Workstation/light-gaming machine and server

Hexen

I'd like advice on two builds.
1. A general purpose, but capable, PC that would have a decent lifespan.
2. A server running Windows Home Server 2011 (I have an OEM copy of this, which was cheap).

1. What is your budget? [€1300-1800]

2. What will be the main purpose of the computers?
Computer no. 1: General Purpose Home PC (Workstation & Light Gaming) - database software, some photo editing and video encoding, general Office software; I'd like to retain the option of doing some light gaming but not the major purpose of the machine. I would like it to be fast, however, and to have a decent lifespan of about 5+ years.
Computer no. 2: Running Windows home server 2011 (file serving, limited transcoding of media files, remote access). Also running Stablebit Drivepool and Scanner.

3. Do you need a copy of Windows? Yes for computer no. 1 - probably Windows 8

4. Can you use any parts from an old computer? Some hard-drives (Crucial M4 60GB SSD; WD Green Caviar 2TB x 2; WD Blue Caviar 500GB)

5. Do you need a monitor? No

5a. If yes, what size do you need. N/A

5b. If no, what resolution is your current monitor and do you plan to upgrade in the near future? a) 1920x1080 Resolution (Samsung P2370). b) Perhaps - it might be useful to run two monitors for some tasks (transcribing photographs of documents, etc).

6. Do you need any of these peripherals? Keyboard, mouse and speakers.

7. Are you willing to try overclocking? Yes for General purpose PC. I'm hoping this will extend the life of the machine. I guess underclocking the server cpu might be an option.

8. How can you pay? Bank Transfer/Credit Card/Laser

9. When are you purchasing? In the next week or so

10. If you need help building it, where are you based? Dublin

Workstation build
Item|Price
Intel Core i5-3570K Box, LGA1155|€205.99
ASRock Z77 Extreme4, Sockel 1155, ATX|€122.84
8GB-Kit Corsair Vengeance Low Profile schwarz PC3-12800U CL9|€62.41
Samsung SSD 840 250GB SATA 6Gb/s|€141.99
Samsung SH-224BB bare schwarz|€16.92
Thermalright Silver Arrow SB-E Extreme|€74.98
FRACTAL DESIGN Define R4 Arctic White|€94.08
Wavemaster MX-3+|€39.99
be quiet! Pure Power L8 CM 530 watt|€68.99
Windows 8 OEM|€99.95
ASUS EAH7770-2GD5, AMD Radeon HD 7770, 2GB, PCI-Express|€131.20
WD Caviar Green 2TB|Reuse
Shipping (Hardwareversand)|€18.99
Total|€1,078.33I guess the main question would be whether to go with an equivalent Haswell PCU (Intel Core i5-4670K Box, ohne Lüfter, LGA1150) or not. Although marginally more expensive, The LGA 1150 socket will have a better upgrade path and enhance the longevity of the machine but I've no clue what motherboard to get with it.

If the build sticks with Ivy Bridge, is the motherboard overkill?

Would the Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO(€28.37) be a better cost/performance choice for a CPU cooler than the Thermalright?
I'd like the PC to have a fairly cheap graphics card so it has some gaming capability but it's not a major priority. If I buy the above GPU (ASUS EAH7770) I'd likely pop it into my daughter's PC (with AMD Phenom II X4 965 CPU) and take her old GPU (ASUS EAH6670) for this build.

I'd like this PC to be fairly quiet and discrete. Will this build deliver that? Should I invest in some case fans at this point or wait to see what the noise level is like (it's got to be an improvement on my current set-up)?
Are there any other component choices that could be improved upon?

Server Build
Item|Price
Intel Pentium G2020 Box, LGA1155|€50.69
ASRock B75 Pro3-M - Socket 1155 - Micro-ATX|€64.95
be quiet! STRAIGHT POWER BQT E9-450W 80+Gold|€72.68
4GB Corsair XMS3 PC3-12800U CL11-11-11-30|€31.75
Nanoxia Deep Silence One White, ATX, ohne Netzteil|€98.21
WD Caviar Green 3000GB, SATA 6Gb/s x 2|€230.98
WD Caviar Green 2TB Sata 6Gb/s|€88.19
WD Caviar Green 2TB Sata 6GB/s|Reuse
WD Caviar Blue 500GB Sata 3Gb/s|Reuse
Crucial M4 60GB SSD|Reuse
Samsung Story 2TB|Reuse
Shipping (Komplett)|€9.99
Total|€647.44
I have somewhere in the region of 2.5 TB of movies, TV and music files which I'd like this device to be able to serve to my HTPC (no transcoding needed) and, more occasionally, to a variety of mobile devices (transcoding needed). As storage space increases this is likely to grow.

There's also about 300GB of family photos and videos which I'd also like it to serve. These items will also need to be backed up (probably to the external drive). The required storage space for this will also increase.

There's an additional 200GB of work related documents that the server will have to store/share and back-up.

The server will also have to back-up one laptop (about 420 GBs) one HTPC (about 60 GBs) and two PCs (one has about 200 GBs and the other, to be built will probably have a similar amount - both of these have/will have a secondary 2TB drive however).

The server itself will have to be backed up - probably to the external hard-drive.

I'd also like the server to host individual share folders for PCs/Laptops on the network where documents could be saved.

I'd like most of the content on the server to be duplicated. Essential/irreplaceable content would be backed up to the external drive.

