# Computer System for Home



## Sonnie (Apr 11, 2006)

Hey guys...

I am attempting to put together a small computer system to replace our old one at home... nothing fancy, as we don't use it all that much, but like having it in our small study. 

I want it to be small, as we want to move it from the floor to on top of the desk, so this will be a mini ITX build.

 
SilverStone SG05BB-450 ALL Black Plastic/SECC Mini-ITX Computer Case with SFX 450W 80+ Bronze Certified/Single +12V rail Power Supply (Black) 
$120


 
ASUS USB 3.0 SATA 3Gb/s Intel H61 Mini ITX DDR3 1333 Intel - LGA 1155 Motherboard - P8H61-I <REV 3.0> 
$85


 
Intel Core i5-2400 3.10 GHz 6 MB Cache Socket LGA1155 Processor 
$190



SAMSUNG 830 Series F-MZ-7PC064DAM 2.5" 64GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) 
$99


 
Sony AD-7581A 8x DVD±RW DL Notebook IDE Drive w/LightScribe (Black)
$48


 
Kingston Technology HyperX Blu 8GB 1333MHz DDR3 Non-ECC CL9 DIMM (Kit of 2) KHX1333C9D3B1K2/8G
$40



We already have a pretty good Asus 22" monitor.

We plan to use the motherboard video, sound and LAN.

It will run Windows 7 Home 64-bit. 


Any thoughts are appreciated... and I do have a specific question...


I started another thread Network USB Media Server asking about hard drives for use with the USB connection on our E4200 router. I am wondering if it would be just as easy or simpler to use this computer to house a couple of large drives to serve the same purpose of the USB external drive.

The difference would be, direct USB 2.0 connection from the hard drive to the router vs. wired Ethernet connection from the computer to the router. Not being that computer savvy, will the USB drives be that much easier or faster in serving as our media hard drives?


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## KalaniP (Dec 17, 2008)

Sonnie said:


> I started another thread Network USB Media Server asking about hard drives for use with the USB connection on our E4200 router. I am wondering if it would be just as easy or simpler to use this computer to house a couple of large drives to serve the same purpose of the USB external drive.
> 
> The difference would be, direct USB 2.0 connection from the hard drive to the router vs. wired Ethernet connection from the computer to the router. Not being that computer savvy, will the USB drives be that much easier or faster in serving as our media hard drives?


No Blu-ray drive? Not much need for internal storage, I guess, with just a small SSD drive?

Re the question, I'll repost my response from the other thread:

USB2 tops out at 400 mbps, although it often doesn't hit that theoretical peak outside of lab conditions, especially with other devices on the USB bus.

Gigabit Ethernet (assuming), is 1,000 mbps of course, so theoretically over twice as fast... but again, devices rarely reach potential speeds. Still, you can see it's likely twice as fast. BUT if the choke point is the USB2 connection to the router, in the situation you've outlined, you're going to be restricted to USB2 speeds, at best (and likely a bit lower than it would be if connected directly to your machine's USB port due to the various translations and hoops it will have to jump through for data to reach it's destination).

An internal computer hard drive, on the other hand, gets WAY WAY more bandwidth... 2-3 gbps for SATA2/3. So the gigabit connection out has the potential to carry as much as it actually can possibly manage, to its (again, theoretical) peak of 1 gbps.

So accessing an internal drive (somewhere) via gigabit ethernet should definitely outperform ANYTHING going though a USB2 data bus. USB3 is potentially a different story, but I haven't seen any routers with USB3 connections (yet).

The question is, what do you need this theoretical speed for? Even USB2 can easily carry a couple of full-bitrate BR playback streams. OTOH, if you're moving a lot of very large files around, the higher the speed, the faster your copies, for sure.

For me, the convenience of hanging cheap 2tb USB2 drives off a regular computer and accessing them via regular (and iTunes) shares definitely outweighs any speed advantages of networked and NAS drives, particularly since I'm not doing anything to remotely stress the throughput of the system (other than moving large movie files around, which is a click-and-walk-away affair anyway).


