New Build - media server/general PC use/Casual gaming

Mickalus

Hi Lads,
Been saving up for a new machine to replace my old 32 bit DDR 2 machine. Primary use will be a Plex media server, media downloader etc. I'll be using it as a general use machine for internet browsing etc too with casual gaming along the way.
It will be on most of the time so want to keep it as quiet as possible and low enough power usage.

Currently using a Samsung Syncmaster monitor which is VGA only, but is a decent TN panel that does the job nicely, for now at least. Current GPU is a Radeon HD 5850. Played Tomb Raider (2013 one), Spec Ops: The Line, Mafia II and some X Com games just fine.

My current train of thought is to blow most to all of my money on the base machine only, keeping the GPU and monitor from existing until I have enough saved up for a new monitor GPU combo 6-12 months down the line.
I don't want to go budget line now as I want this machine to do me for the next half dozen years+ at least. Current machine was built circa 2007/8 I think so it's done it's part, with a few upgrades along the way.

Can buy now, also thinking of waiting until Black Friday to see if I can get all in one (new monitor and GPU too). Will have an extra 100 saved by then and might be able to scrounge some more - Any thoughts on that?


1. What is your budget? [€800]
2. What will be the main purpose of the computer?
Media Server, General PC use/Internet browsing + Casual gaming - Mainly hearthstone and CS:GO atm, but will throw whatever the machine can take at it.
3. Do you need a copy of Windows? No
4. Can you use any parts from an old computer? GPU and monitor for now - XFX Radeon HD 5850
5. Do you need a monitor? Not right now
5b. If no, what resolution is your current monitor and do you plan to upgrade in the near future? [1440x900] [Yes - once I have enough saved up]
6. Do you need any of these peripherals? No
7. Are you willing to try overclocking? [Yes - not needed initially, but want to leave the option open down the road so picked the K CPU and Z170 board]
8. How can you pay? [Any]
9. When are you purchasing? [Soon - no major panic]
10. If you need help building it, where are you based? [ DIY build ]

Here's what I was thinking of so far - should be able to play most of anything with current GPU I think. Don't care about AAA games.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-6600K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor (£220.00 @ Amazon UK)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler (£29.99 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: ASRock Fatal1ty Z170 Gaming K4 ATX LGA1151 Motherboard (£106.66 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3000 Memory (£78.87 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Western Digital Blue 3TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive (£82.98 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: XFX Radeon HD 5850 1GB Video Card (My existing card)
Case: NZXT H440 (Matte Black/Red) ATX Mid Tower Case (£99.98 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: Corsair CSM 450W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply (£42.24 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £660.72
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-09-17 12:03 BST+0100


What do you think of this build? Anything you'd change?
Thanks for looking

TerrorFirmer

Solid enough but I'd definitely include an SSD, even just a 120GB for the OS and a few primary programs - it will make a huge difference in boot-up times and general response times. That storage drive you have chosen is slow.

You could fit something like an RX470 4GB in there easily enough for a little extra by switching to an i5-6500, H170 or H110 board, use the intel stock cooler, and 8GB of standard 2133mhz ram in a single stick so you can add more later when required.

Though if you're positive you'll be overclocking and plan keeping the CPU for as long as the current machine, what you've chosen is a good choice.

Mickalus

Good spot, forgot the SSD. Had one in earlier - not sure what happened to it .

Mickalus

I added on this SSD to the above build:
Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive £79.99 Amazon UK
Taking the total to 740.71 GBP = 863.328 EUR according to xe.com today. I could probably push to that at the start of next month.

Re: HDD - any recommendations on a good drive there? 2TB would still be plenty, doesn't need to be 3. Not sure what the WD colours mean. I had seen a link on here recently but can't find it again.

I also changed it up to the i5 6500, H170 board and slower RAM (inc. SSD) as suggested which came in at £625 (=728 EUR):
PCPartPicker part list

How much difference will there be between the 2 builds, performance wise? I did look at cpuboss for a comparison but that's just the CPU, not considering the faster RAM and better(?) chipset on the motherboard.

TerrorFirmer

I'm not a whizz on hard drives to be perfectly honest, for storage what you picked would be fine but it's a 5,400rpm drive versus 7,200rpm.

Right now, there's zero difference between an i5-6500 and a 6600K at stock speeds. The advantage to the 6600K is that it can be overclocked when a time arises when you need that feature. Unlikely to be needed unless you buy a 144hz monitor, or else you decide to splash out in a €700 graphics card (these are factors where a stock 6500 will technically bottleneck, but outside of this, it's not an issue).

For gaming on a normal 60hz monitor, the i5-6500 will likely last at least 5 years+. By means of comparison, the 2500K came out in 2011 and even without overclocking, still hits 60fps in all the latest titles with a good card. An i5-6500 might get 80fps in the same scenario, but the point is that 60fps is still a rock solid performance from a 5 year old CPU and overclocking can help bridge the gap further.

Those boards also only support 2133mhz natively - at the moment faster ram does show an advantage but like the 6600K and overclocking, only really applies if you're seeking beyond 60hz gaming.

Chipset wise I wouldn't worry - Z170 will have more and better features - better connectivity, overclocking and modification options, better sound chipset, better expansion options (like M2 support) and other assorted things, but it won't offer more core performance. 90% of people wouldn't tell, or care for, any difference between H110M and Z170M.

ED E

It doesnt play with your budget but I'm all for separation of roles here.

