Home media server hardware

[nolam]

I have a old rig that I cant be bothered to keep repairing anymore, thinking of making it into a home media server

 

Planning to only reuse the i7-3770 cpu (and maybe mobo) and perhaps the PSU which is only a 80 Bronze

 

My use case is as follows: 1. auto torrent shows 2. putting a SINGLE 8tb drive as network storage to store the shows (I dont need raid) 3. displaying the shows which are MKV files mostly to a TV that cant read MKV files 4. Hosting VPN/misc servers (some require linux os) 5. run a windows os as well 6.if possible also have host kodi server

 

My power costs are high so I need to reduce power usage as much as possible

 

my concerns are as follows:

• If I use the i7-3770 is it overkill and will it draw too much power even when idle?
• If I simply connect video output to TV, will it be lower quality than if I streamed to it?
• Will integrated graphics suffice without a loss in quality, or is gpu needed which is more $$$ in investment and power cost.
• If I do get a dGPU, is it detrimental to the system health if I game/do work on the system? and will it affect idle power?
• Do I need ECC ram?
• Which OS should be the host OS? will there be issue if kodi is hosted from VM or network storage is hosted from VM?
• what software to use to setup network storage if dont need raid, can just use windows?
• Is 80 Bronze PSU good enough or should change to a 80+ gold?
• Must I have a seperate drive for OS?
• Mobo is old and I suspect it is causing stability issues, should I replace? Which LGA1155 mobo you suggest?

Considering the above, should I reuse the i7-3770 or just get a cheap server (tower only pls) on ebay and if so which one? Will the cheap ebay server be able to run the VMs and transcode? will it draw too much power?

 

Thanks, this would be my first dedicated server so pardon any stupid quesitons

 

[Tabs]

@nolam

 

1. i7-3770 is quite overkill for what you suggest, but at idle it ramps down to good levels. Ensure EIST is enabled, and ensure power plan is not set to "high performance", and it should idle at sub-30 watts, depending on the rest of your machine.

 

2. Since you said your tv cannot play MKV directly, streaming would involve transcoding, and a subsequent loss in quality and increase in power consumption (since on the fly transcoding is quite an expensive process, whereas simply playing a video isn't). You would avoid this loss by connecting the machine directly to your tv, and most likely get a better overall experience.

 

3. Integrated graphics will be more than enough for this use case, so long as your content is not h.265 - the iGPU on the 3000 series cpu's cannot fully hardware decode h.265, so you'd get dropouts etc. 4K videos would be an issue. Anything up to 1080p would be no problem.

 

4. The i7-3770 (non-k) supports VT-d which enables high performance paravirtualization of IO devices like storage and networking. This means that you should get close to native speed whether your Kodi or network shares are hosted natively on the host OS, or virtually on a VM. The choice of which to have as host/vm is entirely up to you - but I'd recommend that if you're running Windows 10 as the host, you can use the Windows Subsystem for Linux and then Linux binaries wouldn't even need to be virtualised. I'm not sure if kodi server uses a GUI though, if it does this isn't an option.

 

5. If you choose to use Windows as the host and use a share on it directly, yes, you can simply share directly from Windows. Note though that Windows 10 by default will disable SMB 1.0 as it's incredibly insecure, so if you have any old devices on your network that don't support SMB 2.0+, they wont be able to access the share without a little extra configuration.

 

6. The 80 bronze part is less important than the overall wattage of the supply. Efficiency curves start low at low loads and increase at middle-high loads, so if you have a ~50 watt load and you have a 1000w power supply, you're never going to get good efficiency. If you can say what wattage your psu is we can probably give you a better estimate. However, buying any new power supply is likely to take years to pay off the difference, so it's likely an academic question - you're probably still better off using whatever you have now instead of paying out for new hardware.

 

7. If you have concerns about the mobo you should absolutely replace it. If you end up coming to rely on your server, you'll want it to be as stable as possible. I would personally recommend a H67 based board, since you don't have an overclockable CPU (and overclocking is contrary to the needs you have for this machine in the first place). As for specific models, I'm sorry, I can't recommend one since I skipped that generation of processors.

 

My own opinion: I have been running a Lenovo T420 laptop with a sandy bridge i5 as a home server running Windows Server for more than two years. It has been rock solid, draws close to no power, and works great as a storage server. Your CPU is absolutely going to be enough for almost any workload you can consider at home, and you'll need a desktop-class machine anyway if you want storage capacities above 2TB per drive. I think you'll be set up well if you get a new, cheap motherboard and ensure all power saving options are enabled for it.

[nolam]

Thanks for the detailed answer Tabs!

 

Will be using the i7 3770 and a new mobo!