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Author Topic: [MEGATHREAD] Personal Computer - Updated builds thanks to Logical Increments  (Read 1600238 times)


i'm confused guys. i have a pentium e6700, and dxdiag says my graphics are the g41 chipset, but my motherboard has gma x4500. why isn't it using the x4500, or am i just not understanding something?


they not great for gaming. but we needed workstation monitors

I wanna build a NAS but it's been pretty hard to find any builds that are on the cheaper side. I wanna use FreeNAS with SABnzbd with some other stuff making it a media server for XBMC.

http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=26048912

To save some money I wanted a board that's SoC instead of getting a cpu because I'll never be upgrading it. The only problem with the board that I can see is that it only has 4 SATA ports. I was planning on starting with a 3 drive volume and then maybe later adding a second 3 drive volume. I think it would be cheaper to buy a SATA expansion card than a mini itx board with 6 ports.

The only other problem I have is the case, which is a bit too pricey for me. But finding anything that is small and holds a bunch of drives that isn't expensive is pretty difficult. I think this one is best because it still allows for me to expand the number of drives without having to replace everything.

For some reason my PC went through a disk check but when I rebooted it the BIOS wouldn't load or Windows.
Any help?


If you want, I can try and make a build for you. Just give me a few hours and I should have something decent.

Alright, here goes. I'm not very familiar with media servers and such, so I don't know whether it's supposed to do video decoding or just act as a regular file server, but it should be capable of doing both. I'll do a breakdown of the parts, as well as explain some of my choices. Oh, and I bumped up the form factor to MicroATX if that's okay.

Motherboard / CPU
ASUS A78M-E + AMD A4-6300 - $85
Since I couldn't find any Mini-ITX motherboards with 6 SATA ports I went for a MicroATX board instead. I also upgraded the CPU to an A4-6300 since I read that the A4-5000 had some issues with streaming high-bitrate 1080p video. The combo is only $10 more, but since you don't need a SATA controller card you'll actually save some money. You also have the advantage of being able to upgrade in the future if you want to stream 4k video.

RAM
Team Xtreem Dark Series 4x2GB - $60
I don't understand what you'd need 16 gigs for; most guides I've seen have recommended about 4, though I went with 8 just to be on the safe side.

Hard Drives
3x WD Red 3TB - 3x $112
No objections here, I think.

Case
Nanoxia NXDS4B MicroATX case - $80
Since I chose a MicroATX motherboard I had to get a MicroATX case as well. The Nanoxia was the cheapest case I could find that had 6 3.5" drive bays. It's got dust filters too, which is neat. If you can manage with a full ATX case you can go even cheaper.

Power Supply
Rosewill CAPSTONE-450 - $60
It's way overkill, I know, but this was the cheapest decent power supply I could find that had 6 SATA connectors. Despite being higher-powered, it's still more efficient than the Antec at the same loads, and it's also got all-Japanese capacitors and a two year longer warranty which is something you want in a PSU that's supposed to run 24/7. If cable management is important to you there's also a modular version for $5 more.

Full list: http://pcpartpicker.com/user/Chipskate/saved/HgnMnQ
Total: $622


So, there you go. $80 cheaper (probably more with the SATA controller you'd need for the MiniITX build), better performance and probably more reliable. As I said, though, I don't know too much about media servers, so you should ask for a second opinion from someone who's more experienced than me.

Is there anything better than the R7 265 for around the same price?

Is there anything better than the R7 265 for around the same price?
i would say 750 ti but its not better
just stick with the 265


You might need a RAID card or a good NIC. Perhaps even both but mostly a good NIC to ensure that the local transfer speeds are up to snuff, especially if multiple people will be using it. There's little point in a NAS if the local transfer speeds aren't even close to the read/write speeds of the drives used in it

When I'm using FreeNAS I plan on using ZFS from what I've read it's a good idea to have 1GB of ram for each TB of HDD space. I think I'll just start with a single 8GB stick and get another when I expand to another 3HDD volume.

I don't plan on using it to stream to devices that much, just using an XBMC box to get the files from it. But since it's only 20$ more and has 6 SATA ports your mobo/cpu is a better deal.


You might need a RAID card or a good NIC. Perhaps even both but mostly a good NIC to ensure that the local transfer speeds are up to snuff, especially if multiple people will be using it. There's little point in a NAS if the local transfer speeds aren't even close to the read/write speeds of the drives used in it

It's going to be used by just me most of the time, I just want a NAS for media. I'm also going to have them in RaidZ-1, I've never heard anyone talk about needing a raid card for a NAS using software raid. My router only goes to 1000Mb throughput so I don't see why I would need anything above 1000Mb, some people suggest getting an intel NIC to just not have any hassle with FreeNAS detecting it.

my new specs are gonna be as follows:

pentium dual core e6700 3.2 GHz
3 GB DDR3 1133 MHz
GT 730

can i play mostly all of the games in my steam library? http://steamcommunity.com/id/elecr0

Maybe; devildog never said which drive config he's going to use, though thinking about it RAID 1 or RAID 5 seems most likely. The chipset natively supports the former but not the latter. He might need an NIC though since the board only has gigabit ethernet.
EDIT: If you're only going to download/upload files to it you could maybe do with an A4-4000 instead and save sime money.
« Last Edit: February 03, 2015, 10:13:49 PM by Pentium »