Desktop computer for media ripping (to NAS) as primary function.

[Captain Ron]

My current 32 bit PC is on its last legs and needs retiring / replacing and I am looking vendor / model recommendations.

The primary function of the new PC will be media transfer of my CD,DVD,BLURAY and UHD collection to NAS. Secondary functions are light photo manipulation, audio recording / processing, and MS Office activities and general internet activities including video conferencing.

Desired key hardware features.

Bay for SATA optical drive (UHD friendly drive from old PC)
SSD primary drive for OS and software. (64 bit Windows 10 pro. MS Office. Media manipulation programs)
Additional bays for at least two more SSD drives.
Gigabit Ethernet. Twin parallel if possible so I could look at a NAS that supports it.
Fast 64 bit processor / motherboard / memory architecture to blaze through media reading/writing/transcoding and speedy transfer of resulting files about the system and out to NAS whilst also being able to smoothly and responsively mulitask other PC duties.
HDMI video output. Don't need a gaming level graphics card as the machine will only be using a 32" 1080p LCD TV as the main display but proper 32 bit depth support for photo processing duties and a decent looking Windows 10 environment is always welcome.
integrated HDMI audio output. No mega soundcard required.
USB 3 and C connections for microphone / webcam / external memory sticks / portable HDs.
Would be nice if the machine had efficient but quiet cooling fans.

Budget around £1000. Can stretch a little bit if a killer feature takes the price up a bit.

 

[next010]

Are you just dumping source video via makemkv to .mkv files or are you actually looking to trancode the video into another format ?

 

[EndlessWaves]

Media read and write speeds are generally drive-limited, not CPU/memory limited. Certainly for optical disks.

Transcoding these days is usually done using fixed function hardware incorporated into the GPU side of the chip (VCN/Quicksync/NVENC), you'd only use the CPU if you wanted maximum control or wanted to transcode to a format without hardware support.

HDMI video output, or a DP port supporting dual-mode that can output HDMI, is ubiquitous and all of them carry audio.

Is your existing drive a half height (desktop) drive or a slimline (laptop) drive?

The dual ethernet ports is the only unusual feature on your list, that's not a common feature. I don't know much about parallel ethernet, would a two port PCI-E ethernet card do the job?

 

[Captain Ron]

Are you just dumping source video via makemkv to .mkv files or are you actually looking to trancode the video into another format ?

Bit of both. Full disc backup to AVCHD folder and some ISO images when I want to make physical backups. More often though just extracting main titles to mkv or m2ts.

 

[Captain Ron]

Is your existing drive a half height (desktop) drive or a slimline (laptop) drive?

The dual ethernet ports is the only unusual feature on your list, that's not a common feature. I don't know much about parallel ethernet, would a two port PCI-E ethernet card do the job?

Existing optical drive is a regular desktop drive (about an inch tall). If the Ethernet card can pair the gigabit ports to increase speed then yes that would do.

 

[next010]

Bit of both. Full disc backup to AVCHD folder and some ISO images when I want to make physical backups. More often though just extracting main titles to mkv or m2ts.

That's not video conversion so your CPU isn't going to be doing much, the source video is unchanged just repacked in various containers.

Edit: If actually making real AVHCD video to burn to BD-R then that would require video conversion. I dont believe the below really changes all that much for that kind of usage.

So any basic office PC is just fine for that task like this Ryzen system.
Memory = select 16GB
Primary drive = 2TB samsung 860 EVO

QuietPC sell systems focused on low noise too, again anything will do and you can alter the base offerings.

Dual network cards are not common on average systems, you can buy a USB3 one if you don't want to install an internal PCI-e model.

 

[EndlessWaves]

Existing optical drive is a regular desktop drive (about an inch tall).

You're probably limited to an old fashioned big tower if you need to fit a drive like that then.

If the Ethernet card can pair the gigabit ports to increase speed then yes that would do.

If you're just after speed wouldn't a 2.5Gbase-T port be a better bet?

 

[Captain Ron]

Thanks for all the food for thought to get my PC purchasing whammy on folks.
I eventually went for a VE Workstation M2 from Mesh and ticked a few upgrades from the base config to get a spec I am happy with without going utterly nuts. Total build cost came to just over £1300 after a still valid Black Friday 10% discount was applied. Looking forward to getting it up and running then cannibalising the bits I want from the old machine to live on in the new one. Dead excited to see what ripping and muxing performance is like on a modern 64 bit machine over my old 32 bit dinosaur.