mITX HTPC/NAS Build

[Nickglott]

Hello,

 

I am planing to upgrade my HTPC and want to build a hybrid NAS server as well., I want it to be small but powerful. Wont be gaming on it relay since I use my shield game stream. But I use emby media browser with Live TV that is tanscoding for multiple clients up to 6 for my 6tv tuners(FFMPEG) could be a few more if any of my clients dont support the video/audio files and need them transcoded.  So here is what my plans are.

 

Fractal Design Node 304 case

x6 2TB HDD on raid5 @ 10TB (It will mostly be media files so read speed for multiple clients with a redundancy of one drive) I currently have 4 on hand.

m.2 Samsung 950 Pro PCIE x4 Boot Drive

i7 6700k because of the trancoding and the 8 thread(Possibly a i5 6600k as I think it would do just fine without the HT and to save some cash to maybe upgrade the video card)

EVGA 750TI (Have it laying around might upgrade depending on 4k video playback quality)

16GB of Ram

 

 

The hard part is the motherboard. Looks like I only have a few options. 

 

GIGABYTE GA-B150N-GSM ( Can't overclock and the B150 has No RAID  would have to use a raid controller and realy want a discret grafics card ) 

GIGABYTE GA-H170N-WIFI ( Can't relay overclock and m.2 issue see below)

GIGABYTE Z170N-Gaming 5( m.2 issue see below)

GIGABYTE GA-Z170N-WIFI ( m.2 issue see below)

ASRock Fatal1ty Gaming Z170 GamiTX/ang-Ic ( Seems to work for what I need but a lot of bad reviews on newegg see explanation down below)

 

The gigabyte motherboards

 

I would love to you one of them but.....the table below states that in raid mode if you use the m.2 port it disables sata3_5. I am confused by that. If its a PCIE x4 NVME shouldn't it be using PCIE lanes from the chipset and not take over sata3 lanes? With no extra PCIE4x slots it should have more than enough lanes to not override them. I was thinking it only meant a sata3 m.2 ssd but the header states m.2 PCIE x4. I am guessing it that the raid controller can only support 6 drives total since it says you can use all 6 sata3 ports with a m.2 in AHCI mode. Obviously the m.2 card will not be a part of the raid  so can it run in AHcCI mode by itself?

 

The ASROCK motherboard

 

The bad reviews already make this board weery for me. The excerpt from the manual states that for a SATA-type m.2 takes over sata3_0 and sata3_1. But technically a Samsung 950 Pro is a PCIE ssd and not a Sata-type. Maybe I am getting too technical here haha. If it is considered a stat-type then this motherboard is out but it sates nothing about raid so if the raid controller only supports 6 drives then it could still be plagued by that if it can not run the m.2 in ACHI mode separate from the raid.

 

 

I would like some input from people or if anyone knows the answers to these questions. I know I could just drop a HDD or drop the m.2 and make a partition of the raid for the system. To drop a HDD would relay hurt me. I am currently at 6TB with 2 TB left and no redundancy on raid0 and planed to add for redundancy and 2TB more. I am prepared to drop the m.2 but when I do something I take it to the extreme and having my system on the raid is what I am trying to avoid so my drives can idle to help longevity when not in use even though my system is running 24/7 running other different process. 

 

Please help me make a decision haha. Thanks in advance to anyone who has anything to say.

 

*EDIT* Had to upload images since the imgur links dont seem to work.

[desertcomputer]

WTF? i7 6700k ... An I5 is enough for HTPC/NAS ... I can transcode using PLEX to stream 3 1080P stream over network and 2 720p over the internet with no problem ... you just need a good video format which will reduce the cpu overhead. 

 

Also if you are running ZFS you should go with server grade due the fact z/h series dont support ecc memory. 

[ARikozuM]

You shouldn't overclock a NAS since it introduces a potential failure into your system. I wouldn't go with the 950 PRO for a small case since the little guy gets pretty toasty when being used which is why I don't use mine for games.

[ARikozuM]

Do you know what OS you'll be running on the NAS?

[Nickglott]

1 minute ago, MrUnknownEMC said:

WTF? i7 6700k ... An I5 is enough for HTPC/NAS ... I can transcode using PLEX to stream 3 1080P stream over network and 2 720p over the internet with no problem ... you just need a good video format which will reduce the cpu overhead. 

