My old Media PC was running out of space and its not the fastest PC. I am getting more blu-ray movies and they take up more space when keeping the HD quality so I decided to splurge and build my Ultimate Multimedia PC. Here is the list of hardware parts I used:
CASE – Antec Eleven Hundred Case (6 Sata, 2 2.5 HD bays + 3 standard 5 1/4 slots for Optical drives, lots of fans for cooling, USB 3 ports on front) It might be big but it holds all my drives and keeps it cool and quite using the 120mm and the 200mm fan on top.
KEYBOARD/MOUSE – Logitech K400 works well and with distance. Don’t need line of site
REMOTE – Adesso ARC-1100 . Its cheap, has all the buttons needed and has little mouse pad. It does need line 0f site to use
MOTHERBOARD – Asus P8H77-V LE (4 SATA connectors that give RAID 1 + 2 6GB/Sec SATA, USB 3, HDMI out)
CPU – Intel i5-3570 3.4 GHz Quad core
MEMORY – 8 GB DDR3 (2×4 GB dual layer)
POWER SUPPLY – Thermaltake 500Watt
OPTICAL DRIVE – Blu-ray Burner (Watch,Rip and Burn DVD’s and Blu-rays)
HARD DRIVES – 1 2TB WD BLACK (System drive and extra space for ripping,converting,Hyper-V etc)
2 3TB WD RED (RAID 1, most of videos stored)
2 2TB WD GREEN (My older drives from previous media server, RAID 1, more videos and music)
TOTAL STORAGE SPACE 7TB!! If I was not so paranoid and using RAID I could have 12TB!!
Now for the Software. My OS I chose is Windows 8 PRO. Why Windows 8? Well for a few reasons. First it has Hyper-V built in. I normally use VMWare but the advantage of Hyper-V is it will start automatically when booting. Boots faster (both OS and the Hyper-V). Has Netflix as Windows 8 app. I use classic shell so it boots to desktop and I have the XBMC autostart.
The Multimedia software I use is both XBMC and PLEX. The XBMC gives me great media options when its connected to my LED TV and the PLEX gives me great server option when I have my other PC’s or iPad connection. My other PC’s in the house normally use XBMC and point to my new server. Its a bit of hassle configuring but my family is use to the interface and it has better selection for add-ons then PLEX.
Now I have a multimedia PC connected to my large LED TV and its running all the time. Lots of space for my ripped movies and music and space for more. Why most of my drives are RAID 1? I don’t want all the movies I ripped disappear on a hard drive failure. That’s my paranoid kicking in.
The Hyper-V is running a version of Windows 7 where I can remote in and use the PC for other things while the main PC is playing movies etc.
It might have cost me a bit of money but at least it should last me for many years.
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