Media Server (Antec P183/CP-850/i7)

[KuniD]

For the past 5 years I’ve been using a dual Opteron system in a Lian Li PC-V2000 full tower as an all purposes media server, to encode and stream content.

Recently I’ve started using PS3 Media Server software which is fantastic but I’m beginning to see the limitations of my processing power – it struggles to transcode MKV 1080p files when they’re played over the network to an Xbox 360 for example.

On top of this limitation, the system is too big and too noisy.


So out with the old and in with the new, this is what I’m considering

Case: Antec P183 (£110)
PSU: Antec CP-850 (£89)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD3 (£107)
CPU: Intel Core i7 860 (2.8GHz, QC, HT) OEM (£189)
Memory: Crucial 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 1333MHz/PC3-10600 Ballistix CL6 (£60)
Cooler: Prolimatech Megahalems (£45)

This comes to £600 which is the upper limit of my budget.

I’ll be adding the following parts which I already have:
Fans: 120mm nexus’s as 7v for the Megahalems and the whole case, replacing all existing fans
Graphics: ATI HD3870
DVDRW: NEC ND-3540
Hard drives: 2 x Samsung EcoGreen HD154UI 1.5Tb, 1 x Samsung HD103UJ 1Tb, 4 x Western Digital WD5000AAKS 500Gb

I’ll be running Windows 7 Professional 64bit on the system.

I’ve selected these parts for their noise characteristics, build quality and performance. The system will need to be able to run for 24hrs without a reboot for weeks perhaps. Most the time it will be conducting basic tasks, but at times it may need to transcode and stream two 1080p MKV files for 2-3 hours.

Spec wise, the only changes on the horizon I can see is that I’ll replace the 500Gb drives eventually with larger ones. The system will never have more than 8 drives.

My questions are:

1) Have I selected the correct parts in terms of noise characteristics, build quality and performance for my budget – can I do better?

2) Do you think the parts I have selected will actually fit together – i.e. Are there any known problems fitting the Megahalems into an Antec P183?

3) Am I being realistic in expecting such a setup to have the ability to transcode and stream two 1080p MKV files? (guidelines state to transcode/stream a single 1080p MKV requires a C2D 2.6Ghz)

4) Will the cooling setup I have in mind – Megahalems with 7v Nexus 120mm, and 3-4 7v Nexus 120mm system fans – be up to the task of keeping a Core i7 860 and 7 hard drives cool when they’re working at 80-100% load?

Cheers

[Chocolinx]

All I can say is... That's major overkill for a media server lol

My media server has a lowly Sempron 140 and 1GB of ram, and a 785GM motherboard because it has 6 SATA spots. Adding additional SATA slots isn't hard by buying a few cheap SATA Controllers.

My only comment is, if you can afford an Antec P183, I think you should get a coolermaster stacker instead. Or something with a crap load of hdd bays. I'm using a 400W to power my currently 6 drives in my server, and future 4 drives will be powered by a separate brick.

As for your questions, the system will be loud regardless (at least by SPCR standards). HDDs put out a lot of noise, buzzing, humming, clicking. You can problem dampen the noise you find a way to make some sort of acoustic sound proofing box. Other then that, simply suspending all the drives won't do the trick.

[KuniD]

Of course pretty much any spec would be fine for serving up files alone, but problem I have is with transcoding HD files.

I use an application called PS3 Media Server, which can transcode pretty much any file and make it playable over the network on a PS3 or Xbox 360.

Now my existing Dual CPU setup (2 x Opteron 246HE (2.0GHz)) can handle transcoding/streaming ONE 720p MKV file, but really struggles with anything more.

In my house the media server will need to primarily service three devices in separate rooms:

Lounge - Xbox 360
Bedroom 1 - Nvidia ION HTPC
Bedroom 2 - Xbox 360

The ION handles the x264 MKV decoding all on its own of course, so the media server will just need to stream the file, but for the two Xbox 360's (or a PS3), the server first needs to transcode/mux the x264 MKV file, then stream it to the console to make it playable. This is because MS and Sony do not support MKV on their consoles.


