HTPC Build-Log: Part 3..... It's been a good week!

It's been a good week......, no check that; it's been a GREAT week..... in the HTPC world that is! In the last build-log, I had said that the ID Cooling coolers were delivered, but there were other issues that delayed the update of my HTPC fleet. Anyway; "we have overcome"!

I got momentum when the delayed conversion of our bedroom HTPC went off without a hitch. In fact, the speed and ease of which this theoretically "out of date" A75/A6-3600 motherboard/CPU combo went about it's tasks was a surprise. My pride would like to attribute this to me applying these older (read cheaper) components to jobs that it does particularly well. I may be right, or I might be just lucky; who knows, who cares? The fact is that this combination of pretty prosaic parts are an excellent match for it's intended job of a HTPC. If you haven't been keeping score, here it is:

• $48 - ASRock A75m-ITX, AMD A6-3600 MB/APU combo (eBay)
• $12 - ID Cooling DK-03, Heatsink/120mm fan (Amazon)
• $0 - Silverstone SG08Lite case (old machine)
• $0 - Seasonic 500w PSU (old machine)
• $0 - Intel 80Gb SSD, Hitachi 500Gb HDD, Slot-loading DVD-RW (old machine)
• $60 - Total 

 

No; you are not looking at the inside of the SG-08. This is in fact, the inside of a Silverstone SG-05. ??? So, after the sucess of the "Viking" HTPC, I moved right on to the replacement to "Bronco" machine that fulfills the HTPC role in the downstairs den. Since it was a low-powered "thin" PC it uses a "wide-voltage" external power supply. The issue I had on Sunday was that it used a different adapter than what I was using. In the ensuing 2 days, I realized that there were several random adapters from dead laptops that I've accumulated. In the pile, I found HP one that worked. After a quick OS load-up; this machine was ready as well! Again I was a little surprised by the speed of this machine! At least this board should be fast, since it's LGA-1150 of the "Broadwell" generation. Anything else left to do on this?

• $39.68 - Gigabyte GA-B75TN motherboard (eBay)
• $34.28 - Intel Pentium 2030T CPU (eBay)
• $19.99 - Silverstone NT-07 HSF (Amazon)
• $12.54 - 4Gb DDR3 SO-DIMM (eBay)
• $0 - Other 4Gb DDR3 SO-DIMM (spare parts box)
• $0 - Crucial M4 mSATA 256Gb SSD (spare parts box)
• $0 - Power adapter (closet of doom)
• $106.49 - Total

Well.... yes. The SG05 is a temporary home. My ultimate evil plan is to pick up a Silverstone PT13. The reason is obvious: it's so small and cool! What about the 3rd HTPC?

I get to do this all day Saturday, and I do mean all day. I'm an academic competition coach and sponsor at school. While my debaters fell just short of advancing to state level competition, my top Social Studies kid is an alternate to the Regional Competition this year. So I get to drive him and all the others from both high schools in our district, 2 and a half hours East and South into the heart of the Piney Wood to Stephen F. Austin University at Nacogadoches. In order to get there on time, we'll be leaving at 5am, putting me getting up at 4am since I have to get the bus. We'll finish around 4pm. I'll be getting home somewhere around 9pm! Therefore, despite the arrival of the 8-pin EPS adapter, there'll be no finishing the HTPC in the main A/V system till Sunday. Here are the numbers for the last machine.

• $30.25 - Gigabyte GA-F2A78M-HD2 motherboard (eBay)
• $66.35 - AMD A8-7600 APU (eBay)
• $40 - Corsail Vengeance Pro 8Gb DDR3/1866 RAM (eBay)
• $5.81 - Creative Labs Soundblaster Live Soundcard (eBay)
• $0 - Ahanix D-Vine5 case (old machine)
• $0 - Intel 120Gb SSD (parts box)
• $0 - Hitachi DeskStar 500Gb HDD, Sony Blu-Ray optical drive (old machine)
• $106.35 - Total    

All of these totals include not only the cost of parts, but also the shipping costs as well, so I figure the grand total of $272.84 is pretty OK. That's about $90 per on 3 pretty up-to-date machines that do their jobs well. They are going to allow me to "cut the cord". The end of Netflix, and the end of Cable TV service. Those 2 things by themselves come to something like $80-90 per month! That puts this upgrade to paying off in 3 months! Do I wish, I was already done after all the planning and waiting? Sure I am, but I'm OK with the progress so far. I can see the end of the road from here!

