HTPC + NAS proposed build review requested

Combination HTPC and NAS

I think it's always better when you split them up. But you can do it. It should work fine.






GIGABYTE GA-Z77X-UD4H LGA 1155 Intel Z77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard with UEFI BIOS
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128583
$164.99

That board is expensive but I am not sure you need any of the reason why it costs more. I'd opt for an Asus with Intel Lan for the same price (high end) or an Asrock Z77 for $60 cheaper. I like both better. But that board should work.
Does it have HDMI ? That's really all you need. HDMI + Intel Lan + USB3.0 are the three important things. You can add intel NIC card later... if you need great network performance.


Do you realize why that board is $60 more ???

I am not sure you need 3 x16 slots for triple video cards. one x16 or two x16 slots would be enough on a cheaper board in case you wanted to upgrade or add a GPU. It's unlikely you'd have more than 1 GPU card if at all.
Save your $50 and look at an Asrock Z77 3 or 4 level for $89-$109.

Intel Core i3-3225 Ivy Bridge 3.3GHz LGA 1155 55W Dual-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 4000 BX80637I33225
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116774
$144.99


Very nice CPU but you can get i5 3570k for about the same price ($205 total with Asrock motherboard) with the Microcenter bundle deal if you have one near you. $169 for i5 plus you get $40 off a motherboard.


SAMSUNG 840 Series MZ-7TD120BW 2.5" 120GB SATA III Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147188
$109.99


Very nice SSD. Best 3 SSD's are SAMSUNG840, Plextor M5 and Vertex4 IMO. Those are mainstream normal good choices
On high end the big brothers are SAMSUNG840PRO (pro has better nand inside and faster speeds) The Plextor M5 PRO, and the OCZ Vector.
You'll do well with that SSD.


G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-4GBXL
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231427
$29.99


Spend $12 and get 8GB. Get 1866mhz too.


SILVERSTONE Black Aluminum / Steel Grandia Series SST-GD08B ATX Media Center / HTPC Case
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811163196
$155.99



Freakin' really nice case. Well done.



Western Digital WD Green WD20EZRX 2TB IntelliPower 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236404
$89.99 x 4 = $359.96


You can get RED for the same price right now. Longer warranty. No head parking issues if you ran Raid 5 (you mentioned earlier)
You can not run any hardware RAID with green drives they have TLER issues.



SeaSonic X series SS-400FL Active PFC F3 400W ATX12V Fanless 80 PLUS Platinum Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151097
$119.99


Expensive but very nice. A fan Rosewill platinum or 80% gold is near silent for half price though. As is a Seasonic Variant with a fan like Antec Neo. You might want the fan with that many HDD's inside a HTPC case.





JRiver MC18

JRemote via iPad, iPhones

(JRiver remote solution for Surface Pro pending)




Jriver is a good player but a poor front end. Do you plan to use mediabrowser?



MS SyncToy for sync / backup (unless a RAID solution is better and I can figure out how to set it up)

I'd look into Flexraid. It has drive pooling and parity backup. Combine $10 a month crashplan and you can back up all 8TB to the cloud and rebuild any single failed drive locally with flexraid software raid and it's parity based backup.

Software Raid > Hardware raid. Raid 5 is basically software raid. I'm confused if you want to run hardware or software raid. Raid 5 is not really much different than flexraid. Flexraid allows you to read the contents of your drives on any machine. You don't need a raid controller, and you can rebuild a failed drive from the parity backup. You can add or subtract both full or empty drives from your storage pool.

How much storage do you need? 8TB ?

How were you planing to run or set up your raid 5 ?

Please stop saying this as it is just incorrect.

This is not the first time I have corrected you on this issue.

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=780

The same exact data that you use to tout the Red drive's superiority, actually. Unless you can show me an actual study that proved that the Red drives definitely do not have head parking.

Which I am sure you cannot. You hardly ever post actual data or testing. You're rich on opinion though. Poor on fact.

Your link just sends me to the marketing page.

I am not sure what data your trying to show me.

I did see this:

Basically what I have always been saying. They make a fine basic storage drive that is good for low use and traditional systems. For a simple storage disk in a simple PC or HTPC they make sense.
But since the OP wanted or mentioned RAID5 and seemed open to the possibility I thought RED drive made more sense.

Looks like WD agrees with me.







http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5357/session/L3RpbWUvMTM2MTY2OTI5MC9zaWQvdHNBSEpDamw%3D






Do you think he should buy the Green drive for $109 over the RED drive he got for $105 for use in RAID5 ?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236404&nm_mc=OTC-pr1c3grabb3r&cm_mmc=OTC-pr1c3grabb3r-_-Hard+Drives-_-Western+Digital-_-22236404
vs.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236343&nm_mc=OTC-pr1c3grabb3r&cm_mmc=OTC-pr1c3grabb3r-_-Hard+Drives-_-Western+Digital-_-22236343

????

You really should learn how to read. Look again. I even quoted it for you.

And I never said anything about buying one over the other.

I am merely trying to correct your biased opinion that often is inaccurate.

You can get 1866mhz G.skill for $2 more. It does not require overlocking. You just stick it in the slot and it runs at that speed. The 2133mhz is on sale for $59 on Newegg with coupon code too.
But 1600mhz will work fine. Your motherboard will downclock to 1600mhz if that is what the DDR3 your using is. It would upclock to 1866mhz if you had that installed. The performance increase is small so I would not sweat it.
I run 1600mhz on all my systems (but actually just bought some 2133mhz for my HTPC)



Expensive but very nice. Hard to hate on it. But I'd probably gotten an Asrock for less $
(I have a Asus Deluxe for my desktop I paid $279 for)

Really nice. I have this for my HTPC. It's a beast. The 3570 (not k) is $199 with coupon code on newegg today. If your not overclocking it might be worth saving $30
One of the best choices available for this price.
Well done.