As crazy as it sounds, I want the system to be powerful enough to be able to transcode/mux TWO x264 1080p MKV files.

That's why I need the processing power.

The minimum requirement for transcoding a single 1080p MKV file is a Core 2 Duo 2.6GHz, so I'm hoping a Core i7 860 2.8GHz with four cores and hyper threading should be able to handle this.


Regarding the hard drives, this is why I haven't gone for something like the Coolermaster Stacker. My current case (Lian Li PC-V2000) is a full tower, which at times has held 11 hard drives! I want to move away from a full tower; it just takes up too much space. A midi tower is easier to hide away.

As 1.5Tb and 2Tb hard drives are now more affordable I don't see the need for that many drives. Eventually I'd like to end up with no more than 5 or 6 1.5/2Tb drives.


I'm hoping that by having a generally quiet base spec (CP-850 is quiet, CPU cooling is quiet, etc), that by reducing the numer of hard drives + using the correct spin up/spin down strategy the noise will be very very low.

[danimal]

you didn't mention what software you were using to do the encoding?

at any rate, i'd be looking at the i7 920, if you want the maximum overclocking performance.

the Megahalems costs twice as much as the mugen 2 here in the states, check your pricing.

you can easily fit 9 or 10 hdds into the p183, when you install a bay converter into the top bay.

[Chocolinx]

I think you got it all backwards, or the wrong idea. Transcoding to MPEG doesn't use much CPU power at all. The CPU is simply there to decode the H.264 material. That's why you need at least a C2D 2.14 for 1080p. So a decent 7200RPM HDD will do fine for transcoding. However, you should simply use mkv2vob for TVersity (I'm assuming this is the Share Media software you're using. If not you should be.) PS3 will read the VOB files fine.

As for the 360... Packaging to WMV I'll assume it's doing the same as VOB, since WMV should be able to contain H.264 video, unless it's actually encoding it back to VC-1 (which would be retarded).

As a side note, my old C2D E6400 was fast enough to transcode/decode H.264 at 1080P.

In the end the choice is yours, if you have the money to blow, then I say I'm all up for the i7 1156 setup. However if you want to build a system that will handle what your needs are, you can probably spend half the amount you set out to spend.

[danimal]

the problem is that he wants to do simultaneous decoding of *two* h.264 video streams for playback... he's talking about a media server, not a standalone pc.

however, he also mentions "transcode/mux", which is not decoding for playback, it's encoding, which in the case of h.264, is very cpu-dependant.

i think that there is some confusion about the terms, but he is outlining a situation that requires a lot of horsepower.

[Chocolinx]

Transcoding is going to MPEG so it's not all that taxing on the CPU. MPEG is very low CPU usage in general. Muxing, the task of moving video and audio into a container, is all dependent on how fast the HDD is. Transcoding IMO and many on doom9 would say it's a bad idea since you're essential re-encoding the video. It's better to remux into a compatible format. If he wants to decode 2 streams of 1080P for transcoding, that can easily be handled by any Quad Core today. Although, there's a problem with that too, I'm not entire sure the codec will split the work for 2 cores each. It might try to decode the files via the same 2 cores. I'm just saying, it's a very expensive setup for what he wants to do, but it isn't a bad idea really if he can afford it. For his PS3 he could simple use mkv2vob for any files he downloads and the PS3 can do the decoding, instead of his server. Brings out much better results.

However I just thought of this, and for the price you're paying for the new parts, you could basically build 2 HTPCs for both TVs you're trying to transcode to (2TV because you said 2 1080P streams). Just a thought. A PC could play any format, and it wouldn't tax your server as severely. I recently built my server (which doubles as an HTPC) for about $260 US or 130 quid, which is the price of your case alone.

