Dear respected forum members!
I am about to embark on the adventure of my first HTPC build! I am av tech savvy but have no experience of building computers! Eeek!
I have been researching this for over two weeks and have found some great articles on these forums but I was hoping to get a once over of my specs to see what you guys think? Thanks in advance.
What it has to do:
Ripping my ever growing DVD and Bluray collection to internal hard drives with mirrored backup internally.
Watch and record freesat, Dual tuners
Faultless playback of Bluray/DVD rips including MKV etc.
Playback of HD online content such as iPlayer, 4OD etc
Integration to Lovefilm account
DVD and Bluray playback direct from the drive when needed
7.1 audio (where available on the original disc) over HDMI
Gigabit Ethernet
Lots of storage and a path to much more!
Quiet!
Serious wife approval factor
What I have spec'd at the moment:
Case: Silverstone LC-13E
PSU: Corsair 430CX
Processor: Intel i3 2100
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z68MA-D2H-B3
RAM: Corsair XMS3 DDR3 2 x 2GB
Optical Drive: Samsung SH-B123L/RSBP
Tuner Card:TBS Dual DVB-S2 PCIE card
OS Drive: Intel 40GB SSD
Storage Drive: WD Green 3TB 6GB/s
Backup Drive: WD Green 3TB 6GB/s
Recorded TV Storage drive: WD Green 750GB 3GB/s
Software: Win 7 Home Premium 64Bit with 7MC
I am planning that when the 3TB drive is full I will build an unraid server that will be able to add storage as and when I want over the GB ethernet. Im planning on a 15 drive setup with hot swap cages. The backup drive will become the parity drive and then I can add a drive whenever I like. Great thing about unraid is that you don't have to renew the raid every time you add a disc. Oh and you only need one "redundant" drive for the backup solution so if you add a 3tb drive you add 3tb of storage not 2tb. Oh and if you lose more than two discs at the same time for some ungodly reason you only lose the data on those discs, not the whole raid array like conventional raid!!! Sounds good to me! I appreciate this is not a fully secure backup solution, i'm happy with that. If the house burns down I'll be more worried about my Home Cinema than my Media server!
As I want to migrate this drive to a server in the future I have a dedicated drive for my recorder TV which will be coming and going all the time, anything I really want to keep can be migrated onto the 3tb media drive.
In terms of FE software I want to run Media Centre on startup and use the MC remote to control it all. I think I will rarely use a mouse and keyboard. There are some nice plugins available out there for iPlayer, 40d etc and Lovefilm. Also there is a great plugin for one click DVD/Bluray ripping within 7MC, see link below. Looking forward to seeing how that works!
Windows Experts Community
I appreciate this is a high spec for an HTPC but I want Faultless HD playback and fast ripping/converting of media and for it still to be current in 5-10 years.
So what do we think? Have I got it kind of right? Any suggestions?
Also very happy to answer any questions on how I got to where I am now if anyone else is thinking of starting out.
Thanks a lot guys!
I am about to embark on the adventure of my first HTPC build! I am av tech savvy but have no experience of building computers! Eeek!
I have been researching this for over two weeks and have found some great articles on these forums but I was hoping to get a once over of my specs to see what you guys think? Thanks in advance.
What it has to do:
Ripping my ever growing DVD and Bluray collection to internal hard drives with mirrored backup internally.
Watch and record freesat, Dual tuners
Faultless playback of Bluray/DVD rips including MKV etc.
Playback of HD online content such as iPlayer, 4OD etc
Integration to Lovefilm account
DVD and Bluray playback direct from the drive when needed
7.1 audio (where available on the original disc) over HDMI
Gigabit Ethernet
Lots of storage and a path to much more!
Quiet!
Serious wife approval factor
What I have spec'd at the moment:
Case: Silverstone LC-13E
PSU: Corsair 430CX
Processor: Intel i3 2100
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z68MA-D2H-B3
RAM: Corsair XMS3 DDR3 2 x 2GB
Optical Drive: Samsung SH-B123L/RSBP
Tuner Card:TBS Dual DVB-S2 PCIE card
OS Drive: Intel 40GB SSD
Storage Drive: WD Green 3TB 6GB/s
Backup Drive: WD Green 3TB 6GB/s
Recorded TV Storage drive: WD Green 750GB 3GB/s
Software: Win 7 Home Premium 64Bit with 7MC
I am planning that when the 3TB drive is full I will build an unraid server that will be able to add storage as and when I want over the GB ethernet. Im planning on a 15 drive setup with hot swap cages. The backup drive will become the parity drive and then I can add a drive whenever I like. Great thing about unraid is that you don't have to renew the raid every time you add a disc. Oh and you only need one "redundant" drive for the backup solution so if you add a 3tb drive you add 3tb of storage not 2tb. Oh and if you lose more than two discs at the same time for some ungodly reason you only lose the data on those discs, not the whole raid array like conventional raid!!! Sounds good to me! I appreciate this is not a fully secure backup solution, i'm happy with that. If the house burns down I'll be more worried about my Home Cinema than my Media server!
As I want to migrate this drive to a server in the future I have a dedicated drive for my recorder TV which will be coming and going all the time, anything I really want to keep can be migrated onto the 3tb media drive.
In terms of FE software I want to run Media Centre on startup and use the MC remote to control it all. I think I will rarely use a mouse and keyboard. There are some nice plugins available out there for iPlayer, 40d etc and Lovefilm. Also there is a great plugin for one click DVD/Bluray ripping within 7MC, see link below. Looking forward to seeing how that works!
Windows Experts Community
I appreciate this is a high spec for an HTPC but I want Faultless HD playback and fast ripping/converting of media and for it still to be current in 5-10 years.
So what do we think? Have I got it kind of right? Any suggestions?
Also very happy to answer any questions on how I got to where I am now if anyone else is thinking of starting out.
Thanks a lot guys!