Forum.HaveTheKnowHow.com

Hello all,

I'm new here, but I've been reading the site for a while. (A few months?) Let me start by saying this site is awesome! It's amazing to see such a detailed walkthrough and support of exactly what I wanted to do before I found the site at all, and after reading I've only gotten more excited about my soon-to-be media server. I'm sure my plans wouldn't be this streamlined without the help I found here!

I've got a background in electronics/programming, but I've never actually built a computer before. I'm planning on building two soon, a media server and a gaming desktop, so I'm starting with the media server since the parts are cheaper, so if I break anything, it costs less to replace. But I want to make sure I'm not doomed before I start because I've made a simple compatibility/design decision when choosing the parts. I've got an overall budget of about 1500 euro for both computers. (despite buying in GBP, grr) It would be awesome if anyone could tell me if I've done something stupid (or have missed something out) in my following part selection:

Case: The NZXT Gamma Case. 6 drive bays, as explained below.

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-880GMA-USB3 AMD 880G AM3+ Motherboard I went with a motherboard with onboard graphics so I wouldn't need a graphics card for the initial setup and such when I'm first installing everything. I went for 6 SATA III ports, even though I only plan to start with 4 HDDs, to leave room to expand later.

Processor: AMD Athlon II X2 245e Energy Efficient Dual Core CPU My motherboard meant I needed to use an AMD CPU, which was good fun because I've only ever used Intel before, so AMD's numbering systems/product lines were a complete mystery to me. I thought this one was a pretty good idea since energy efficiency is important, but its specs still seem to be quite good. I was also considering the AMD CPU Phenom II 555 Black Edition Dual Core Processor but it seemed a little overkill. (And more expensive)

Hard Disk: 4x 1TB Western Digital Caviar Green Hard Drive. As advised here, I'm going for Caviar Green for energy saving, and because WD is a good manufacturer. And I've got a lot of media, hence 4 drives. I plan to use flexRAID unless anyone would advise otherwise?

RAM: 2x Corsair Memory XMS3 4GB DDR3 1333 Mhz CAS 9 Dual Channel I was slightly confused by XMS3 and non-XMS3 Corsair RAM, which didn't seem to be explained anywhere I looked. There were two sets of RAM where the 'presence' of XMS3 was the only difference, so any advice here would be great.

PSU: Antec BP550PLUS Basiq Plus 550W Modular Power Supply As far as I can tell, a 550W PSU should leave some headroom for upgrades in the future, given my current setup? Keeping up with the 6 SATA connections on the motherboard, and 6 drive bays in the case, this has 6 SATA power connectors.

DVD Drive: SATA DVDRW IHAS122-18 LiteOn I've just realized I probably need a DVD drive in here. I'll put a blu-ray drive in my desktop, because I have quite a few HD movies, but more for loading software and stuff. But this does use up a SATA port. Would people advise using an external DVD (USB) drive instead? (I already have one of those.)

Network Switch: 8 Port Edimax ES-5800G 10/100/1000 Ethernet Gigabit Environmental Friendly Switch I plan to link up all my devices via this switch, using gigabit cables so I get good enough transfer speeds for HD video. (Incidentally, I did a test earlier this year of video over Wi-Fi and it was quite unsuccessful, couldn't even get SD video playing without skipping.)

Also, I've only ever used laptops before, so I don't actually have a monitor in my house. With this in mind, I'm buying the monitor I intend to use with my gaming desktop at the same time as my media server parts, so I can use it to do the first set up for the server. It will run headless after that.

Monitor: Viewsonic 24" VX2439WM LCD Monitor A nice large screen, with speakers until I decide to get a proper sound system. (Depending on if I move house, currently the bass speaker would kill my neighbors.) And the line-out was important so I could plug in my Sennheiser headphones. I notice that it doesn't support HDCP though, could that be a problem in the future?

There are some other things I gather I need to pick up:
HDMI cable: so I can use the monitor (I'm amazed at how cheap these have gotten)
Cable ties: keep the case organized
Keyboard: I have a spare USB keyboard already
Mouse: If I really need one, I can borrow the mouse off my laptop for a few hours (USB as well)

Questions:
Do I need to buy thermal paste? (Or will it come with the CPU?)

Is SATA III worth the improvement over SATA II in practice? I saw a lot of SATA II drives and boards when I was browsing. Changing my mind about this would require rechoosing a decent chunk of the parts though, and future-proofing is always useful. (I looked at SSDs, but they're way too expensive for the media server, maybe a small one for the OS drive in the gaming desktop.)

Should I go with a case with more fans?

This may seem really stupid, but does the PSU come with the power cable that goes to the wall outlet, or do I buy that separately?

Am I missing any other cables?

And where would be best to get a static wrist-band?

Thanks all for your help!

Hello and welcome to the forum.

Wow that will be an awesome server

If you have been following the threads in the forum you may have seen that both Ian and myself are big fans of Samsung 2TB F4 drives, as they are twice the capacity of the WD Greens you have mentioned. Sammy are also fast due to having 3 platters instead of the more normal 2 platters.

Sata 3 will not give much of an advantage in a server as servers are more for storage than the speed of data transfer, however for a gaming rig 6GBps will be a big plus, also it may be worth investing in a WD Blue or a WD Black HDD (or pretty much any other desktop drive for that matter)as they spin at 7200RPM where as the WD Greens only spin at 5400RPM, a faster spinning disk equals faster data access.

