Best Power/Cost Efficient (still powerful) HTPC Build


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Hello fellow hoarders,

 

I'm looking to make a power efficient but powerful enough system to transcode 2-3 1080p streams as well as run radarr, sonarr, and all the fixins. I want to make it as 'green' as possible without sacrificing too much power and potential requirements in the near future.  Any input appreciated.

 

This is the basic build list I came up with after spending all day at work (thanks for the help Kyle) and the night at home researching.  Please add any comments, extras I may need, caveats, etc.  Or just tell me what you think.

 

Case: https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B00BQY3916/ (NORCO 4U Rack Mount 24)

MB: https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B018AX44Q4/ (Supermicro Micro X11SSM-F-O)

CPU: https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B015T3YEZ4/ (Intel Corp. BX80662E31245V5 Xeon Processor E3)

RAM: https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B01DKBPY2E/ 2 x (Kingston Technology ValueRAM 16GB 2133MHz DDR4 ECC CL15 DIMM 2Rx8)

PSU: https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B01HXYRMME/ (Seasonic Flagship PRIME TITANIUM 850 SSR-850TD Active PFC 80 PLUS Titanium 850W ATX )

HDD: https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B01IA9GU0Q/ x(as needed) (Seagate 10TB IronWolf NAS SATA 6Gb/s NCQ 256MB Cache 3.5-Inch Internal Hard Drive (ST10000VN0004))

 

Plus a 1TB SSD for caching

 

And if you are wondering why it's smile.amazon.com, always go there... they donate a portion of the purchase to a charity of your choice.

 

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The CPU had a passmark of over 10,300. You'd be quite comfortable with the workload you have described. In fact you're nearly double the power you really need. A CPU with ~6000 passmark would transcode 3 streams. (But I think more horsepower is better, cause you will likely be doing much more with the server than you expect going in).

 

32 gig is similarly about double what you need unless you are doing VMs, but I would not recommend reducing.

 

The Norco had gotten mixed feedback. Mostly concerns with build quality, noise, and under appreciation of the size and heft of the thing. Suggest doing homework on this forum about this case. I personally like something like an Antec 1200 with 4xCSE-M35T-1Bs. A tall tower takes up much less room. But if you like rack mounts, there is a SuperMicro that gets good feedback you might want to look at. And the Norco might be fine too. I have no personal experience.

 

It's unclear how many drives you are going for, but 850 watts is more than plenty - maybe a bit overboard. I've run 24 drives + 2 SSDs and a video card on 650.

 

Might look at something like a SAS9201-16i for extra ports. And you could look at a GTX10xx series video card for passthrough. I have the 1050Ti which works great, but I'm not playing games, just doing dual 4k video.

 

One more comment, 8T drives are the sweet spot right now. Best Buy carries a custom WD product called Easystore that can be had for between $170-200. The drives can be easily shucked without messing up the case (see good deals forum for a thread including directions). Those would be a lot cheaper than 10T - which are not enough bigger to justify the premium IMO. Its up to you but I'd consider 8T to start. The HGST 8T NAS makes a very nice parity.

 

Looks line you're off to a good start! 

 

Good luck!

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Thank you so much for your valuable advice!

 

I did build it with expansion and tinkering in mind so I went a bit higher on the specs but tried to keep the best balance between cost/performance/power consumption as possible.

 

I didn't mention it, but i am specifically looking for a rackmount chassis.  It will mount in a rack in my utility room so noise is not so much of a concern but quieter the better.  I'll peruse the forums and get a better idea of whats out there.

 

I will probably stick to 24 drives max, but will start with a few and add on as needed.  Thanks for the advice on the PSU.  I use a power calculator and came up with 426 watts but for some reason didn't trust it and erred on the side of caution.

 

I do agree on the 10 vs 8 at the moment.  It's just too much capital for me to put out right now and at around double the cost, it's hard to justify... I sure as hell wouldn't buy a 2TB drive for $180!

 

I do have one more question... Is the performance of an SSD worth the cost for a cache drive?  Is there a significant improvement using an SSD vs. a spinner?

 

Thanks again.  I will update with my full build specs once i complete it.

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The cache can be used for two distinct purposes.

 

1 - to cache writes to the array. I don't recommend. Although this speeds writes to the server, it delays writes  to the array. There were better ways to speed writes when needed (like initial array loads), and for most users, the majority of writes are happening in the background, and they are fast enough. 

2 - as a Docker/VM/config data dive. I wholeheartedly recommend as SSD cache drive for this. It provides substantial performance benefits that you will feel every time you use your server. And the files I the SSD tend to be relatively static, meaning you are not wearing out your SSD, which have a limited number of writes, nearly as fast.

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9 hours ago, gooroo said:

Holy Balls.  What are you storing??

Someone added it up for me once on the forums here.  At that time I had 329TB of space (~75% used if I remember correctly).

 

Current totals:

  1. 78TB - 43.9TB free - basement norco
  2. 100TB - 22.3TB free - basement norco
  3. 36TB - 20.5TB free - living room Define R5
  4. 67TB - 13.8TB free - basement norco
  5. 68TB - 17TB free - basement norco
  6. 48TB - 9.78TB free - in pieces on basement floor maybe some day will take fifth slot in rack if Livingroom one doesn't go there first.
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4 hours ago, BobPhoenix said:

Someone added it up for me once on the forums here.  At that time I had 329TB of space (~75% used if I remember correctly).