The problem is LiveTV. I am trying to get rid of my 5 other cable boxes in my house. With testing on my main computer(6700k @ 4.8) 5 ffmpeg transcoding use about 50% load. If i play any 4k content on the TV hooked up to it the cpu will get boged down i think with an i5. Plus i am planing on upgrading another tv or 2 to 4k as well. So why start low if you can go big now hu? I guss an x99 mobo might be a better but no way my HTPC is getting that if my main is not :D.

[ARikozuM]

Will LiveTV allow the use of a GPU for hardware acceleration? 

I know that Cyberlink's software allows me to use mine for transcoding.

[Nickglott]

7 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

You shouldn't overclock a NAS since it introduces a potential failure into your system. I wouldn't go with the 950 PRO for a small case since the little guy gets pretty toasty when being used which is why I don't use mine for games.

 

7 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

Do you know what OS you'll be running on the NAS?

I don't think i will overclock it but would like the option if I ever decide to go a different route with the hardware in the future. As for OS, I am still not sure. Want to get the build done then test my options. Emby works on anything so....yeah unsure.

[ARikozuM]

Also, have you looked into the 6-core CPU? I think it's the 6800. More cores with hyperthreading may help.

 

You can look into FreeNAS and see if it allows LiveTV.

[Nickglott]

1 minute ago, ARikozuM said:

Will LiveTV allow the use of a GPU for hardware acceleration? 

I know that Cyberlink's software allows me to use mine for transcoding.

Emby can use Intel QuickSync or Nvidia NVENC for transcoding, something I have yet to look into much but so yeah it is an option.Currently the build is my priority since my current HTPC is about to hit the bricks.

[Nickglott]

8 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

Also, have you looked into the 6-core CPU? I think it's the 6800. More cores with hyperthreading may help.

 

You can look into FreeNAS and see if it allows LiveTV.

Was thinking about FreeNAS and is supported by Emby. I ahve always like Emby and hated Plex. All about development over proprietary.

 

I did look into an X99...only one motherboard ASRock X99E-ITX/ac Mini ITX. $650 for a motherboard and cpu is quite steep for a htpc and what i am trying to accomplish. Although looking at it some more looks like the hard drive problem would be solved as the manual states nothing about the m.2 taking over any sata3 ports.

 

 

[Nickglott]

Update soon!!

[Nickglott]

Okay,

 

I would first like to say how sorry I am for people that still use Plex. I gave it a go for about 2 weeks. I don't think I have ever said "what the heck" and "that is so stupid" and "why" so many times as I have when trying to use Plex. I have used Emby for a long time since it was mediabrowser and maybe I am spoiled by it. I wont go into much detail but first off the very fist thing....playlist? Just why is it the first tab and also the fact that you cant remove it? Emby has playlists, collections and many other ways to organize data. Its mainly used to TV and movies.....i don't think a lot of people plan out in what order you are going to watch something. I understand for music yes but why is it a main tab and not a sub-tab. I will say Plex works but come on if you liked to be bound to using the same looking thing that everyone else uses you prob have a iphone and a mac and are okay with you stuff looking and acting like a sheep. I had so many problems that I had to do some weird stuff just to get some basic features to work like making routes so my local network could see the server when on a VPN for example. I could go on and on but I wont. Emby is open source and has pay features(people have to eat) but they take suggestions, work with people, and implement new features fast (not hundreds of pages of requested features that go unanswered). I will just stop and not continue because it is a good software but not highly customizable. If you use Plex, give Emby a try you wont regret it.

 

Sorry for that rant...moving on.

 

So I decided to do was replace my server that I have in Pittsburgh for watching local sports where I live. I had a old i7 2nd gen laptop that could just barely handle transcoding 1 steam at a time. I picked up a Asrock Desk Mini an i5 6600, 8gb ddr3 for $350. I had a 140gb SSD and a 1tb 2.5 HDD laying around and boom my pittsburgh server is compete and can now watch/transcode on the fly my Pittsburgh stations. I could not be happier, I wanted something small, cheap, and powerful to stick at my parents house. I was able to accomplish all that for less than $400. I was originlay looking at the i7 nuc but it cost too much and has a low preforming cpu. I could have put in a desktop i7 6700 and still been cheaper. Anyone looking for something tiny but powerful check the Desk mini 110 out. You cant add a graphics card well not easily. It has a m.2 4x that you could turn into a pcie to hack something up if you really wanted too.

