[mythtvnz] HTPC Configuration for combined front/back end

[Stephen Worthington]

On Thu, 7 Nov 2013 15:57:17 -0800 (PST), you wrote:

> Hi Thanks for all your responses to my first ever post. Very helpful.
>
>I am looking at hardware configuration now. So for a combined front/back end running MythTV and potentially MythWeb in the future. 
>TV recording and watching only and must do HD to my Panasonic Vierra through HDMI.
>
>
>Case:  Antec New
>Solution NSK 4000-B II Mid Tower Case, Black/Silver
>Motherboard: Gigabyte
>GA-78LMT-S2P Motherboard, Socket AM3+, AMD 760G, 2xDDR3, 1xPCIe-16, 1xPCIe-1,
>VGA, DVI, RAID, M-ATX
>CPU: AMD A6-5400K 3.6 GHz, Socket FM2, Trinity
>Hard drive: Western Digital Green WD20EZRX Hard Disk Drive,
>2000GB, 5400-7200rpm, 64MB Cache, SATA 6 Gb/s
>Memory:  G.Skill
>RipjawsX F3-12800CL9D-4GBXL, 2x2GB, DDR3-1600, PC3-12800, CL9, DIMM  
>Keyboard:  Logitech
>Desktop MK120 Keyboard & Mouse, USB, Black
>Power supply: Silverstone Strider Essential ST40F-ES, 400W
>ATX PSU, Active PFC, Black
>TV Tuner:   Hauppauge
>WinTV HVR-2210
>TV Tuner Card 2: Hauppauge WinTV HVR-1110
>
> My questions are as follows:
>1. This seems quite expensive to
>watch and record TV how can I cut the cost 
>2. Was thinking of dropping storage
>to 1TB as only using PC for one purpose. Is this enough
>
>3. Do I need a Video card for playback or will onboard graphics processor on CPU cope
>
>4. Will this set-up be quiet enough
>for the living room.
>5. Does anyone have a better
>configuration using parts I can still buy now.
>
>
>Alex Marshall

There is a slight mismatch in your hardware selections.  An FM2 socket
CPU will not work in an AM3+ socket motherboard.  The FM2 processors
are the ones with builtin ATI GPU.  If you are adding an Nvidia card,
you want an AM3+ CPU, where the silicon area that the FM2 CPUs have in
video is used for the CPU and cache instead.  If you are going to rely
on the CPU to do the graphics processing, then just about any video
card will do, and the ATI video in an FM2 processor is fine.  But you
will need to choose an FM2 socket motherboard to go with it.

I just ran a quick test using my 3.6 GHz AMD FX-4100 CPU to do the
video processing, and with it set to use 2 cores only in OpenGL High
Quality mode it worked fine.  Since 2 cores of your my 4100 is similar
to the dual cores of your A6-5400K, that should work fine also.

A 2 Tbyte drive is fine for a start, but while green drives work well
as recording drives, the drive with the operating system on it really
should be a 7200 rpm "black" drive (or better).  The MythTV database
is normally on the OS drive, and there are times (such as when the
MythTV scheduler runs) when the database accesses really work that
drive hard.  So when you have two or three recordings in progress, the
normal OS accesses to the drive happening, and then the scheduler
runs, you might find that a 5400 rpm green drive is not going to work
well enough and there will be bits missing from your recordings.  And
the programme you are playing back at the same time will freeze for a
few seconds until the heavy scheduler database activity stops.

Also note that the cheap motherboard you have selected, apart from not
matching the CPU, has only 3 Gbit/s SATA ports.  New SATA drives are 6
Gbit/s.  They will work on 3 Gbit/s ports, just not quite as well. But
where 6 Gbit/s really matters is if you later want to move your system
drive to an SSD - you would lose a lot of the speed of the SSD.