Build advice - enough power?

[mindhorn]

Hii,

I’m building a new, low power machine to replace an existing one which is on the way out, but I want it to act as a NAS as well as a TV server (running Media Portal), so I want it to have low power consumption, especially when idling.

It will be running either Windows 10 or Windows Server (not sure which just yet).

The CPU I'm considering is the AMD 5370, paired with the ASRock AM1H-ITX, which has built in graphics capability.
I'm going to use an SSD which I already have and have bought a 4GB WD RED HDD.
The only other consideration is my dual tuner DVB-S2 tuner card.

What I want to know is if this will be powerful enough for my needs?
I would like the possibility to run media portal server, iTunes and maybe Plex with single 1080p transcoding at a future date, as well some kind of media server for serving up music to my Sonos system.

Basically, my ideal replacement would be a NAS which could accommodate a TV card, but such a thing doesn't exist!
I want to keep costs down.

Any thoughts?

 

[T_Minus]

If it's your TV/media system + NAS I would personally want to be able to handle h.265 which I don't know if that AMD can handle, I know the newer-gen Intels can handle it too. How many devices streaming at once?

It's kind of a catch-22 depending on your utilization when you say "TV ServeR" do you mean it's going to be serving devices like Ipads, roku, etc, or that it will be HDMI-->TV or will each device be able to transcode itself? If you're going to a ROKU and have h.265 content you MUST have enough system to transcode on the fly since roku device can't do h.265 itself locally on the fly, and if you're doing h265 then off-load it with a newer CPU architecture for freeing CPU cycles for everything else you want to do

I'm not sure what that AMD 5370 cost, but if you don't need h.265 you can get the Intel E3 v2 Xeon for ~$100 for a 4C/8T that will blow the AMD out of hte water, and sure it wont be 25w max tdp but you could get one with like 65w iirc and it will idle around 20w (no hdd counted in this). The Xeon will also be a 3.xghz core that can turbo to even faster, smokes that AMD 2.2ghz with no turbo, no hyper threading, etc.

Bigger budget get a newer intel cpu that can off-load the transcoding and even more cpu cycles

 

[sd11]

I have this setup for a small NAS running openmediavault. My requirements have drastically reduced over the years and this has been serving me well. It's used for encrypted storage and plex.

I have an aTV4 and an android tv. Both are capable of playing h265. The AMD cannot play 1080 h265. The CPU load generally stays pretty low. Whatever plex seems to be doing, there is a bit of a load on the CPU.

It's low power which was my primary concern when I bought it. I'm sure you could get a pentium or something similar which would give you very similar power consumption but better performing.

 

[MiniKnight]

AMD's message with Ryzen was "we know our other CPUs were terrible". These are fast and the APU ones with Vega are coming later.

I'd get Intel as @T_Minus mentioned until the Ryzen + Vega APUs are out.

 

[mindhorn]

Thanks for all the replies.

@T_Minus
Regarding h.265, I would like it to be able to handle that - I don't want the server to be immediately out of date when it's built.

I'll definitely be running 1080p and streaming to probably a maximum of 2 devices at once - this will be the exception though. Mostly it would be one 1080p steam and perhaps some music streaming too.
Summing up, I will connect to the server from a client on a FireTV box, in order to set recordings and then to stream them later.
I also want the facility to stream my dvd/blu-ray rips.
The ability to handle 4K would be a bonus, but I can't see us upgrading the TV for a few years.

An AMD 5370 is around £50 here in the UK, so it's cheap.

My budget is around £300 to cover cpu, motherboard, memory, psi, case plus sundries (hard drives are taken care of).
I need the mother board to handle at least one additional 3.5" drive and have a pci Express slot for my TV card.

I've been advised about Xeon chips before, but can't see how to get anything within my budget.
Even second hand on eBay here in the UK, they seem expensive.

Can you point me to anything to fit my needs (factoring in low power use)?

 

[mindhorn]

@sd11

Thanks for the comments about your setup (AMD 5370).
Seems like that one may be a little under powered for my needs, but then again it's a bargain!

I think I'd need to double the cost of cpu and motherboard, in order to go Intel. I've seen an i3 with TDP of around 35w, which costs about £100 and the same for a mini-it's mobo.

I forgot to mention that my server will also do backups - nothing too heavy, just photos, music and video, as well as backing up my phone.

Seems like I may have to go down the i3 route, unless someone can suggest a cheap way to go Xeon (mini-itx too?).

This machine will be idle most of the time, hence my need for low power.
Most usage will be evenings and weekends.

No gaming, not connected directly to TV and memory-wise I'm looking to use 8GB of RAM - can do more if needed.

 

[keybored]

Have you looked at any of the prebuilt small business/home servers? e.g., Lenovo TS140?
This currently shows up as £200 shipped (from NJ) new: Lenovo ThinkServer TS140 Tower Server System #70A40083UX | eBay
It comes with an i3-4150 (2C,4T), 8GB of ECC RAM, and no storage or OS. You can fit 4 3.5" drives in it if you want to keep the DVD reader; otherwise, you'll be able to fit 5. The mobo has 2 DisplayPort connectors. You can easily convert that to HDMI with a cheap adapter. PSU is rated at 280W. These machines are virtually silent at idle. I have an older model with an i3-4130 and it consumes 13-15W at idle running Windows off of an SSD.
Lenovo also makes a Xeon version of this tower which ships with an E3-1226v3, if I remember correctly. This version will likely be closer to £300 and it may be better suited if you have lots of transcoding going on.
Dell PowerEdge T20 is also an option. Specs, capabilities, and price range are basically the same.

 

[ttabbal]

It sounds like you plan for the server to be a pretty basic file server. That doesn't need a lot of CPU, even running complex filesystems like ZFS. The media type doesn't matter to the server, unless it has to transcode it. h265/h264/mpeg2 are all just bits to push around.

If you want the server to just push files around, your AMD is fine. I ran a file server for many years on an older AMD 3-core. It's still running as a backup host. It's actually overkill for the job.

If you want to transcode with Plex or similar, then you need more CPU. I think it is probably more cost effective to upgrade the TV boxes when needed than to have enough power to transcode. Having the ability is nice if you want to do remote streaming, where bandwidth might be limited.

For RAM, ECC if your platform supports it is nice for peace of mind. More is better for caching and such, but likely not necessary for you based on what you want it to do.

 

[mindhorn]

@keybored

I did consider both the Lenovo and Dell, but both are a lot more expensive here.
I missed out on a good deal for the previous Lenovo model.

The one you linked from eBay...unfortunately the shipping is more expensive than the computer and that's before the customs duty and tax.

 

[mindhorn]

@ttabbal

You're right that's it's mainly a file server, other than the need to seat the TV card for recordings and some transcoding.

I'm pricing up an i3 setup for comparison to the AMD rig.

Thanks All for the advice so far!

 

[mindhorn]

Having priced up the 2 builds, it's going to cost £405 for an Intel i3 7100t setup (35w TDP), Gigabyte GA-H270N-WIFI, 8GB RAM, case, cooler and PSU.

Alternatively, for an AMD 5370, ASRock AM1H-ITX and the other bits, it'll be £270, so a fair difference.

I may just pony up for the more expensive components and use this as my main PC as well, setting it to go into standby when not in use, then to wake on LAN, when called by TV a client, SONOS speaker, etc.