WHS SageTV Server Build by Newbie

[nwboater]

Have been using Sage for a couple of years on my office machine. Have decided it's time to switch to a dedicated server using Windows Home Server. I would like to build my own, but could sure use some help in confirming that I'm going in the right direction and in selecting some of the major components.

Present System

SageTV running on old Pentium 4 office desktop using XP.
1 Haupauge PVR-350 card
1 Sage HD100 Extender
1 Sage HD200 Extender
2 Shaw Cable (General Instrument) SD Set Top Boxes (Only 1 presently used w Sage)
1 USB-UIRT for channel changing.
1 Older Sony 32" CRT
1 Westinghouse 26" LCD TV


Future additions and changes

New SageTV Server running WHS.
1 or 2 HD Cable Boxes to replace exising STB's. (Note OTA not available in our area of Canada)
1 or 2 HD-PVR's
Large HDTV (or projector system) to replace 32" CRT TV.
Comskip
Somewhat possible - 1 or 2 more HD 200 extenders to small TV's.

Server Details

Headless server will be located in closet in HT Room. (Closet could be vented to hall if heat build up is a problem.)
Run Windows Home Server.
Besides SageTV, system will do backup for 3 computers and will serve audio to JRiver Player on separate audio PC for 2 channel playback.
I believe the only high CPU loading will be with Comskip and the 2 HD-PVRs.
Would like as low power as possible as it will be on 24/7, but this conflicts with CPU requirements above.
Want large case for several hard drives and for possible future expansion.

Based on research I've done thus far and others suggestions my best bet to accomplish what I need to do now, and to be fairly well future proofed would be to use the following:

1. Full size tower case. To hold as many hard drives as possible.

2. ATX MOBO (not micro or mini). Gives most SATA ports and expansion slots.

3. A dual or quad core CPU. Hope to find one that will have the power to run Comskip and the HDPVR's, without too heavily supporting the local power company.

4. Will probably start with two 1.5 TB 7200 RPM hard drives as they seem like the most bang for the buck now.

Unfortunately the component selection here in Canada is not nearly as good as in the US - and of course higher prices! I have not established a budget for this server due to all the selection uncertainties, but of course would like to minimize costs wherever possible.

One MOBO I have been looking at with interest is a GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3R LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128359 . This and the UD3P seem to be fairly popular with Sage users. Since there is no onboard video with these boards, I'll probably use an old PCI video card I have in storage for system setup.

I have been hoping that my requirements could be met with a dual core CPU, but it has been suggested that I may want to consider a quad core Core i5 750 http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product...82E16819115215
I guess that Comskip and the HD-PVRs require a fair bit of CPU power, but don't really have a feel for how much.

Questions:

1. What type of CPU would be appropriate for the above operations?

2. Have I selected a suitable MOBO? If this series is recommended is there a reason to go with the UD3P?

3. Any other suggestion or comments on this build would be very appreciated.

This will be my first computer build, although my background is electronics/industrial controls.

Thanks very much.
Rod

[SWKerr]

The real question is do you expect the machine to have the comskip file available right after you finish a recording even if you are doing two or three at a time? If you are ok with it being ready the next day then a dual core should be no problem. I run a ATSC tuner with two HD-PVRs and the comskip file is always ready by the time I watch the show. The only thing I watch close to real time is the news and sports and I don't miss it.

I would not get hung up on SATAports. You can always add a SATA card for $40 down the road should you ever need them and something with a lot of them built in will cost significantly more.

Unless you plan to go for the new i5 I would go to AMD and one of their low power cpus. You can swap out the AMD X2 to a AM3 socket X4 easily and cheaply later on while the Intel 775 cpus will be phased out fairly quickly. You can also get a AMD motherboard with decent built in graphics rather cheaply. There is no point buying fast\expensive memory here as well.

I use the Antec Three hundred with a 430W power supply. It is $99 a Newegg. It has great ventilation and the large fans run quite. You can spend more and get more internal drive space but using 1.5TB drive it will be a long time before you need them. I don't have a DVD drive in my WHS.

The i5 750 is clearly the best value on the market today in a quad core but it is truly overkill for the WHS. The required DD3 memory will also drive up the price but still in a reasonable range. Don't do a 775 socket cpu.

