[mythtv-users] Motherboard / case suggestions for early 2022 backend

[Stephen Worthington]

On Sat, 11 Dec 2021 12:00:19 -0500, you wrote:

>On Sat, Dec 11, 2021, 10:02 AM Stephen Worthington, <
>stephen_agent at jsw.gen.nz> wrote:
>
>> On Sat, 11 Dec 2021 07:59:12 -0600, you wrote:
>>
>> >
>> >Ian:
>> >
>> >
>> >>>> Of course, I'm deciding that I might want to build a modern system as
>> >>>> the old combo  front/backend was limited in speed and memory.
>> >>>>
>> >>>> As I peruse possible holiday sales, I wanted to pick yer brains.
>> >>>>
>> >>>> - Will be a backend only, probably using Shield/Chromecast as frontend
>> >>>> - most of the budget will be for at least a couple of 12+ TB NAS
>> >>>> drives for recordings/video library
>> >>>> - AMD? Intel? Speed? Cores?
>> >>>> - motherboard suggestions? Perhaps an NVME for OS/database, but enough
>> >>>> SATA connections for possible expansion past two storage drives.
>> >>>> - case: current case is just over a foot tall. Limited bays. Would
>> >>>> like a case that can hold at least four 3.5 inch drives.
>> >>>>
>> >>>> If anyone has built a backend lately, I'd love to hear your choices.
>> <snip>
>> When I got my new AMD Ryzen 7 3700X CPU, the cooler that came with
>> that (a Wraith Prism) was fine for the job.  I believe it is a
>> rebadged Cooler Master product.  It even has RGB lighting.
>>
>> A CPU at Ryzen 7 level is overkill for MythTV.  I put an AMD Ryzen 3
>> 3100 into my mother's MythTV box when it was upgraded, and that is way
>> more than enough, when coupled with 16 Gibytes of RAM and a fast PCIe
>> v3 NVMe SSD.  The cooler that came with that is fine as well, but
>> nothing fancy like the Wraith Prism.  I was really impressed with just
>> how fast the Ryzen 3 3100 is.  But when I got my Ryzen 7 3700X, it
>> turns out that it is literally "blink and you miss it" fast - if you
>> blink while the screen is updating, you can miss that anything has
>> changed because it has all happened before your eyes open again.
>>
>> For a new MythTV box these days, a Ryzen 3 is fine.  I would put more
>> money into getting a better NVMe SSD than into a faster CPU.  And 8
>> Gibytes of RAM is getting to be necessary if your database is growing.
>> MythTV does a lot of things by putting big lists in RAM, such as the
>> list of all your recordings or all your videos.  My database is
>> massive (> 50,000 recordings), so with only 8 Gibytes of RAM in my
>> main MythTV box (AMD FX-4100, Asus M5A97 Evo motherboard), it does
>> swap unused parts of mythfrontend out to disk.  But that is not
>> impacting performance (yet).  The old motherboard with only 4 Gibytes
>> of RAM that it replaced was really struggling, with the then much
>> smaller database.
>>
>>
>Great input from everyone. I appreciate it.
>
>Stephen,
>
>Good to hear a Ryzen 3 will suffice. Memory seems to be the area I should
>look at. The old system was running both MythTV and a one camera Zoneminder
>(don't need more, it's an apartment). I might want to run the occasional
>Windows session in a VM. I'm a film reviewer and some of the studios'
>secure screening platforms are Windows only. I use HDHomerun's for my
>tuners.
>
>Guess I need to check out cases next. Don't need any clear sides as where
>it'll be placed I don't need to see any RGB. :-)
>
>On a side note, continued thanks to the list. Everyone is so helpful with
>their ideas and generous with their time.

Running Windows in a VM takes a fair bit of memory.  I would recommend
getting 16 Gibytes of RAM if you want Windows to work well - give the
VM 8 Gibytes.  RAM for a Ryzen 3 is not very expensive.