It will work. But 1866 for $3 or 2133mhz for $6 is also available. You need coupon code for the TRIDENT X series for $59.

SILVERSTONE Black Aluminum / Steel Grandia Series SST-GD08B ATX Media Center / HTPC Case
Not much to hate on that^ Very nice.


$105 is reasonable and those should work find. Newegg also has the 3TB seagate for $120 (7200.14)
7200rpm though.

Nice PSU.

I think you did great.

I don't think we are talking about the same thing.

Your even confusing me.

Head parking is different from no touch ramp loading technology.

Headparking was a core feature of GREEN drives for a long time under the moniker "intellipark" I believe WD has transitioned away from this feature for reliability concerns.
I believe RED does not have it, and they have discontinued it on some green product lines. It's also the reason for the reduction in warranty on green drives (conspiracy theory from another forum)
Green used to have 3 years warranty. Now RED has longer warranty and the warranty on green drives has been shortened.

That longer warranty alone would make RED a better choice at the same price point.

Nothing wrong with a green drive for a simple storage drive. But there might be a problem using it in a server, NAS or RAID set up (per WD)

Of course wd agrees with you. They need to protect their enterprise market ($$$) and want you to purchase their red drives (usually more money) which use many of the same exact parts internally.

I agree on the Red being better than the Green at the same price point based on the warranty alone.

But as you have discovered in your other thread you started at Anandtech there are others, like me, that think all of this gibberish has absolutely nothing to do with reliability especially for storage of media files.

I am not sure recommending a RED drive that sells within $10 most of the time qualifies as protecting the enterprise market. I don't see WD saying that for increased profits.
I think they actually mean it; They claim RED was designed and tested for such environments and Green is not tested or designed for that.

Well for the $30 you save you could always get a GPU card if you thought you needed more graphics power. Are you gaming ??

If not it won't matter.

1080p will look the same on HD2500 or HD4000.

HD4000 would have advantage on something like SVP.

Red drives are no where close to within $10 of an enterprise drive.

That was my point.

It was expressed wrong.

My point was RED drives sell within $10 of GREEN drives in price in most cases. So considering that RED costs about the same as GREEN I don't lend credit to your suggestion that the reason WD recommends RED and does not recommend GREEN is a matter of profit chasing, and in reality GREEN is just as good. I think you are wrong on that. I believe WD is being honest with the recommendation.

I believe WD recommends RED for NAS / 24/7 use, and applications using over 5 HDD drives because RED is actually originally designed and tested for such applications. RED has better vibration resistance ( specifically for the vibration that comes from multiple drives in a case or HDD cage /rack ) and has less aggressive head parking leading to increased endurance in those applications. The longer warranty alone probably means that even at $10 more it ends up costing WD about the same in the long run.

I do not believe your theory that GREEN is just as good, or a good choice in those applications- And that the only reason WD does not recommend them is because they want you to buy a more expensive drive. I think WD is pure of heart in the recommendation towards RED over GREEN in those situations.

My original point was RED was within $10 of GREEN (not enterprise drives) so recommending RED was not protecting the enterprise market and your point and suggestion I believed to be in error.

That's not entirely true. You can't just pick an all-time lowest price of the Red drive and use that as a price comparison against the Greens.

Today, for example, the WD Reds are $170 at Newegg and $156 at Amazon. To the best of my knowledge you can't get a Red in an external enclosure.

The Green 3TB is $140 (or $130 in an enclosure) at Newegg and $135 or $130 at Amazon.

And the green drives (especially in the enclosures) can often be had for much less.

So I think to say that there is only a $10 difference at any given time is a little disengenuous.

I just bought one yesterday for $139.

It's not really hard.

But yes you are right at the time of purchase the purchaser should weight the options and make the best choice from what is available. But it's very common for RED to sell for same price as GREEN.

I've seen 2TB for $90 and 3TB $129 on many occasions.

@ OP

When are you building this bad boy ?

It would work either way. Your E6600 could do HTPC without issues with a good video card. Not powerful, just good. (6450 for $30 would work)

All depends on what you want. I'd say go new on the HTPC leave the desktop as is and that give you an excuse to upgrade that too soon

Mechanical drives can't saturate SATAII. So either is just fine. Put the SSD on a SATAIII port.

Good luck on setting everything up.

Do you mind if I ask why? I'm planning on doing a similar-ish build soon.

I've got a lot of answers to my questions already in this thread.

Depending on what you need your NAS for... it is mostly better to have two separate machines... each one dedicated to its own task...

If the NAS will serve only one HTPC connected to the TV or AVR, it surely makes sense to have both on only one machine...

If the NAS will serve 3 smart TVs, two HTPCs, an iPhone, two iPads, family documents, tv recordings...etc... I think it is clear what the better choice should be...

I just like it better. I find the server to be most reliable when it's a pure server running 24/7 and needs almost no attention. The HTPC on the other hand gets used, turned off, restarted ect... none of which effect the server or stop a stream.

I have some local content on my desktop occasionally and when I restart or crash from a video game my wife cries because her show stopped playing in the living room. lol.

Plus, it's better if you have a 3 way set up like me where you do all the media management on the desktop and put on the server and the HTPC is a remote control only unit that just reads from the libraries on the server. A true HTPC should not need a keyboard and mouse very often IMO. Doing all in one that will not be the case. It will feel like a PC hooked up to a TV.