[nwboater]

SWKerr,

Thanks very much for your informative and well thought out post. And especially thanks for trying to save me money!

You put the Comskip requirements in understandable terms. For sure we don't need the Comskip file immediately after the recording is done. If it's something we need to see right away - which is rare - then we'll just skip through the commercials, or go make popcorn! In the next few days I'll look through AMD CPU and board selections.

I am concerned about our future hard drive space requirements. For SD a few terabytes will store a lot of movies and other stuff. It's the HD future storage requirements that could get huge. 10 50 GB movies = 1/2 TB, 100 movies = 5 TB, and so on. Now as we add more HD's the pricing sweet spot will probably move from 1.5 TB to 2, etc so in the future I will be adding larger drives. But I'm not sure that needing 10 + drives might not be unreasonable. If so this would beg for a larger case. Or are there inexpensive HD only enclosures available?

A somewhat monster case that I had been considering is this Chieftec Full Tower http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product...c%20BA-01B-B-B
By the time a power supply and fans are added it is certainly more expensive than the Antec 300 (which looks great BTW), but would definitely future proof me! It's large size and weight isn't an issue since it will live in a closet.

Perhaps I am just going overboard in my anticipated storage needs. I wonder how others are looking at this part of the equation? And I just thought of another way to look at this. If I get the Antec 300 case now and have to replace it in a few years, I'm only out about $100. By then my wife or I will probably be ready for a newer computer and we could use the Antec case for it.

Rod

[SWKerr]

A ripped Blu-Ray will be in the 50GB range but I don't store them in their native format. I just store the main movie and then compress it even further. Since my biggest screen is just 46" I will even crop them to 1280x720 because I cant see the differece in real word viewing. Even if you have a large screeen and want to retain the whole 1920x1080 resolution I am betting you can still store them at around 10GB per an not notice a difference.

[Djc208]

You keep mentioning the HDPVRs as a driver for a powerful CPU, but unless you're trying to placeshift the files the HD-PVRs don't use any more CPU horsepower than any other tuner card for recording. It's the playback that kills a CPU, which you won't be using the server for anyway.

I agree that a dual core should be fine, comskip may take longer but if it's not vital then save the money. The advantage of the i5 setup is the speed/power management that would give you the best of both worlds but hardware is just starting to show and prices will be high for a while, so I'd agree with SWKerr, look at the AMD side, good hardware, better prices than the i5, and better upgradability than the C2D/C2Q.

You most likely will need to vent the closet. The system will probably pull around 100~150 watts depending on how full it is and the workload, all that heat will make a small space pretty warm. I have my WHS in a small hall closet and had to install a vent into the attic for the hot air to escape and a vent in the door to allow cool air to enter.

That said, do think carefully about your power supply. They are most efficient in the middle of their range, so a 600w supply providing 120w will usually not be as efficient as a 300w supply pushing the same load. A kill-A-Watt type device on your current server is a good tool for sizing your power supply.

[nwboater]

Originally Posted by SWKerr

A ripped Blu-Ray will be in the 50GB range but I don't store them in their native format. I just store the main movie and then compress it even further. Since my biggest screen is just 46" I will even crop them to 1280x720 because I cant see the differece in real word viewing. Even if you have a large screeen and want to retain the whole 1920x1080 resolution I am betting you can still store them at around 10GB per an not notice a difference.

Good to know that we could get by with a lot less than 50 GB per movie. In reality going to HD with a large screen or projector is a fair ways down the road.

Would be interesting to know what size others with large screens are storing with.

Thanks,
Rod

[nwboater]

Originally Posted by Djc208

You keep mentioning the HDPVRs as a driver for a powerful CPU, but unless you're trying to placeshift the files the HD-PVRs don't use any more CPU horsepower than any other tuner card for recording. It's the playback that kills a CPU, which you won't be using the server for anyway.

I agree that a dual core should be fine, comskip may take longer but if it's not vital then save the money. The advantage of the i5 setup is the speed/power management that would give you the best of both worlds but hardware is just starting to show and prices will be high for a while, so I'd agree with SWKerr, look at the AMD side, good hardware, better prices than the i5, and better upgradability than the C2D/C2Q.