The "How" and "Why" of Upgrading My HTPCs

There's a price to be paid; both literally and figuratively, to having lots of computers! It's not a static hobby! There's are constant changes which is both the fun and the frustration of it. Now that my workstation, all of the laptops and the server are either in "good shape" or at least "in process", what about everything else..... my non-personal PCs?

Let's look at what's out there. Other than the server, there are 3 HTPCs and their job is pretty much to run Kodi and to server as the front-end to our media which will reside on the replacement server (aka Globemaster). It's actually a bigger job than it appears since all of our TVs are now at least HD with one that's 4K spec. Pushing pixels to those displays is not nearly as easy of a task at what it used to be! So, let's take a look at the players involved.

 

The whole situation is kind of "a house of cards" really so lets start with the simplest situation. Part of my main A/V system in the upstairs media/game room is the "Hawkeye" HTPC. It's a Asus E350M1-Pro motherboard living inside of an Ahanix D-Vine5 case. That board was AMD's first generation of APUs which combined an actual GPU inside the same die as a CPU. As you can surmise from the bare heat sink w/o fan, it's not very powerful. However, it does the job. If you don't mind the 3 minute boot (on SSD.....ouch) and the 1080p limitation (it's connected to the 55", 4K Sony), then you're good. However, if you compare what those first gen "Llano" chips can do vs. the current ones, it's not pretty. 

The reason all this happened in the first place was that, recently, while looking around at other things, I came across this: a Gigabyte F2A78M-HD2. That's an A78 chipset board with a FM2+ socket capable of taking AMD's then new for 2014 "Kavari" series of APUs. These chips 4 generations down the road from my old one, are built on a 28nm process with a 45w TDP. It was also $20! So, after a month of patient watching and waiting, I was able to nail down an A8-7600 processor for $55. What's so special about the this little "Kavari" chip? Here's the thing. This particular SKU can not only be run at the designed 65w TDP, but also at a 45w low power setting. It has 10 total cores, allocating 4 to the CPU and 6 to the R7 GPU giving it plenty of power. Enough so that AMD advertises as capable of driving 4K specs, but in reality their goal is the HD one, which is 1080p at 30fps while gaming with challenging titles. Given that it's going to be an HTPC, that's more than enough. Warts? I wish it had 4 instead of 2 RAM sockets, and it lacks an optical digital out for sound. I use that to send the audio to my home theater receiver for much cleaner decoding, but hey; I can spring for an stand-alone soundcard for that!

 

What about this? I have 2 other TVs in the house: one in the downstairs living room and one in our bedroom. Our TV watching habits are basically spit between, cable TV, movie watching (via actual media like DVD), and content over the internet. This split varies between the location AND is slowly changing from more cable to more internet with movie watching via media staying the same. Strangely, unlike others, we don't stream Netflix or use Roku, we'll watch TV via the network's sites, Youtube and Kodi (formerly XBMC). So obviously, having a computer connected to these TVs is kind of a need. Some of you might remember my "Viking" build in the Silverstone SUGO SG-08B Lite case. Inside is a very low-powered motherboard, the Gigabyte GA-C847N-D with an onboard Intel Celeron 847 CPU (17w TDP). I do have a DVD drive in there, but not sure why. The onboard graphics seems to do an adequate job, but the engine is the aging "Ivy Bridge" processing. This machine will stay the same.

Last summer, while I was in Taiwan, my brother gave me this. It was one of his spare boards. An Intel DN2800MT mounted in a little plastic generic case. Don't be confused if you've never heard of it, much less seen anything like it. Boards of this type are made for "industry" typically used in computers that run automation of one kind or another, hence the very low-profile everything! Oh, and it's powered by an Intel Atom N2800 which is a dual core processor running at 1.86Ghz drawing 6.5w TDP!!! I've got it running HTPC duties on the 3rd TV, but it struggles some. One of it's issues is that the chipset only allows it to address 4Gb of RAM running on a single channel..... and that's despite the 2 SO-DIMM sockets. It's nice to have versus not having a machine down there, but that's about it.