 

As for the topic I finally have it finished for now.

 

I decided to skip using a m.2 x4 card due to that fact that it would be overkill as an SSD can keep up but may still go back to it later when I have more funds available. Also chose to comprise and stick to just 5 drives instead of 6 for NAS storage and I am glad I did but more on that later.

 

The Build:

Spoiler

Fractal Node 304 w/ 500w PSU

Asrock Fatal1ty Z170 Gaming-ITX/ac

Gskill 32GB DDR 3400

I7 6700k@4.7gHz

H80iv2

EVGA GTX 750TI SC 2GB

5x2TB HDD(For Now)

1TB SSD

2x96mm Noctua pwm Fans

2x120mm Noctua pwm Fans

 

 

 

Build was simple enough since I did great planing. I was originally going to use a gigabyte mobo and at the last second realized that the 4 sata connectors were a right angle and would have been a huge problem so switched to the asrock. Only downside was the asrock only has a single 1gig NIC not the end of the world but still sucks. I also wanted to watercool the CPU because I was worried about the heat of my HDDS in such a small case with everything packed so tightly. I did not know if I could fit the h80iv2 in since the thinker 120mm rad but its just made it with the help of a 120mm fan grill to prevent the tubing from hitting the fans. I have to say for the amount of stuff I fit in this case it turned out perfect. It is filled to the brim.

 

Software:

My original plan was to just use Windows 10 so i could use intel Quicksync to do my transcoding and leave my cpu at only 30% and still had the power in my forntend for the HTPC. After getting everything up and running and doing some testing I realized that my raid5 write speeds were not going to cut it. While copying my backups to the drives and trying to play a movie at the same time I was getting studders as the drives were bottoming out. I was only getting 30mb/s writes as this is the 1st time I have used 5 drives in raid5 and didn't realize I would be getting that bad of write speeds and if I wanted to use this as a NAS as well I knew I would be in trouble.

 

FreeNAS, Worked great in my testing dramatically fixed my write speeds but only one problem, I wanted to use this as a HTPC....So I started thinking about  using HyperV and running freenas as a VM and realized that if I could figure a way to get m HDDs to be unformatted in windows but give the VM full control I dont know how reliable it would be. Stated to think I was out of options and would have to deal with windows and slow write speeds. I did play around with caching in windows and while my speeds improved a little I did not like the trade off of possibly losing data in the event of a power outage.I thought about using Kodi but was always hated the UI of it. When I was about out of hope a stumbled upon a post somewhere...

 

Night in shining armor...Unraid.

At this time I had no idea that Linus was an unraid fan. I only found it by looking for FreeNas alternatives. I then learned you can run a windows VMs with attached hardware. 

 

I am one happy camper. This is a very unlikely scenario for a few reasons because some of my clients(shieldTV and HTPC)  can direct play live tv w/o transcoding but it works!

Transcoding 6 streams while playing a 4k moivie on my VM. My CPU was at 79c, Mobo 41c, HDD's 30c. GPU 40c. My CPU was at 97%.

My VM is 1core/2threads 4gb ram and is good enough to play 4k movies so that is good enough for me.

 

Future upgrades:

Upgrade my HDDs to 5x8TB (Unraid you can upgrade drives as needed so I dont have to spend a ton at once.) I would have liked to rreturn the (2)2TB drives I just bought but used them for a week and I am not that kind of guy.

Upgrade to m.2 for faster Cache drive, Maybe....kind of a waste of money because I only have 1gig NIC and cant add another so m.2 relay wont benefit me

Nothing....cant not fit anything more in this system and 32TB will be enough space for anything I would want.

[Nickglott]

I forgot to mention that currently FFMPEG is just using the CPU with Unraid. I know is possible to use intel quicksync in lunix, or VAAPI I just have not figured out how to get it running inside of a docker. It has been years since I have use linux/unix and I am not very savvy with it anymore although I am sure I can get that figured out hopefully. I mean it currently works for my worst case scenario but would be better for CPU usage if I could get it to work, I could also give my VM another core. I did seriously contemplate using an x99 for this build and spending the extra $$$ but every time I thought about it I couldnt get past that my NAS/HTPC would have a better CPU than my main rig HAHA. That would be just a cruel joke.