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Posted By: Gr8_White_North Built a new server - 10/19/13 03:12 AM
Last week I decided to recycle an old computer case and bought some used stuff off ebay and built myself a movie server and thought I would share. The inside is lined with BQuiet sound deadener so you can not hear it running when it is turned on. The hardware consists of a ATI 7770 video card, AMD 6 core processor , 4g of ram and windows 7 with Media Center that serves 3 Xbox 360s and soon an Xbox 1. It has a program called Light's Out that lets the computer sleep unless an xbox is turned on which wakes the computer. When no Xbox's are on the server shuts down after 8 minutes of inactivity. I can access the server using RDC and can control it from my main system. The nice part is only one network cable and a power cord, neat and tidy.



Posted By: nickbuol Re: Built a new server - 10/19/13 05:00 AM
Sweet!

My server is done too. Here is what I put into it:

Main components are the 120GB SSD, blu-ray drive, i5-4430, 8 GB of RAM, and six 3TB drives.

And the finished server. It is sitting right behind me at the moment because I can rip my blu-rays faster on it than on my primary desktop. So it still has a keyboard, mouse, and monitor hooked up.


Working on the HTPC now. It is in the following case:

The main guts are:
i5-4670K processor
8GB DDR3-2400 RAM (super fast)
120GB SSD
Asus Radeon HD7790 video card
Pioneer blu-ray burner

Way more processing power for the server and the HTPC than what most would want/need, but I am looking to do some serious video processing for the optimal picture and that takes more horsepower on the CPU and of course on the video card.

Crazy thing is that the HTPC boots up from power off to fully up in less than 15 seconds (that is INTO the HTPC software too).
Posted By: Gr8_White_North Re: Built a new server - 10/19/13 06:43 PM
Nice, you can never have too much power ( tim taylor voice ). Silverstone does make a really nice case that fits well in an entertainment rack. Why are you electing to use an htpc in the theater rather than stream. Are you planning to rip your Blurays to the htpc as well?
Up until now I have been streaming to my xbox 360's but they are big and power hungry and the Xbox 1 will not be an extender to windows media center. I am now moving to a Roku 3 and will add the Media Browser 3 channel. There is also a channel called MKV XSTREME that I am looking into.

Richard
Posted By: nickbuol Re: Built a new server - 10/20/13 04:15 AM
My HTPC is going to be my "stream-to" box of choice. The server, while beefy, will just be that, a machine sending the bits of data around. My HTPC is going to run things like madVR and other video processing to give me what should be the absolute best picture for in the theater since I have a 138" screen that will show less-than-perfect images pretty well. For that level of quality, I need the horsepower.

In the family room on the 50" TV, I will probably just use the XBox 360 as an extender or some sort, in the living room upstairs with the 47" TV, I am thinking about a Raspberry Pi running XBMC to stream to.

On my HTPC, I just started messing around with Media Browser Theater (don't ask me how I got the install). It is pretty slick, but has a lot of bugs. If Media Browser 3 Classic had a built in player instead of being requiring Media Center at its core, I would probably just use that instead.
Posted By: Murph Re: Built a new server - 10/21/13 12:02 PM
Nice Work!
There is nothing like that feeling after putting it all together and sending it electricity for the first time...... and it works!
It's as close as I'll get to the Doctor Frankenstein feeling.

Also, Blue LCDs FTW!
Posted By: Gr8_White_North Re: Built a new server - 10/21/13 07:41 PM
Originally Posted By: Murph
Nice Work!
There is nothing like that feeling after putting it all together and sending it electricity for the first time...... and it works!
It's as close as I'll get to the Doctor Frankenstein feeling.

Also, Blue LCDs FTW!


Mine is a frankenPuter grin I bought the mobo and processor and ram combo for 70 bux off ebay, the main hard drive is a Intel SSD from a ssd raid boot I messed with. The case I have had for over 10 yrs and the storage is a 3tb drive I pulled from my main computer.The dvd drive is one I bought for 15 bux many years ago, only there for installing the OS. I pick up hard drives when I find a mad sale. I have about 10tb between 3 computers atm.

Ha HA I looked at nicks rig many time and I just figured out that it is a keyboard sitting on it. DOH>
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