[danimal]

Transcoding is going to MPEG so it's not all that taxing on the CPU. MPEG is very low CPU usage in general.

that is not correct.

your insistance on calling everything "mpeg" indicates that you are unable to differentiate between mpeg1, mpeg2, and mpeg4, which is critical knowledge for understanding how and why h.264 encoding is so cpu-intensive.

you were right to look at his client(ps3) for the decoding, instead of the server doing it, but at this point it's not clear to me that the server he is referring to actually did any decoding to begin with.

[Chocolinx]

Transcoding is going to MPEG so it's not all that taxing on the CPU. MPEG is very low CPU usage in general.

that is not correct.

your insistance on calling everything "mpeg" indicates that you are unable to differentiate between mpeg1, mpeg2, and mpeg4, which is critical knowledge for understanding how and why h.264 encoding is so cpu-intensive.

you were right to look at his client(ps3) for the decoding, instead of the server doing it, but at this point it's not clear to me that the server he is referring to actually did any decoding to begin with.

MPEG refers to MPEG-1... Otherwise I'd say H.264. TVersity when transcoding does MPEG-1 transcodes and not H.264, unless you specify it to. But, you wouldn't want it to anyway because it's settings are ugly. Transcoding involves decoding and encoding. So yes, CPU for decoding the H.264 stream, usually the audio stream is sent back as PCM format if transcoding. But, then at the other end simultaneously you encode to your desire format. Usually MPEG... Not MP2, or MP3, or MP4, but MPG. MPG will overload your HDD bandwidth before it breaks any barriers with your CPU.

TBH, I really don't think this setup is going to work anymore. I doubt anyone would want to do this either. You should really ask on doom9.org forums for a solid solution. Asking here is anyone's best guess. The people there would actually have an answer for you. Like the developers of TVersity and mkv2vob are there. A solution I know that would work perfectly though is, setting up a PC at every TV you want to access the server. That's what I do in my house, and I can stream 3 1080P so far. Haven't tried more.

[danimal]

MPEG refers to MPEG-1... Otherwise I'd say H.264. TVersity when transcoding does MPEG-1 transcodes and not H.264

since both his xbox 360 and his ps3 support h.264, it wouldn't be very smart of him to encode anything in mpeg1, now would it? i don't understand why you brought "mpeg" into this discussion.

for those of you who are trying to keep up with this chocolinx mess the mkv that the o.p. was referring to is a container format, which means that it should support various codecs, like h.264, x264, and yes, even "mpeg".

[KuniD]

Good to see there's a healthy discussion going


To explain the situation more clearly, let me explain how things have operated for me up until quite recently.


I have a media server (the dual Opteron rig I mention above, made out the bones of an old workstation), which holds around 6-7Tb worth of storage space. I use the server to stream files to two HTPC's. Now due to an accident, one of these HTPC's is completely out of action, leaving me with a single ASRock ION-330.

Beyond that we have two Xbox 360's in the house.

Now, I could have just bought/built another ASRock ION (or something similar) and saved myself a chunk of change, but then I got thinking about updating my setup in general.

The problem I have is that the media server I currently use is built from an old work station I used a few years back for work. It's a big, bulky, windy and noisy full tower (Lian Li PC-V2000).

Whilst I've managed to quieten the system down quite a lot, I'd much rather have something built to my requirements.

On top of this, I have two Xbox 360's in the house, which are networked and used for gaming, but annoying aren't used for watching media over the network. This is because the Xbox 360 doesn't support the containers/codecs of most my content.

90% of my content is 720p/1080p x264 MKV & XviD. The remaining 10% is mostly DivX (although that number is constantly going down, as I favor x264 MKV's these days).

This is when I came across PS3 Media Server (PMS). Whilst I did look at other media server software such as TVersity, I found PMS to be more appealing.

I installed it to have a quick play and found that with hardly any setting up, I could play all my XviD's and x264 MKV's through my Xbox 360! Now this is a major plus to me, as it means I can utilise both my Xbox 360's as media clients over the network, plus having the ASRock ION on top.

