HTPC with storage

[snellizback]

I've spent a few hours researching various aspects of this, and there doesn't seem to be any one source to help me solve all of my issues, hopefully someone here on TH can help.

I'm planning on building my first HTPC soon and I've been looking into various solutions and it seems to be hard for me to find a solution that both matches what I want from the system and fits within what I consider a reasonable budget.

Primarily this is the system I want:

• 
  ■ Connects via HDMI to my TV.
  ■ Is quiet enough that it won't be distracting (not necessarily silent, just not so noisy I have to increase volume on TV).
  ■ Consumes as little power as possible (again, not trying to run on a 10W PSU, but I plan on having it on most of the time, if not constantly and don't want to pay crazy bills, if it can be helped).
  ■ Has 4TB+ of space (this is for consolidating all of the movies I have on my 3 PCs). Ideally I would have a RAID1 configuration, to avoid loss of data.
  ■ Is connected to my home network.
  ■ Can have files downloaded straight to it, either through network settings, or remote access.
  ■ DVD drive, to play DVDs
  ■ Can be powered on indefinitely without overheating or dying.

These are optional extras I was considering:

• 
  ■ SSD for quicker boot times (although if it's on all the time, this is pointless).
  ■ GPU capable of playing Steam games (with a possibility of turning it into a steam box once Steam OS is available).
  ■ Blu-ray drive.

It's worth noting that I don't need a TV tuner, as I am happy with the freeview my TiVo provides (for free).

Ideally this would cost less than £500.

The first issue I ran into is that it seems that most cases designed for HTPC use only have two 3.5" HD bays and maybe one or two 2.5" bays, making it pretty hard to pick a case which will be inconspicuous and capable of storing vast amounts of films and TV.

The next problem is that I don't know how much GPU/CPU power is needed to a) play high quality video or b) play steam games at a reasonable setting. I'm not 100% on if I would incorporate a mid-range GPU into the rig (for the purpose of playing some games on the TV), but as I don't know exactly what is required I have no idea of what the difference in price would be.


Can someone give me some guidance into possible case solutions (I guess an alternative is some kind of NAS setup in a room with more space, but it seems daft, as I'll already have a PC which will be almost permanently on in the living room) and also some rough guidelines as to what is required for a) HTPC use and b) steam-box use.

Thanks a lot.

 

[Rammy]

I think the first thing you have to decide is how many drives you are going to need, and the setup of these. This will have a knock on effect on both the cases and motherboards which can support what you are trying to achieve.
Case in point - it is perfectly feasible to get say 8TB+ of storage within a pretty compact ITX case, but if you are trying to keep individual drive sizes down, trying to reuse existing lower capacity drives, or have any type of RAID setup, you are going to run into the physical limitations you mention. Secondly, most ITX motherboards have only 4 SATA ports, one of which will be taken by an optical drive, and one which will presumably be taken by a boot drive (SSD/HDD), leaving only two for your storage.
If you do decide you need more space, there's a load of ATX (and mATX) HTPC cases which have 6+ 3.5" internal drive bays, and the accompanying motherboards won't be as limited with regards to ports.

Given your budget, I'd probably suggest ignoring a graphics card entirely, and getting a decent CPU. If you just go for a basic CPU for HTPC (which will manage fine on its integrated graphics for video playback) then this will be a limitation if/when you do decide to play games.

Different games have hugely different graphical demands, so there isn't really an answer for the amount you would need to spend to play "Steam games". Somewhere around £100 will get you a card capable of playing any modern game at lower settings/resolutions, while going up to the £150-200 bracket gets you a solid 1080P gaming card for high demanding modern games.

 

[snellizback]

I think the first thing you have to decide.....

Thanks for the reply.

I don't have any current plans to use any old components (except maybe a couple of SATA cables or something), so in terms of which drives I'll be using they'll all be bought for this machine.

I guess I'll probably settle for 2*2TB drives (plus boot drive), no RAID, to avoid moving into larger cases.

Based on the advice you've given I'll probably stick to HTPC stuff and maybe consider adding in a GPU at a later date, if I feel it's worth it. I take it that the built in graphical capabilities of the Ivy bridge i series processors are capable of doing video over HDMI by themselves?

Could you let me know what you think of the below:

This is just a quick bunch of components I threw together and I'll probably spend a few days finding cheaper/better alternatives etc. just wanted to know if anything seemed wildly out of place to you. (I haven't added a boot drive as yet, as I'm not sure if it's worth SSD or not yet, as I imagine it'll be on all the time).

Thanks again.

 

[Rammy]

There is nothing wrong with it, but I'd probably be more inclined towards Haswell these days. Few extra features, better internal graphics, and better motherboard selection. You shouldn't have any issues with either for video playback though (you can do basic gaming on them).
A basic socket 1150 board like a Gigabyte GA-B85M-D2V has 6 SATA ports, which gives you a few more options, and if you need HDMI there is the slightly more expensive HD3 version.

If you do want to have a machine capable of gaming with just a graphics card addition, then it's perhaps worth going for 8Gb of RAM, and a slightly larger capacity PSU (to give you more options with regards to graphics cards). For a cheap(ish) high quality PSU, check out the XFX Core 550 for £45. It'll power more or less any graphics card you could want to add, plus it's generally better quality than the Corsair.

The Silverstone case is a nice choice for looks (and decent value) but it is a little limited with regards to drive locations. On the plus side, it is fairly large, and I'd imagine it wouldn't be too hard to supplement these locations if required. There aren't a huge amount of alternatives without the costs spiralling. At ATX you have the Silverstone LC10/LC13 which aren't massively larger and have a lot more drive bays, but they aren't cheap and might not suit you.

 

[shortstuff_mt]

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i3-4130 3.4GHz Dual-Core Processor (£77.99 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-B85M-D2V Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£43.02 @ Scan.co.uk)
Memory: Patriot Viper 3 Low Profile Blue 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£57.40 @ Ebuyer)
Storage: Kingston SSDNow V300 Series 120GB 2.5" Solid State Disk (£47.99 @ Aria PC)
Storage: Western Digital Green 4TB 3.5" 5900RPM Internal Hard Drive (£116.48 @ Ebuyer)
Case: Cooler Master N200 MicroATX Mid Tower Case (£33.83 @ Aria PC)
Power Supply: Corsair CX 430W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply (£36.73 @ Amazon UK)
Optical Drive: Samsung SH-224DB/BEBE DVD/CD Writer (£11.78 @ CCL Computers)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 (OEM) (64-bit) (£69.96 @ CCL Computers)
Total: £495.18
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-03-04 14:41 GMT+0000)