Quote:
Originally Posted by
the_beast666 
Are you intending on doing anything else with it?
If not a Dual Core Celeron E1200 with 4GB ECC DDR2 could manage that as well as the dual socket system you have listed...
Quote:
Originally Posted by
kapone
However, that being said, for your listed objectives, this is WAY WAY overkill.
Blu Ray content = max 50mbps.
x 5 rooms = 250mbps
That's 1/4th of a wired gigabit connection. An Atom 330 could saturate that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
xuniman
... but I personnaly don't think you need a high power server for these types of applications. I put a E5200 on this MB and I'm pretty confident that I won't need to worry about the processing power. My usage scenario is very similar to yours and it just doesn't take a lot of horsepower to saturate a Gig ENET connection so why have it.
Just to kind of prove the cpu power needed to stream to myself, I set up a test this morning using my backup server. I copied a BluRay rip to it 3 times (it normally doesn't serve media so it had no files on it). I then streamed each copy to each of the 3 computers I have that can play a full HD stream (only 3 pcs available - sorry I couldn't test all 5 streams you mentioned). I did play a 4th 720p stream on my laptop though just to stress the server as much as possible though.
All 4 streams played back with no issues or stuttering.
So, the question I bet you're asking now is 'what hardware was in this serving powerhouse to provide such performance?'
A Pentium III. Running at 750MHz, 768MB SDRAM. Single 32 bit 33MHz PCI bus, containing an Intel Pro/1000 MT desktop gigabit NIC and a 3Ware 7506-8 8 channel IDE RAID card with 4x80GB & 4x120GB IDE disks (various manfs) in 2 separate RAID5 arrays.
So if my 750MHz P3 can do it, why do you need 8 cores@2266MHz, with over 10 times the RAM?
Note that I am not suggesting you buy a P3 to do the job, just maybe have a think about the reasons why you want to go with just about the most powerful system you can fit into a single case to accomplish what is actually a task with very low cpu requirements.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
kapone
As far as fast RAID-6 speeds are concerned, that's a function of your RAID card (in your case), not the system. The same RAID card will probably offer 98% of the throughput on a system that's 1/4th the size (or even less), than what you have listed.
As stated, the RAID card & disks are pretty much the only things that matters as far as disk read/write speeds are concerned (and to be honest, for these multi-spindle arrays for media serving, even the disks are largely irrelevant). Extra cpu is useless & a waste of money.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
kapone
That also being said, it's your money. Knock yourself out.
True. But I just don't feel comfortable letting someone spend ~$2,000 more than they need to for no benefit in order to achieve their aims after asking for advice...
Not trying to tell you what to do with your cash, just to (politely) inform you that you are being a bit silly. If I were in your shoes & had the money available, I would save the cash on the processors, board & RAM and put it towwards a nicer TV or a (lot) of new BluRays instead.