PMS uses MEncoder, Avisynth, FFmpeg & TsMuxer - now my knowledge on all this stuff is a bit flakey if I'm honest. IF it can't mux the file into something the Xbox 360 likes, it transcodes it into MPEG2.


Now enough of all that - the reason I'm splashing out on a new server is so I can build a box that I can keep on in the corner of a room with minimal noise, which will do everything I need for the next 6 or so years. To finance the new box, I'm selling off all the parts I don't need from the old media server and parts from the now dead HTPC. Essentially this should pay for 90% of th new machine. YES, I probably am splurging a little bit more than I should be, but I'm sure I'll probably end up using the machine for other things in the future so thought I'd spend a bit extra to make sure its future proof (hence the SATA600, USB3.0, i7, etc)

Sorry for the long winded reply, just thought I'd give a bit more background to my warped thinking

[KuniD]

you didn't mention what software you were using to do the encoding?

at any rate, i'd be looking at the i7 920, if you want the maximum overclocking performance.

the Megahalems costs twice as much as the mugen 2 here in the states, check your pricing.

you can easily fit 9 or 10 hdds into the p183, when you install a bay converter into the top bay.

The Scythe Mugen 2 is about 37 pounds in the UK, the Megahalems is 45 pounds.

As it wasn't much more I thought I'd see what the fuss was about, after SPCR has given is 9.5/10 which is quite high!

[KuniD]

Oh and I mention PS3 (the console, not the server software), as I may pick one up at some point.

I believe the PMS software muxs the x264 MKV files into an M2TS?

Regarding the Xbox 360, I think it can't do this (as the Xbox only supports MPEG4 files up to 4Gb), so it needs to transcode to MPEG2.

[danimal]

i'm guessing that the lian le tower you have is a precision work of art, if it's too noisy, change the fans out, and add some baffling material to the inside... you could probably get good money for it, if you chose to sell it.

i like where you are headed with the video server project... you have a workable solution with the xbox's, i have to wonder if adding disparte hardware like the ps3 is going to complicate the encoding on the server end.

x264 is the codec inside of the mkv container, and i think that m2ts is a file type for certain variations of the h.264 codec... muxing/demuxing is merely the act of splitting/recombining audio and video streams, without re-encoding, so it should be lossless... i don't have a clue if that's how it works on the ps3 media server, but i would avoid bloated junk codecs like mpeg1/mpeg2 whenever possible.

[Chocolinx]

@kunid
So yeah it works the same way TVersity does. MPEG2 or MPEG1. That kind of encoding isn't heavy, but like I said it'll suck your hdd's bandwidth before the CPU if you're doing 2 1080p streams. At least in theory, I've never tried before.

m2ts is a container used most commonly in HDTV captures. M2 for MPEG2 and TS means Transport Stream. We use them commonly when we want to release good fansubs for those Japanese Anime otakus That aside, remuxing to m2ts is changing the container, so this is also HDD bandwidth heavy too, no CPU required actually in this step, or at least very very little. You'll probably want to do some kind of RAID0 setup if you really want to do what you're asking. I've been asking other encoder friends and they pretty much say the same thing. If you want a more definitive answer really go on www.doom9.org and ask the people there. They know their stuff better then anyone.

Also, if you're running a 5.1 audio system at any of the end points, make sure PMS is remuxing the media file correctly. It may or may not be re-encoding the audio to DTS Stereo. mkv2vob (which remuxes and is the original software for PS3 users) does the same thing but is update regularly for that sole feature, so check it out.

[KuniD]

Thanks I'll check it out.

I'll drop by Doom9 as well


Thought I'd share this:

http://support.divx.com/faq/view/suppor ... other?id=6

Divx7 adds H264 MKV support to Media Player in Windows 7, the video above shows how to make this work with Xbox as well!

Will give this a try as well once the system is setup.

[danimal]

here is the place to get some good advice on setting up a media server:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1071162