Small, quiet, headless = Plex box
Big, loud(er), headed = Workstation/gaming PC


If you live alone maybe its an OK compromise but the glory of plex is a family member/housemate can their phone and have whatever they want on a chromecast etc. You dont want your PC on 24/7 especially if its in your room.

Mickalus

Cheers Terror - can't see myself splashing out on a €700 card in the lifetime of this PC (or ever :P ). So going for the 6600k at this stage would only really give me a potential longer life if OC'd down the line?

Ed E - I had thought of separation of duties for a while, and was looking at an i3 skylake for a small headless machine, or putting it in the front room as a dedicated HTPC headed by the TV but like you say it doesn't really play with my budget.

Plex use is mainly myself and the wife, kids use it occasionally but I have a few Kodi apps that they're trained to use safely on an android box in the front room.
Current machine is turned off at night each night, so not on 24/7 in any case.

Serephucus

Did I miss something? Why not use your existing machine as a NAS? Might not be the most power efficient thing in the world, but it's probably the difference of €2 a month or so.

I'm also a NAS/server fan. It's very handy having something you can leave on over night to download stuff, handle Plex duties, backups, all that. It also makes any maintenance on your main machine very easy, because nothing (other than games) really lives on it.

If you do decide on just the one machine, the build you have above is solid. The motherboard is quite expensive though. If you don't need something specific on it, just get something like this and save a little money: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/43tWGX/asrock-motherboard-z170pro4

K.O.Kiki

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-6500 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor (€186.00)
CPU Cooler: ARCTIC Freezer 7 Pro Rev.2 45.0 CFM Fluid Dynamic Bearing CPU Cooler (€24.92 @ Mindfactory)
Motherboard: ASRock H170M Pro4S Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard (€84.99 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Memory: Crucial 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2133 Memory (€63.58 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Storage: Crucial MX300 525GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (€126.29 @ Mindfactory)
Video Card: XFX Radeon RX 470 4GB HS Black Edition Video Card (€211.70 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Case: Corsair Carbide Series 88R MicroATX Mid Tower Case (€52.63 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Power Supply: XFX XT 500W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (€50.88 @ Mindfactory)
Total: €800.99
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-09-18 18:07 CEST+0200

Buy the CPU as TRAY since you are getting a cooler.

Mickalus

Serephucus wrote: »

Did I miss something? Why not use your existing machine as a NAS?

....

Current CPU is a 32 bit AMD Athlon 64 X2 6400+ and while it's been fantastic over the years it now struggles with some of the newer encodings. Noticeable when playing videos on the machine (plex or vlc) or remotely via Plex. Even if I kill everything else on the box so it's not competing for processing power it's the same.
"This server is not powerful enough to convert video" is the message you get.
Most things are fine but that's coming up more frequently. I find I'm having to ditch certain downloads and go find something with a different encoding or go to a direct stream online.

Not sure if there's anything can be done about that error?
Would I/O from disk help in any way? Never had an SSD in this machine. Plan on adding one soon and having this machine as a family workstation.

Cheers for all the advice so far, much appreciated

Serephucus

Ah, didn't realise the CPU was that old. Family PC it is. :P

Have you looked at unRAID before? I use it as my server's OS, and it's wonderful. I don't personally do this, but one of the use cases for unRAID is running your main machine as a VM within unRAID. You pass through your GPU in hardware, so the performance hit is usually less than 5%.

Mickalus

Serephucus wrote: »

Ah, didn't realise the CPU was that old. Family PC it is. :P

Have you looked at unRAID before? I use it as my server's OS, and it's wonderful. I don't personally do this, but one of the use cases for unRAID is running your main machine as a VM within unRAID. You pass through your GPU in hardware, so the performance hit is usually less than 5%.

Had heard of it, but never looked into it in any detail before.
Watched this just now: https://youtu.be/dpXhSrhmUXo pretty cool alright.

What dockers do you use on your server? Plex?

More food for thought

Serephucus

Yeah it's very nice. The 6.2 update adds a few nice things (dual parity, and a bunch of VM optimizations). Apparently there's some cool stuff coming in the next versions involving cloud sync and backups (a comment from Linus in a recent WAN Show).

Mickalus

Pulled the trigger today on amazon.co.uk based on the advice here.
Had also loaded up the amazon.de mindfactory.de as per K.O.KIKI's build above but after swapping and changing bits that wouldn't be shipped to me directly I got fed up and ordered from the .uk one. Price was working out pretty much the same anyway.

i5 6500
ASUS H110m board
16GB Crucial 2133 DDR4 RAM
NZXT CA-S340MB-GB Source 350 case
XFX Radeon RX 470
750 EVO 250GB SSD
2TB WD Blue
Corsair 500w bronze psu

Came in over budget by about 60/70 euro ish (waiting on Amazon to actually charge me to see how the rate worked out) but happy out with that.

New piggy bank started for a home server now Will be a while before I can get enough put aside for that but I've setup a bunch of alerts on camelcamelcamel for parts. Long term plan is to move all the 'server' functions off this box and leave it as a gaming pc / workstation. Will be an all in one for now.

Cheers!

ED E

Mickalus wrote: »

Came in over budget by about 60/70 euro ish (waiting on Amazon to actually charge me to see how the rate worked out) but happy out with that.

If you charged it as £ then your CC provider is the one doing the conversion (always cheaper than Amazon).

https://www.visaeurope.com/making-payments/exchange-rates
https://www.mastercard.com/global/currencyconversion/

When your bank displays the charge it should match the above.