Combine 2 machines into 1

[Ken C]

When I got the HD100, the HTPC machine was moved into the 'back room'. Also in the back room, a media server. The server houses six hard drives, 5 are used for video storage. The server, based on XP Pro, also runs the commercial skip software.

Recently changed the HTPC motherboard to a Gigabyte P35 board, an Intel E6400 Core2Duo, 3 gb of ram. There are 4 Hauppauge 150 analog tuners. Currently no digital tuners, I will be adding a HDHomerun shortly. The HTPC is also based on XP Pro.

Any reason not to combine these two into one ? I can just move the 5 drives from the server into the HTPC machine. The 'new' HTPC will be based on XP Pro, run SageTV along with DirMon/Showanalyzer, six drives, 4 analog tuners (with an HDHR shortly), and the P35 board.

Not sure why I didn't think of this when I bought the HD100, another senior moment ...

[Menehune]

I would worry about finding enough mounting positions for your drives in your consolidated case, making sure you have enough power plugs available for the drives, and possible airflow/overheating issues with the large number of cables in the case.
Since the server is in a hidden room, you may be able to overcome any thermal problems via additional fans and spot cooling. Physically getting the parts to fit in the case may be interesting though...

[Ken C]

Everything will be moved from the Silverstone LC10M case into an Antec P180 mid tower. It has the room. The new combined Sage/server will use a 750 watt power supply, the one currently in use by the server. Should I get a larger one ? Looking at the Gigabyte P35 board, it has 4 SATA plugs so I'll have to continue to use a Promise SATA controller for the additional drives.

I think the E6400 has enough horsepower for all of this. I normally don't do any transcoding so it should be adequate even when the HDHR is added.

Just finished reading the FAQ about moving directories, not quite sure about how that works. Hopefully I won't screw that up.

The network load will certainly decrease. With the current system there can be up to five video streams, 4 from the tuners to the server and 1 from the server to the HD100.

[Ken C]

All went well, but I have a question. Thought I had a larger power supply, 750 watts, but it's only a 500 made by Thermaltake . I'm wondering if it's enough to handle 4 Hauppauge 150's, 6 drives (4 SATA, 2 EIDE), an Intel E6400, an inexpensive PCI-E video card, all on a Gigabyte P35 mb.

Visited a site which calculates power usage and it came up with 430 watts. Assuming 10%, we're at 470 watts.

Should I be looking at a larger supply, say 600 ?