 

Current totals:

  1. 78TB - 43.9TB free - basement norco
  2. 100TB - 22.3TB free - basement norco
  3. 36TB - 20.5TB free - living room Define R5
  4. 67TB - 13.8TB free - basement norco
  5. 68TB - 17TB free - basement norco
  6. 48TB - 9.78TB free - in pieces on basement floor maybe some day will take fifth slot in rack if Livingroom one doesn't go there first.

 

WOW! You win the digital hoarder award!

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Damn this is thread is full of win! I'm kicking myself I didn't get in on it earlier... but whatever, I'm just going to pretend I was here in the first hour when this was still fresh. So humor me, it's the weekend. Party time! 

 

On 9/20/2017 at 5:38 PM, gooroo said:

NORCO 4U Rack Mount 24

 

Great starter choice, I started there too, I can't fault it. I fully agree with what @bjp999 eluded too. Quality is meh. It'll do. But if you don't know like I did at the time, how will you ever know to appreciate something better....Now I'm in the situation of trying to decide if I want to sell the two cases I have to fully move to SuperMicro, cause it's simply that much better. I saw you opted for LianLi, if your attracted to bolt-ons, can't say I blame you. Plenty of sex appeal for sure.

 

Now for the win streak....

 

On 9/20/2017 at 5:38 PM, gooroo said:

Supermicro Micro X11SSM-F-O

 

Win!

 

On 9/20/2017 at 5:38 PM, gooroo said:

Xeon Processor E3

 

Win!

 

On 9/20/2017 at 5:38 PM, gooroo said:

16GB 2133MHz DDR4 ECC CL15 DIMM 2Rx8

 

Win! Just get the 16GB if no VMs, you're solid, easy to add later if you change your mind and less power on 2 dimms

 

On 9/20/2017 at 5:38 PM, gooroo said:

80 PLUS Titanium 850W ATX

 

Win! and I'll even say look into lowering the wattage to the 650W model which appears to be as low as they offer. If you got no video cards, then drive spin-up is your only remote concern. Look at the performance curve of load and efficiency on PSU's, you'll see why going lower is better. Don't buy into the fear others might sell you, just do your load calcs and know there's plenty of tolerance built into buying a brand like Seasonic, you can trust in it.

 

On 9/20/2017 at 5:38 PM, gooroo said:

Seagate 10TB IronWolf

 

This has been on my short list to try for sometime, but haven't tried yet, so WIN!

 

On 9/20/2017 at 5:38 PM, gooroo said:

1TB SSD

 

Win!

 

On 9/20/2017 at 5:38 PM, gooroo said:

donate a portion of the purchase to a charity

 

Dude, another win! I'm broke, you bankrupted the win bank.

 

Go forward and please post pics, just please keep the bolt-ons SFW.

 

 

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5 hours ago, BobPhoenix said:

Someone added it up for me once on the forums here.  At that time I had 329TB of space (~75% used if I remember correctly).

 

Current totals:

  1. 78TB - 43.9TB free - basement norco
  2. 100TB - 22.3TB free - basement norco
  3. 36TB - 20.5TB free - living room Define R5
  4. 67TB - 13.8TB free - basement norco
  5. 68TB - 17TB free - basement norco
  6. 48TB - 9.78TB free - in pieces on basement floor maybe some day will take fifth slot in rack if Livingroom one doesn't go there first.

 

That is some serious win @BobPhoenix I'd love if you could post some pics and details in a new post dedicated just to this. This reminds me of when the famous 'Atlas' build on these forums was everything us young kids aspired to have. This is like 'Atlas' x5-x8? I'm not so young anymore to remember! Pics and details would be awesome! Or if you already have, please link!!!!

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2 minutes ago, Lev said:

 

That is some serious win @BobPhoenix I'd love if you could post some pics and details in a new post dedicated just to this. This reminds me of when the famous 'Atlas' build on these forums was everything us young kids aspired to have. This is like 'Atlas' x5-x8? I'm not so young anymore to remember! Pics and details would be awesome! Or if you already have, please link!!!!

Sorry no pictures.  The rats nest of wiring doesn't really encourage me to take any either.  But I might if I get one from the right angle if I get time.

 

Sorry about derailing this thread.  Just wanted to point out I liked my Norcos.  What I had before was 4 Lian Li V2000 towers but I like my rack mounts a lot better even if the build quality on the Norco isn't as good as the Lian Li's.  The ease of drive replacement in the Norcos verses Lian Li's more than make up for it.  The SuperMicro rack mount cases are much more expensive but I may graduate to them the next time I need to purchase a case in a few years.  Sorry my OCD won't let me mix case types in my rack.

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7 minutes ago, BobPhoenix said:

OCD won't let me mix case types in my rack

 

Brother! I can sympathize with that!

 

I've only got two 24bay Norco's compared to your awesome collection and just recently got my first 36bay SuperMicro. Even the screws are different for the trays.. Norco's need Phillip's #1 bit, SuperMicro are much easier with a #2, switching between cases means changing not only hard drive trays but also screw driver bits! My OCD is compelling me to sell a Norco and start the migration towards SuperMicro.... painful!!!! 

 

I'm getting ready maybe this weekend or soon to post for sale one of those Norco's as a tested and turn-key unRAID ready system, if you're in the market to add another Norco, keep an eye out! At this point all I really need to do is take pics and list the hardware specs, just add your own unRAID key license and you're good to go.

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