You most likely will need to vent the closet. The system will probably pull around 100~150 watts depending on how full it is and the workload, all that heat will make a small space pretty warm. I have my WHS in a small hall closet and had to install a vent into the attic for the hot air to escape and a vent in the door to allow cool air to enter.

That said, do think carefully about your power supply. They are most efficient in the middle of their range, so a 600w supply providing 120w will usually not be as efficient as a 300w supply pushing the same load. A kill-A-Watt type device on your current server is a good tool for sizing your power supply.

Thanks for the helpful post.

I thought I had read somewhere that using the HDPVR's consumed quite a bit of CPU power - guess not. So that's good news - my only CPU intensive task seems to be Comskip, and I don't need to be in any rush for it.

Thanks for mentioning the closet venting. It got me to thinking of server location and I have now decided to put it in a spare bedroom we are using mostly for storage. It can be in the open on a shelf, so that issue is solved.

Good to know about the power supply efficiency curve. I've been meaning to get a Kill-A-Watt to check on other power draws, and it will be interesting to see what my present office desktop/server draws. Not sure how closely it will be related to the new server only setup though.

Rod

[Djc208]

Originally Posted by nwboater

I thought I had read somewhere that using the HDPVR's consumed quite a bit of CPU power - guess not. So that's good news - my only CPU intensive task seems to be Comskip, and I don't need to be in any rush for it.

The analog->digital conversion is done inside the HD PVR, so the only thing the computer gets is a digital H.264 file that it just has to dump to your HDD. All the heavy lifting is done by the HD PVR.

Good to know about the power supply efficiency curve. I've been meaning to get a Kill-A-Watt to check on other power draws, and it will be interesting to see what my present office desktop/server draws. Not sure how closely it will be related to the new server only setup though.

Check this link for good reviews on PSUs http://www.anandtech.com/casecoolingpsus/

Some of the reviews are a little old but not much changes in the PSU world so most of these are probably still available. One of the PSUs in this article is probably right for you http://www.anandtech.com/casecooling...oc.aspx?i=3487

Think about a UPS (uninterpretable power supply) too. It's cheap insurance for that new hardware. I have a small one (550 VA I think) that's just enough to let the computer survive brownouts and hiccups or shut the computer down safely if the power goes out.

[nwboater]

Djc208 - Thanks for the power supply info - was some good reading. Unfortunately here in Canada we have a limited selection compared to in the US. Was a good tip on the UPS. Please see below for my selection of both items.

So here is what I have come up with for the new server:

1. Antec Three Hundred Black steel ATX mid tower Case with Antec BP430 Supply (430 watt). http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product...-065-_-Product

2. GIGABYTE GA-MA785GM-US2H AM3/AM2+/AM2 AMD 785G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product...82E16813128394

3. AMD Athlon II X2 240 Regor 2.8GHz 2 x 1MB L2 Cache Socket AM3 65W Dual-Core Processor http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product...82E16819103688

4. SAMSUNG Spinpoint F2EG HD154UI 1.5TB 5400 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product...82E16822152175

5. APC BE550G-CN 330 Watt UPS http://www.apc.com/resource/include/..._sku=BE550G-CN (I recently bought this for our boat but am going to commandeer it for our server instead.)

6. Microsoft Windows Home Server.

So my questions now are:

1. How does this selection look?

2. Should WHS be on it's own hard drive? Hate to dedicate a slot for just a small drive, which is all I would need for the OS.

3. Not sure of number of drives to initially get. Seems like I need one for the OS? Another for media storage, and perhaps a third to backup the media storage and three other computers. Might it be better to have my backups done on external USB drives? At least for the media backups perhaps.

4. Would it be advisable to install a CD/DVD for WHS install? Most of the normal file saving will be done from client PCs.

5. This is my first computer build and I'm wondering if typically all needed cables are provided with the parts I'm buying?

6. Anything else to consider?


Thanks very much for all your input on this project.

Rod

[SWKerr]

AMD just came out with the Athlon II X4 620. For only $99 it might be worth considering. Getting good review and for only $30 more it is harder to pick a X2.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103706

Still need to select memory. The expensive stuff will not do much good for the server. 2Gb is more than enough.

I steal a DVD from another machine for the WHS build. There is no real need to have one in the server once it is built. I have seen guides on how to install from a USB flash drive but have never done it.

