it. Kinda fits with my thinking atm Though I'm not fixed on using remote PCs as I think consoles/new tvs can share a lot of that load....

 

[MossCommuter]

I got a 3TB Western Digital Mybook pro, which simply plugs into the wireless access point.

How noisy is it spun down?

 

[twowheelsgood]

The mybook is completely silent spun down. There is a simple plug-top power supply like a mobile phone. It's a completely passive device. When working it's a 5400rpm disk which is pretty quiet. It does need a bit of clear air or it'll run hot. Mine is in a largish cupboard and it's OK.

I measured 4.7W on my little meter while spun down and peaking at 12.6W working (generally a watt or two less). My media PC is 67W and 105W respectively. My desktop is 107W and up to 210W.

Another nice thing is that it acts like a "personal cloud" and you can set it up to deliver your media anywhere across the net. It's a really fantastic device and an active modding community. Quite a cool toy on which to learn a bit of Linux too.

For what it cost, even if you hate it and re-use the hard disk you haven't lost much. As you can tell I'm very impressed with this device. I've given away an awful lot of old hardware I used to re-cycle as servers lately. About the only thing you need to put a bit of though into is backup as it's not a redundant disk (rsync over ssh is your friend).