[mythtv-users] Hardware list for new mythtv box

John Morris jmorris at beau.org
Fri May 24 03:51:53 UTC 2013


On Thu, 2013-05-23 at 12:43 +0100, Mike Perkins wrote:

> RAM is cheap at the moment. Buy as much as you can afford, up to the maximum the 
> board can accept. You'll make use of it and it will allow you to do things much 
> quicker than if the software has to write to disk all the time.

Admitted, ram is pretty cheap right now but I wouldn't recommend maxing
it out. Guy said money was a consideration and there are better bangs
for the buck beyond a fairly low bar.  I only have 2GB in my combined
FE/BE and it isn't memory starved.

> I notice you haven't mentioned disk drives. You'll need at least two, a smallish 
> system/database disk and one or more larger disks to keep your recordings on. I 
> wouldn't bother with RAID, since "it's only TV".

Not much need for that.  I only have one 1.5TB WD Green (WDC
WD15EARS-00Z5B1) drive in my machine and it can record three HD streams
at once from a Prime.  If I also playback an HD recording it will glitch
playback very occasionally but the recordings are always good.

The original poster is going to have four tuners so might want to make
sure to get a slightly faster drive than the one I'm using or try
throwing 4GB RAM in and see if that is enough.  And forget CPU, except
for transcoding or totally non-myth things it doesn't matter.  Or more
precisely, if CPU does matter you are doing it wrong.

GPU is what counts, until you get to overkill territory I'd probably
recommend spending an extra $50 on that over the same $50 on RAM or CPU.
Be sure to balance performance with heat/fanless considerations though;
remember throwing enough money at the problem can sometimes give you
improvements in both heat and fps.  So can poking around for deals.
Yesteryears' fire breathing gamer GPU can often be found die shrunk and
sold as a bargain unit that might even be fanless now.

> Remember also that the noise of the disk drives can be a factor in your overall 
> quest for a quiet system. That is one major reason why many of us opt for split 
> systems, a quiet diskless or simple front-end and a big back-end somewhere else 
> in the house full of disks and fans.

I have thought of adding an SSD to mine for the primary partition just
so I could have the larger drive spin down when record/playback isn't
happening.  But the noise isn't that bad anyway, the drive's acoustic
management helps a little bit on that count.  Plus I went with oversized
fans everywhere possible so they turn slow and quiet.

> Oh, and think to go wired, not wireless for any connections you need.

On a combined FE/BE that might not be an iron rule.  If all it needs the
network for is guide data, mythweb and displaying web content wireless
might work.  Maybe even for even streaming in video from the net.  Don't
plan on streaming recorded out video over it though unless you transcode
it first.  Wifi from Myth to the AP and WiFi again to a playback device
is a really bad idea unless you have two nets on different
channels/bands.
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