- May 20, 2015
- 3
- 0
- 4,510
Hello all,
It's been quite a few years since I last built a PC from scratch, and the environment / choices available now are being just a tad intimidating, so I was hoping one of you might be able to help me.
I am wanting to build a new Media PC for my living room as my current one is... very old and not doing well. My hopes / desires are for:
A small form-factor PC case (ie: the little Shuttle breadbox systems from ages ago)
A motherboard with built-in audio (and video that can handle VLC Blu-ray decoding in 1080p?)
An Intel I5 processor
16 GB of ram (expandable to 32GB later?)
128 or 256 GB SSD for operating system
A Blu-ray / DVD reader
Windows 2012 Server OS?
I currently have two WD 3GB Red HDD running in raid 1, which I plan to move to the new server once it is built, so whatever case I purchase needs to be able to hold all three drives plus the 5.25 disc reader.
The current system is connected to my LCD TV and is used to watch Hulu / Netflix shows, torrent other media as needed, host a couple of Minecraft servers (and the website they are connected to), and serve as a general file repository. I am wanting the new system to do all of this, plus handle more general web hosting and possibly e-mail hosting as well (future projects).
And finally, of course, I'm on a budget of around $500 or so for this. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
It's been quite a few years since I last built a PC from scratch, and the environment / choices available now are being just a tad intimidating, so I was hoping one of you might be able to help me.
I am wanting to build a new Media PC for my living room as my current one is... very old and not doing well. My hopes / desires are for:
A small form-factor PC case (ie: the little Shuttle breadbox systems from ages ago)
A motherboard with built-in audio (and video that can handle VLC Blu-ray decoding in 1080p?)
An Intel I5 processor
16 GB of ram (expandable to 32GB later?)
128 or 256 GB SSD for operating system
A Blu-ray / DVD reader
Windows 2012 Server OS?
I currently have two WD 3GB Red HDD running in raid 1, which I plan to move to the new server once it is built, so whatever case I purchase needs to be able to hold all three drives plus the 5.25 disc reader.
The current system is connected to my LCD TV and is used to watch Hulu / Netflix shows, torrent other media as needed, host a couple of Minecraft servers (and the website they are connected to), and serve as a general file repository. I am wanting the new system to do all of this, plus handle more general web hosting and possibly e-mail hosting as well (future projects).
And finally, of course, I'm on a budget of around $500 or so for this. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
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