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

[Hika van den Hoven]

Hoi Ian,

Saturday, December 11, 2021, 6:00:19 PM, 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. 

>  

For a silent case I can recommend Antec. They have a special silent
line with case fans included. With an 3-way switch on the front you
can turn them off or put them in overdrive. At normal speed they make
less noise then your drives. I recently bought the Antec P101 Silent
and am very pleased with it. This one has 8 easily accessible 3.5"
bays, 2 2.5" bays and 1 dvd bay, but they have them in several
flavors. They are well designed to get a good airflow.

If you want to use raid you best add an extra sata controller. Beware
of the Marvell 88SE9230 chip. It works and has Linux support but is
very unreliable. The DELOCK 90395 with Jmicron JMB585 works good.


Tot mails,
  Hika                            mailto:hikavdh at gmail.com

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Zonder leven is er geen hoop
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