Tee hee.. I've just ordered a mega PC...

neil_g said:
a good brand case pays for itself no just with looks but with cable management in my opinion.
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Yup. I agree. I reused my Antec Sonata for 3 builds before I put it in the garage. Now it's back out being used for its 4th incarnation which will be the E8400 running Ubuntu as the TV server (may even move all the media onto it with time). Bought one of these: http://www.fractal-design.com/?view=product&prod=48 for my server (upgraded the Sonata to it) as it has 8 x 3.5" drive caddies and pretty good silencing. Internal build quality isn't as good as the Antec, but for a server that will only ever get disks added, it's great :)

neil_g said:
are those dells the 22 or 24?
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2x 24" U2410s :)
 
menthel said:
I have a 182 too but had trouble fittng the cables behind the mobo.
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Some of mine are jammed above the power supply. I'm thinking of changing the PS for a modular one with higher efficiency (and lower noise) although the TX650 is pretty good as it is. It's sooo much easier to do when the PS is at the bottom of the case (not to mention much better for thermal issues too).
 
Cheers Neil. They do look good - and cheaper than the Corsair AX I was looking at. Not sure I'll get one yet, but of all the things it's nice to have a spare of, it's a power supply (I have 4 PCs on 24/7 now...)
 
No. On my list though. I can see me turning the garage into a server room (although 2 of the PCs are media players so would be inconvenient rather than catastrophic if I lost them for a few days).
 
yeah i really need one, the power here has been a bit flakey just recently to the point where i turn my NAS off now when im not using it.

a couple of guys here run servers under the stairs, full on domains and Hyper-V boxes :lol: cat5 channelled into walls etc.

unfortunately being in rented property thats not an option here, best i could do is a mini rack in the spare room.
 
Hyper V boxes? Are they running a web hosting company???

I have cat5e between office and living room which runs a gigabit network. Just thinking of adding a port in the main bedroom, but that'll be via a wire outside and it's FAR too cold to attempt that at the moment ;)
 
for "testing" apparently but i suspect more so for sh**s and giggles.

luckily all my stuff is in one room so its all gigabit apart from the HTPC and sky+ box which is 200mbps homeplug link.
 
Testing - haha.. Testing what???? That even beats my "because I need one" earlier in this thread ;)
 
They're not bad for the price - especially if you need 8 disk slots...
 
4 plus a system SSD. The thing I like is that the connections are facing you, far easier. Just a case of attaching the rails to the HDD and slotting in?
 
Funnily enough, I have 5 disks too... and bought it for exactly the same reason. Although I do have a spare PCI->4 SATA II card if I need more disks (which is quite possible... <cough>)
 
To be fair, I've only used 5 slots so far, but I may well add another 1 or 2 when I run out of backup/storage space.... (I have 6 PCs that are backed up regularly - and that's not including the works PC & android tablet....). Hmmm. Major geek moment there.....
 
You can always use more drives ;)

I use rsync over ssh as I have both Linux and Windows machines here and setting it up also has the benefit of me being able to get to the main servers command line from any machine should I need to do anything a bit more hacky. That plus drive snapshot to make regular images of system disks just in case... I'm still on 1TB drives for backup - drive snapshot takes about 50% of the size of the system disk to store the data and rsync keeps the data files in sync between machines (and allows me to backup the backup as I use rsync over ssh to copy the backups to another machine).
 
well i can fit 2 more drives in my base NAS enclosure then i need to buy the expansion unit.

trouble is id like to keep all the drives in at least the base the same and HD203WI's are getting harder to source now.

i used to use rsync on the 2 netgear units i had, works very well.
 
Big difference in prices there...

Like the idea of a NAS, but have so many PCs lying around here (I have another older AMD - 2500 I think - board in the cupboard that I don't know what to do with...) I've just gone the home server route...
 
Any more PCs and it'll be a physical space thing for me too (well, perhaps just one more, but that'll be a media centre for the bedroom...)
 
I used to have PCs all over the house, servers, HTPCs, laptops and a desktop. I got fed up with them all! We now have 1 desktop, 1 windows home server, 1 laptop (my wife's) and I have an iPad. Makes life much easier. The server is just great though and helps run my fave bit of tech in our house, a 5 zone sonos system!
 
Not if you put the ITX board in a full sized HTPC case you can't....

We (umm... I mean I) have here: 1 main PC, 2 HTPCs (well, 1.5 as I'm just building the second which will act as a recorder too out of the bits of my old PC and will add an Acer Revo for the bedroom HTPC in a month or two), 1 server, 3 laptops (one for each of us but I only use my when I need something with a keyboard and serial port), works laptop, and an Android tablet (which I use when it is too far to walk to the main PC!).
 
Are you sure you set it up properly? My ITX board is an Ion/Atom based board with exactly the same spec hardware as in the Revo 3610 and plays HD/BluRay content fine (1080p/24). Stuttering drives me mad (I produce TV decoders for a living) so I know when it's right or not. Did take a bit of fiddling with to get it exactly right though...
 
blu-ray was fine.

but high bitrate movie files were very hit and miss. that was with XBMC with DVXA configured as recommended by several sources etc. no matter what i did it would not play some files.
 
High bit rate??? BluRay is the highest currently available source rate.... But you were running Windows - all my HTPCs are running Linux. The xbmc Linux development seems to be ahead of the other dev streams (or it was with Camelot, not sure with Dharma). It appears to be easier to get at the hardware bits and pieces and set them up just right with Linux. Getting Windows to sync a/v exactly seems to be a bit hit and miss which is why I went Linux...
 
maybe, they all played fine on low spec laptops however..

i guess the hardware acceleration is better in Arcsoft TMT for blu-ray than XBMC was for files? i dont know but it was a pain in the arse and i got fed up wasting my time on it lol
 
Know that feeling.........
 
Ebuyer generally turn out to be close to the cheapest whenever I've done a comparison :)
 
Yeah, I've had stuff turn up early on 5-day from them. Trouble is, I've normally spent 3-5 days researching it and once I order, I want it now :D
 
yeah there is that.. or even more annoying when you cant get all of the parts from one supplier and one takes twice as long as the other to arrive. and theyre always the key parts to stop you doing anythiing lol
 
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