Are you intending ripping DVD's with your server?, if so then install a DVD drive, if not create the Ubuntu Server installer on a USB flash drive with this http://www.pendrivelinux.com/universal-usb-installer-easy-as-1-2-3/, then boot the server(most modern MoBo's support USB booting) from the USB flash drive and install just as if it where a CD and save yourself a Sata port for storage.

AMD CPU's are not really my bag (although my XBMC-Live HTPC may well be AMD based the jury is still out on that one ), my thoughts are that the Intel Pentium P4 with HyperThreding was a long away ahead of anything AMD produced at the time. AMD don't seem to have really caught up, this is only my opinion so please any AMD fans out there don't flame me.

Although AMD's are probably more cost effective-more bang per buck .

Same for ATi v Nvidia, Nvidia for me all the way simply because Nvidia offers better Linux support and I have experienced problems with ATi's software, but again this is my opinion.

Hope this helps....

I'm going for a lay down now.

Andy

Thanks!

Those 2TB drives look good, only 10 more pounds and I get double storage. I'm still a bit worried about energy consumption though, since the machine will always be on. Or will the manual spinning down of the drives described on the site outweigh any difference the 'greener' drive makes?

Awesome idea about installing Ubuntu from a flash drive, thanks for the tip! I'll do that and save the SATA port.

I'll go for the AMD processor for the media server, bang for buck is important on this one so I can splash out on the gaming rig.

If I were to switch to the Samsung 2TB F4 drives, then is there a recommended SATA II motherboard with enough ports? I'm having trouble finding one with integrated graphics, hdmi, and 6 SATA II ports. (And preferably DDR3 memory) EDIT: It occurs to me to ask what may be, again, a stupid question, but does it need integrated graphics for me to do the initial setup/OS install?

EDIT 2: What do you think of the Seagate Barracuda LP 2TB ST2000DL003 Hard Drive. It's another SATA III drive, but 2TB this time, because most of the motherboards I look at which have a lot of ports are SATA III.

EDIT 3: Argh, now I'm fighting with myself over the power supply. I'm trying to decide between the one in my first post and the Corsair CMPSU-600CXv2 Builder Series 600W Power Supply. Corsair is a good brand, both PSUs have the 6 SATA connectors I need and are about the same price. The Antec one is modular, Corsair one isn't. What do people think?

Only too happy to help, it wasn't that long ago I was asking for help and I probably will be again in the future

Samsung F4's spin at 5400RPM so they are low power drives, faster spindle speed equals more power.

I have always liked Seagate drives, apart from a couple of years ago thay had dodgy firmware that screwed them up, but all that is sorted now.

Don't worry about installing Sata 2 drives on boards with Sata 3 as it is backward compatible.

Try and get a board with on board graphics as a dedicated graphics card is a waste of money and power, if memory serves me correctly Ian mentioned this in his guide.

I am intrigued as why you need a HDMI port as I would have thought you will running your server headless, like Ian and myself along with many others no doubt.

Yes indeed you do need your server attached to a monitor for the installation along with a keyboard and ethernet cable.

Have a look at this board http://www.ebuyer.com/220150-asus-m4a88t-m-880g-socket-am3-onboard-graphics-8-channel-audio-matx-motherboard-m4a88t-m see if it fits your need.

I have an Asus board in my server albeit an Intel one and I really like Asus boards, avoid Biostar boards like the plague

Hope this helps....

Andy

Ohhh, I didn't know SATA 3 was backwards compatible, that saves a lot of headache. I think I'll just go with the Samsung drive you suggest then, so much extra storage for a net of 40 pounds overall. Do you know if the drives will come with the SATA cables?

That's a tempting motherboard, but I think I like the Gigabyte one I've got in my first post, it's also got 2 USB 3.0 ports, which could be interesting in the future. And I couldn't find any mATX cases that had enough drive bays for any reasonable prices. I plan to use HDMI for the monitor, but you're right, it probably isn't 100% necessary.

I remembered Ian mentioned not having a discrete card because of the power, just had to inquire and make sure I couldn't do without the integrated graphics as well. (hence why I said it might be a stupid question) It seems so wasteful to need the hardware for graphics output just to set everything up in the first place.

Thanks! You've been really helpful!

If you do get a board without on board graphics you could always buy an old PCi graphics card off eBay so you can install Ubuntu server, then remove it once you are happy all went well.

You've got me thinking about Sata 3, I presumed Sata 3 is backwards compatible with Sata 2, as Sata 2 is backwards compatible Sata 1.

So I did a little googleing and came up with this http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/storage/30281-sataii-sata3.html

It seems I was right all along, although it appears that Sata 3 or Sata 6GBps is a waste of time and money.

If you get OEM drives all you get in the box is the drive, for additional Sata cables then eBay is your friend again.

Hope this helps....

Andy

I've ordered my parts now! All should arrive on Wednesday. I made sure to get some SATA cables as well, just in case. I went with 3 2TB Samsung F4 drives, which actually ended up being cheaper than the 4 1TB WD Caviar Greens, and gives me 2TB more space.

I've read some other places that say much the same thing about HDDs over SATA 2 and 3, it makes sense I guess.

Thanks for all the help! I'll try to come on here when I've finished the build, or while I'm working on it, and let you know how it worked.

Thanks for the help, I've got all the hardware up and running now. If anyone wants to see, check out my build blog.

Good job well done.

I like your blog.

Andy

Sergeus wrote:Thanks for the help, I've got all the hardware up and running now. If anyone wants to see, check out my build blog.

I agree, nice write up