Media PC/Server

Hardware Build a PC
1

Hey guys!

I would like your opinions on my idea about building a server/media-pc.. Im not entirely sure I will have the money for it, but im hopefull.

What I have so far:

http://pcpartpicker.com/user/Winther/saved/#savedbuild_203424

The case is either going to be the Fractal Design Node 304 or the BitFenix Prodigy.. Love the look of the prodigy, but its a little bigger and only holds 5 x 3,5" drive.. 

I will get either 4 ot 6 of the RED drives and put them in raid 5 I think..

My questions then is, if I need a raid card and soundcard (both will be a little hard on a ITX mobo..

would it be better to just get a small PC and a high(er) end NAS from synology or similar..?

2

Well, you could of course build your own NAS, take a look at one of teksyndicates videos about freeNas. 

Also, i dont know anything about raid, but what is your audio equipment? Are you looking for something, i could advice. But in general a soundcard is not needed. This seems fairly logical because your mobo can only hold 1 card. 

But it seems to me you could easily build a server/htpc if you configure it correctly, not that i know how to.

 

 

3

raid 5 is overkill for almost any consumer usage.... raid 10 is the most redundancy you need....

and raid 10 doesn't need a controller, modern cpu controllers have them built-in

4

I might have misunderstood what raid 5 is then. isnt that the one, if I fx have 4 x 3tb drives, one of them will be used for backup and the rest is storage. but then what is raid 5 and what is raid 10 ?

I have a 5.1 surroundreciever and some good speakers, not high-end but they arent just the cheapo 400$ sets with tiny speakers you can get in any electronics store. i already have a creative soundblaster X-fi titanium.. but I might be using that in my main/gaming rig.. 

5

For the software if you only want storage then you shouldrun FreeNas and if you want it for other things like maybe a router or game server or a UPnP server (Universal Plug and Play) for streaming media to all your devices you should install a minimal distro (I suggest Debian Minimal).

6

raid 10 is what you get when you take 2 raid 1 pairs and put them in raid 0.....

raid 5 is like ultra redundancy.... can take failure of 2 drives 

http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2010/08/raid-levels-tutorial/

7

I dont understand it, as I have understood is if I where to have 3 or 5 drives i would get the most storage and redundancy out of raid 5, but with 4or 6 drives raid 10 is best..

I have considered going with raid 0 and then a single 2tb drives for backups of my OS and files that I dont want to lose. Because most of the data I am going to have on the server is movies and series which I can download again, so not too big a deal, though it would take a while for 12 TB og data.. :P Might even scrap the raid array and just have 3-6 seperate drives..

 

8

I want it for a combination of NAS and media streaming.. I was considering either just Windows 7 or try to get my hands on Windows Home Server 11 or 12.. 

9

I would go with the second one I listed.

You can just look up tutorials online if you need.

10

I will read a bit about it then.. and thank you for the suggestions!! ;)