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## sparky77 (Feb 22, 2008)

Using a seperate computer as a media server would have a few advatages. Running one of the free operating systems such as freenas or ubuntu sever would give you a lot more flexibility and even the option of secured remote access from outside your home network. I have no experience with ubuntu server yet but the new version of freenas doesn't have dlna support yet so you would want to use an older stable version.


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## Infrasonic (Sep 28, 2010)

The components you've listed would work perfectly fine for a basic web browsing/media server computer. 

The only concern is for the HD size, of the 64GB you'll be able to use about 60 and Win7 will take about half of that. As others have mentioned mechanical HD prices have jumped around $100 the last few months but hopefully they will drop back down within the next 6 months. 
One option is to move the HD from your current computer over to the new one to use as storage until prices drop back down. Or you could opt for one larger (1-2TB) mech. HD instead of the SSD. If you're not doing much audio/video editing or gaming the speed increase may not be worth the added cost of the SSD.

Of course you'll also need to choose a case to house the components; when working with these smaller form factors just be sure everything will fit and get sufficient airflow.

Here is a How-To article on building a media PC, although the components are higher end it might be a good read if you're new to piecing together PC.

I would always lean toward having the computer serve the data to the router vs an external drive connecting directly to the router because it offers more flexibility and generally faster transfer speeds.

Let us know if you have any other questions!


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## Sonnie (Apr 11, 2006)

Thanks guys.

I will use the SSD for the OS only... for the most part. 

When I was planning to use the router USB, I was getting a pair of 1TB Seagate USB 2.0 External drives... with an HDMI hub. I can certainly get a couple of internal 1TB hard drives for about the same price. I plan to use robocopy or second copy or something similar to mirror the two drives... as previously suggested. I may reduce those to 500GB drives.

Our plan is to use this computer to backup our laptops... and to load all of our music CDs... of which we have quite a few. This will not be used for movies or video.


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## Gregr (Nov 2, 2010)

Hi Sonnie,

Sounds like a fun build to me. This is the first time I've looked at the ITX form. I've been building big box computers with plenty of room for the biggest Video cards when I decide to make that jump for the 12" AMD580's (something like that)

This is an interesting/challenging size for sure. Sooooooo......I've compared this build in several ways but when doing a price comp with Newegg I happened to notice there is no mention of a "Video Chipset". You have DVI, VGA/D-Sub port, HDMI but no onboard Video chips. Amazon is the same way e.g. no mention of video chip set. INTEL has a board for $124 with USB 3.0 and SATA II and III and eSATA (I think eSATA) and video chip set. I have lots of Asus product and I do like Asus allot but INTEL isn't bad.

Will you let me know on the video thing..., this is confusing me because I have never looked to see if MoBo's without video chip sets still have video connectors. I would think connections are important as input devices and I guess thru put but cannot actually output without a video chip set.

I did find also Amazon and Newegg have the same prices dollar for dollar except for the SSD that Newegg did not have in stock and shipping is free at Newegg. The Newegg shipping could be free two-day shipping if you sign up for a new free program. 

Also, I was wondering if you have used SSD storage before? I read an article 2 maybe 3 months ago in MaxPC. What I think is important to look out for is the way programs use the SSD to store files. I don't know if the new TRIM program imbedded in SSD's will automatically make all switches to reroute saving of games, documents, photo's, swap files, page files, from the "C" drive to anywhere else. However if you notice that the drive space is dwindling you might check the TRIM program. 

There was something else I think. I'll get back to you.


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## Gregr (Nov 2, 2010)

Sonnie,

I wanted to say thank you for the stuff you do around here. Thanks for putting together the RAM DAC Amp20 and PS. I can't wait to get my crazy hands on my new tinker toys. 

Thanks


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## Sonnie (Apr 11, 2006)

Thank you Greg... we appreciate you as well. :T

I don't really understand it, but I believe the video chipset is in the processor (HD2000 on the i5-2400 I am getting). 

