[mythtv-users] Hardware Suggestion for under $1,000

[Richard Morton]

Blake,

Unfortunately as hardware such as motherboards are replaced at a very rapid
rate it is hard to keep a list of supported boards up to date, and it is
more a linux issue than a myth issue.

Drivers for boards are pretty good these days, it certainly isnt as
problematic as the old days of poking around the internet looking for
drivers and workarounds to get things going but sometimes it does come to
that. I have an original asus p5q board. When it was first released the enet
driver was only available from the asus website and that of the chipset
manufacturer but at the next ubuntu release it was included and worked out
of the box.

For a backend you do not need much processing power except for transcoding,
commflagging and other user jobs. A core i5 is certainly going to be
sufficient or overkill.

4gb ram is certainly what i would be looking at. Plus a drive for the os and
db to be on, storage to be kept on other drives. Whether you choose to use
raid is dependant on how valuable you think of recordings... but dont forget
to have a proper backup all storage being kept on a single online raid is
not a backup; you need an offline (preferably offsite) backup for when
things go wrong.

To turn a backend into a combined fe/be simply add a gt220 nvidia card for
about £50. A system with a small os drive and a single 2tb disc is going to
be less than £350 including the nvidia card. With regard to mb compatability
look for mbs with the right combination of slots (pci pciexpress etc) and
google the board for issues with your desired distro. Download the tech
specs and lookup components looking for linux drivers.

I cant advise on capture devices as i am in the uk.

Please excuse brevity and pistakes, this email was sent from my Android
smart phone.

Thanks and best regards,

Richard Morton
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mythtv.org/pipermail/mythtv-users/attachments/20101216/368e0268/attachment.htm>