Gigabyte is good about including the necessary cables. Most hard drives do not come with SATA cords anymore so depending on how many you add you will need to purchase some. You may also need a adapter for the power supply once you run out of SATA hard drive plugs but you should be fine to begin with.

You can start with two and use one as the boot drive. It is relatively easy to add drives to the pool as you need them. I leave my backup drive in the server and just do not put it into the pool. I USB would just be slower to copy to and aside from being portable offer no real advantage. If cost were not a consideration I would want a SSD drive as the boot drive but they are still to pricey for me at this point.

[Djc208]

I tend to like full size ATX boards for the expansion room but that one has a good amount of connectivity. The rest looks good, and I would agree with SWKerr about the new quad, something to think about now that the transcoder can run multi-core and you can set comskip up to work on multi-core systems too. If the $30 doesn't bother you I'd do it.

I'm not an expert on the WHS OS but it doesn't require a seperate drive, it partitions off the primary to give itself 15 or 20 GB of space and the rest is used for tombstones and such (if you have other drives in the pool, otherwise it will also store data there as well).

As for initial number of HDDs, the beauty of WHS is it will take whatever you can give it. You can start with whatever you have or can purchase and swap to bigger or add more as you need or can afford to.

I had an XP setup with a pair of 160GB HDD mirrored for my OS and my important share files (pictures, files, etc.) and two large HDDs for Sage recordings. I don't currently do DVD rips to my server. I also had an old 180GB PATA drive that I had been using for system backups.

I left the recording drives out of the pool but everything else went into the pool. Should I need more room I can always just dump one of the pool drives and go bigger.

WHS does support external backups. In WHS you can set up external drives and pick which folders from the pool are backed up to the external HDD. Only problem is you can't direct it to make backups of your other system backups, just shared folders.

I picked up a 1TB drive cheap and installed it and re-purposed my external 500GB drive as a backup pool drive. I use it as an off-site backup and update it weekly.

[Tokendude]

Umm..... This probably goes against the grain, but I've never been a big fan of AMD processors. WHS is quite stable and AMD is well supported by WHS, but in all the years I've been building pc's I've never had as many problems with Intel as AMD. From what I understand it is more of a support chipset problem (ie. motherboard) rather than the processor itself, but I've had several horror stories with AMD due to incompatibilities.

I'm a huge fan of Gigabyte motherboards for long term durability. They also will throttle down the cpu (via FSB) so as to reduce power consumption when loads are low. Go with the i5.

Regarding power supplies, please understand that a 600W rated power supply begins to falter above 80% loading typically. For non-name brand this figure is even lower. Even though the video card is the biggest consumer (which is not a concern for WHS), I still would not go lower than 600W. I've not had good luck with Antec power supplies. I started with corsair about 2 years ago. No problems there.

Antec 300 case rocks! Add a fan up front across the drive bays and you are golden...

Also, if you decide to include caller ID down the road I suggest you try to use one a motherboard with an onboard serial port. There are many more external modems that support caller ID natively than internal modems, although the Zoom 3025xx does work internally.

Regarding hard drives, I've been curious to see how people choose here. I'm a WD fan, but they have green, black, and enterprise (by order of price). I went with enterprise because I'm not running duplication, but I think you could use greens if you turn it on. They are not rated for multimedia applications, but I think many people use them. Enterprise and 2x the cost of green...

Just more info to totally confuse you... Have fun!

Roy

[SWKerr]

The case will support a full ATX board and Gigabyte does have something similar in that class.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128394
There is no eSATA but you can get a adapter that will fit in an expansion slot for just a few bucks.

The Micro ATX will fit fine in a full ATX case if you want to go with it. I have found that I never use that many expansion slots anymore. The HD-PVR is a USB tuner as are most things I need to hookup to the server. Still there is no reason not to go with the full ATX board.

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by SWKerr

The real question is do you expect the machine to have the comskip file available right after you finish a recording even if you are doing two or three at a time? If you are ok with it being ready the next day then a dual core should be no problem. I run a ATSC tuner with two HD-PVRs and the comskip file is always ready by the time I watch the show. The only thing I watch close to real time is the news and sports and I don't miss it.