I'd like the server to be pretty quiet and low powered (it probably won't be stored in a cupboard). Will the equipment selected above provide that? Should I invest in a CPU cooler?

The mobo has been selected on the basis that it's the cheapest one I could find on hardwarversand that had 8 Sata connections (although only 3 of these are Sata3 6GB/s) which allows for some room for growth. Hardwarversand have none in stock at the moment, however, so I'll have to get this from Komplett.

Allowing for the addition of at least 2 more hard drives, is the selected PSU overpowered?

Are the WD Greens the best choice for this kind of machine?

Sorry for the long post and thanks in advance

marco_polo

Just on the server CPU, normally a celeron or pentium is a good choice for a HTPC/Server build, however if you want the server to transcode on the fly for other devices you may need an i3, if your software of choice supports quicksync preferably an i3-3225 (Or the Haswell equivalent).

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/trinity-vs-ivy-bridge_11.html

It of course depends on whether the software you will be using can take advantage of the QuickSync acceleration, handbrake for example uses opencl for acceleration instead.

Hexen

Very good question and the answer is that I'm not sure - possibly Servio or Tversity for streaming to Android devices, which is what I use now. As far as I know neither of which use quick sync. Lots of people advise getting an i3 or even an i5 for transcoding but, for the moment at least, I doubt I'd be transcoding more than one HD movie to an android device at any one time.

From what I can see G2020 is sufficient to transcode a single 1080p stream? And it is quite a bit cheaper.

marco_polo

Hexen wrote: »

Very good question and the answer is that I'm not sure - possibly Servio or Tversity for streaming to Android devices, which is what I use now. As far as I know neither of which use quick sync. Lots of people advise getting an i3 or even an i5 for transcoding but, for the moment at least, I doubt I'd be transcoding more than one HD movie to an android device at any one time.

From what I can see G2020 is sufficient to transcode a single 1080p stream? And it is quite a bit cheaper.

I can't see that either of them have any GPU accelerated support, so if it is just using CPU transcoding I reckon that it should perform reasonably close to, if not the same the i3 (depending on whether transcoding gets a slight hyperthreading boost or not, not sure about this, but it wouldn't be a massive boost anyway).

You seem to have your homework done anyway so if your research indicates the G2020 is sufficent then fire ahead.

Hexen

I'm finding it hard to differentiate between the available motherboards for the new i5-4670K cpu.

These appear to be the options for my budget. I'm unlikely to ever need SLI, 64GB of RAM, to use RAID. Any opinion on what might be a decent board and safe bet?

Item|Form|Features|SATA|RAID|PCIe x 1|PCIe x 16|USB 3|WOL|Audio|Max RAM|RAM Speed|SLI|Crossfire|Price
MSI Z87-G41 PC Mate|ATX|?|6xSata600|0,1,5,10|2|2|3|Yes|8-Kanal Realtek ALC887|64GB|1066-2133|No|Yes|€94.46
MSI Z87M-G43|mATX|?|6xSata600|0,1,5,10|2|2|4|Yes|8-Kanal Realtek ALC892|64GB|1066-2133|No|Yes|€106.43
Gigabyte Z87M-D3H|mATX|15µ gold plated CPU socket |6xSata600|0,1,5,10|2|2|6|Yes|Realtek ALC892/7.1 HD Audio|32GB|?|?|Yes|€108.95
ASRock Z87M Pro4|mATX|?|6xSata600|0,1,5,10|?|2|6|Yes|7.1 Kanal Realtek ALC892|32GB|1066-2133|No|Yes|€112.28
ASUS Z87M-Plus|mATX|Passive Chip Cooling|6xSata600|0,1,5,10|2|2|6|Yes|8-Kanal Realtek ALC887|32GB|1333-2800|No|Yes|€117.21
ASRock Z87 Pro3|ATX|Intel® HD Graphics 4600|6xSata600|0,1,5,10|3|1|6|Yes|7.1 Kanal Realtek ALC892|32GB|1066-2600|No|No|€119.55
MSI Z87-G55|ATX|?|6xSata600|0,1,5,10|4|3|6|Yes|8-Kanal Realtek ALC1150|64GB|1066-2133|Yes|Yes|€122.00
ASRock Z87 Pro4|ATX|Intel® HD Graphics 4600|6xSata600|0,1,5,10|2|2|6|Yes|7.1 Kanal Realtek ALC892|32GB|1066-2600|No|Yes|€133.25
ASUS Gryphon Z87|mATX|Passive Chip Cooling|6xSata600|0,1,5,10|1|3|6|Yes|8-Kanal HD-Audio|32GB|1333-2800|Yes|Yes|€145.12
Gigabyte Z87X-D3H|ATX|?|6xSata600|RAID|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|?|€145.72
MSI Z87-G45 Gaming|ATX|?|6xSata600|0,1,5,10|4|3|6|Yes|8-Kanal Realtek ALC1150|64GB|1066-2133|Yes|Yes|€146.90
ASRock Z87 Extreme3|ATX|Intel® HD Graphics 4600|6xSata600|0,1,5,10|1|2|6|Yes|7.1 Kanal Realtek ALC892|32GB|1066-2600|Yes|Yes|€146.90
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Hexen

I guess relevant to the above: i5-4670k 4.8Ghz Overclock @ MSI Z87-G45 (1.295v)
Cooled with a "scythe $50 water cooler" apparently.