I am a huge Amazon shopper and because of all the ordering I do, I use the Prime membership, where I get two day shipping for free and next day for $3.99. Newegg has now come up with something similar to Prime.

I wanted an SSD for the OS and the Samsung looks to be very promising. I have not use an SSD for mass storage, although we run the forum database on SSDs in RAID... I have SSDs in my laptop, and my desktops at the office, one of which I built back in March of this year. This is what I put together then:

Cooler Master CM 690 II Advance ATX Mid-Tower Case
Thermaltake TR2 W0388RU 600W Power Supply ATX12V W0388RU 
ASUS P8H67-M PRO/CSM LGA 1155 Intel H67 DDR3 1333 Micro ATX Motherboard 
Intel Core i5-2400 Processor 
Corsair XMS3 8 GB 1333 MHz PC3-10666 240-Pin DDR3 Memory 
2 X Crucial RealSSD C300 64GB SSD Drives (RAID 1)
Lite-On LightScribe 24X SATA DVD+/-RW Dual Layer Drive 
Sony MRW620/U1/181 Internal 17 in 1 Memory Card Reader/Writer
ASUS VE228H 21.5-Inch Wide (16:9) 5ms Response Time LED Monitor (Since replaced with a 24" Asus)
Keyboard, Wireless Mouse, HDMI Cable, Artic Silver Compound, etc.

I only had about $1050 in that entire system.

One of the best systems I have every used.


Here is what I will probably get for storage:

 
Seagate Barracuda 7200 500 GB SATA 6.0 Gb-s 16 MB Cache 3.5-Inch Internal Bare Drive ST500DM002
$92

Much cheaper than SS drives and should work well for our music CD collection.


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## Sonnie (Apr 11, 2006)

I was looking back at the i5-2400 that I purchased in March of this year... same price at $190. Amazing that those have not dropped in price. OTOH... 8GB (2 x 4GB) has dropped from nearly $100 to $40. A 64GB SSD has gone up slightly overall, but I caught the Samsung for a really good deal, about $20 less than what I paid for the Crucial 64GB SS drives back in March.


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## Gregr (Nov 2, 2010)

hmmm........, well, what can I say. I'm an AMD guy. I forget Intel is actually doing the things they talk/write about. I always support the underling which is why my is in Psychosocial Rehab. I guess 

Looks like a nice build. I am so close to jumping ship..., Intel is looking good :huh:


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## Sonnie (Apr 11, 2006)

I built an AMD system several years ago and it performed admirably. I am not sure why I have built all Intel based systems since. I did look at AMD this time around and noticed that there is not that much of a price gap between equal performance processors as there use to be.


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## KalaniP (Dec 17, 2008)

Two thoughts:

1) Overall looks good, and I think you'll be very happy with it. 

2) The one remaining recommendation I would make is to make sure one of your large data drives is external. And while not required at this point, in terms of future-proofing you might want to use a USB3-capable external drive. 

Ok, three thoughts:

3) Go bigger. I wouldn't buy a drive under 1tb if I were you. (personally, if I were me, I wouldn't buy less than a 2 tb drive). Overkill for now, but data has a sneaky way of growing faster than expected at every turn...


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## nova (Apr 30, 2006)

Both AMD and Intel produce integrated multi core CPU and GPU processors. AMD calls theirs an APU.


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## Sonnie (Apr 11, 2006)

I got it all setup and it is an awesome little machine thus far. Pics later on... if I can remember.

FWIW... I ended up going with a pair of the Samsung 1TB drives... they were the least expensive 2.5" drives I could find that had fairly respectable reviews. I got one at Newegg at $119 (limit 1) and the other at Tigerdirect for $129. They should work fine for storage and with this setup... if one goes bad, they will be fairly easy to swap out.


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## KalaniP (Dec 17, 2008)

Good call on the larger drives. :T


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