I would not get hung up on SATAports. You can always add a SATA card for $40 down the road should you ever need them and something with a lot of them built in will cost significantly more.

Unless you plan to go for the new i5 I would go to AMD and one of their low power cpus. You can swap out the AMD X2 to a AM3 socket X4 easily and cheaply later on while the Intel 775 cpus will be phased out fairly quickly. You can also get a AMD motherboard with decent built in graphics rather cheaply. There is no point buying fast\expensive memory here as well.

I use the Antec Three hundred with a 430W power supply. It is $99 a Newegg. It has great ventilation and the large fans run quite. You can spend more and get more internal drive space but using 1.5TB drive it will be a long time before you need them. I don't have a DVD drive in my WHS.

The i5 750 is clearly the best value on the market today in a quad core but it is truly overkill for the WHS. The required DD3 memory will also drive up the price but still in a reasonable range. Don't do a 775 socket cpu.

I'm about to build a new HTPC as well, and have been looking to build my FIRST AMD box. There are doubts on this thread - for the purpose of a Sage Media Center box alone, do you have any doubts whatsoever about AMD? I had read here there was some kind of a timing bug a while back with AMD processors, possibly with XP, and I intend for this to be an XP box. Any thoughts?

[Djc208]

Originally Posted by tvmaster2

I'm about to build a new HTPC as well, and have been looking to build my FIRST AMD box. There are doubts on this thread - for the purpose of a Sage Media Center box alone, do you have any doubts whatsoever about AMD? I had read here there was some kind of a timing bug a while back with AMD processors, possibly with XP, and I intend for this to be an XP box. Any thoughts?

I thought that bug only applied to a specific subset of processors, and had essentially been fixed a long time ago. I had an AMD Sempron64 machine (I built dirt cheap) as my Sage server many moons ago and it was just as solid as my current Intel setup. That machine is now in the garage running W7 (just for kicks) without any problems (other than it's almost too far for my wireless connection).

[SWKerr]

I have built several new AMD based systems in the last few months without any problems. I would be more concerned about the i5 cpu at this point since all the AMD chip are being built off the same basic architecture. It has been a long time since a real problem with a cpu was reported. You are more likely to have a problem with the bios on your motherboard.

I just got my Kill-a-Watt out and tested my current WHS 780G system with an Athlon 64 X2 5400 65W and 7 hard drives. It peaks at 320W during boot and runs at about 220W under full cpu load. I would not e concerned about having to add a larger power supply.

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by SWKerr

I have built several new AMD based systems in the last few months without any problems. I would be more concerned about the i5 cpu at this point since all the AMD chip are being built off the same basic architecture. It has been a long time since a real problem with a cpu was reported. You are more likely to have a problem with the bios on your motherboard.

I just got my Kill-a-Watt out and tested my current WHS 780G system with an Athlon 64 X2 5400 65W and 7 hard drives. It peaks at 320W during boot and runs at about 220W under full cpu load. I would not e concerned about having to add a larger power supply.

OK, thanks for the info - AMD it is then. The Gigabyte 785 boards are what sparked my interest, with the idea being a quiet, cool machine that can run HD from the integrated graphics.

[SWKerr]

Originally Posted by tvmaster2

OK, thanks for the info - AMD it is then. The Gigabyte 785 boards are what sparked my interest, with the idea being a quiet, cool machine that can run HD from the integrated graphics.

You may want to add an after market CPU cooler. The suppled fan is not bad but something with a 120mm fan would be almost dead silent. You need to make sure it will fit your case, some are quite large.

[blueroom]

I'm using one of the new Gigabyte MA785 boards and the HD4200 video even with the 9.9 ATI drives was very good but the occasional tearing at 1320x780 60Hz drove me nuts. I dropped in a fanless HD4550 and all was well.

In hindsight I should have bought an SageTV HD Theater digital media extender and put the server in the attic with the antennas.

[SWKerr]

Tearing was always a problem for me on XP with VMR unless I used full screen exclusive mode. Now I just don't use VMR or XP which solved the problem.

I have two of the HD4550 and I love them.

I also have a 785G rig that I just built. Running Windows7 RC with latest drivers and latest non beta Sage and things looked good under Overlay but I had issues with EVR.

I was able to fix the EVR playback problem with the following Sage update:
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=43579