  

Enter the Silverstone SUGO SG-05 and Gigabyte GA-B75TN. What? Another weird board? Yes, a $30 (local Craigs List) complete with power supply case and....... wait for it....... $24 board! Quite often, "weird" means cheap! In this case, this one was brand new even. OK, let's look at this MB. It's LGA-1155 meaning anything from the Sandy/Ivy Bridge generation of processors. This not only gives very decent power, but pretty good onboard graphics if the CPU is chosen wisely. On top of which, it has an onboard mSATA socket thus allowing the primary storage to be right there as well. It doesn't even require a regular power supply, capable of using any barrel-plugged outboard adapter between 12 and 19v. There's even an LVDS connector for driving LED/LCD panels. They were part of a spec designed to fit inside the all-in-ones. 

Appropriately enough, also for $24, I picked up an Intel Pentium G2030T. This 2.6Ghz dual core processor only draws 35w TDP making it very cool-running. This chip also has Intels HD Graphics with 6 execution units. It won't get any gaming done, but that won't be an issue for it's intended purpose. If I want/need more power, I can go all the way up to i7 from this board. 

When you add it all up, I will have spent about $200 total to update 2 of our 3 HTPCs. They'll all be from the "Core" generation of processors with attendant capabilities. I think we're pretty much set to go!

Family Portrait Part 3: ..... Impersonal Computing?

OK, the title was a bit of a joke, although, I'm not all that certain what to call this category of all our various computers that are not routinely used by a particular person. Last time we talked about the fact that in many modern American homes, people have one, and in many case, more than one digital device that they use on a regular basis. Regardless of form, be it notebook, tablet, or phone, these are personal computers, by definition. So, then what are the other various machines that are scattered about our houses that don't belong to anyone? For us, they are generally something that's connected a large display so that they can access media content either distributed through the internet or our own network. 

For our system, I'll start at the core; the server. Ours has grown from a bunch of scrounged together parts running the first version of Windows Home Server which was housed in a cheap case, to what it is now through a series of steps. The first big step was the addition of a caching RAID controller that allowed for a degree of redundancy. That was back in the mostly backing-up stage of it's existence when I was just experimenting with serving media. However, as things went along and I went from just a bunch a ripped CDs to movies, the server has taken on a greater role. In the last year, I've ripped more and more of my movies from their original optical format to something that can be accessed throughout the house as well as be easily portable. This has taken the amount of necessary space to a whole different magnitude. I just thought I had a lot of storage when I had 2, 2Tb drives in the old server. The new server will have 5! It will be built in a Fractal Designs, Define XL R2, partially because it has 8 drive spaces, but mostly because it's one of the few on the market able to take the EATX sized SuperMicro server motherboard that will run it. I haven't decided whether it will become a 24/7 server or continue as a Friday to Sunday machine as in the past, but suffice to say that it's grown beyond what it was!

 

The next type of machines are actually the fastest growing category in our house, the HTPC (home theater PC). They've gone from 1, to the soon-to-be 3 in fairly short order. Granted I've had one for quite some time. It came about back in the days when there wasn't an "HTPC" term and the purpose built cases didn't exist. I had to use a Antec "desktop" case for it. But it remained at 1 for a very long time. A few years ago, I got the Ahanix D-Vine5 case you see above from my friend Pat and it has remained the home for the HTPC in my primary A/V system for quite awhile, suffering through 3 motherboard changes in that time. A couple of years ago, I picked up an Cooler Master Elite 130 Mini-ITX chassis to create a second unit when my brother sent me one of his technology cast-offs; a first-gen "Core" i3 processor on a Zotac motherboard. Later on, I picked up a low powered Gigabyte board with a Celeron CPU and it went into a much nicer Silverstone SG-08Lite case as befitting the master bedroom. It's current purpose is for us to catch up on TV show episodes that we've missed or occasionaly bouts of YouTube watching.

The third, will go into service as soon as I locate another HDMI cable so it can attach to the downstairs TV. It came to me this summer when I was visiting family in Taiwan and my brother gave me his "spare mini-server". He has a couple of interesting behaviors that has benefited me over the years. He works in technology and has the wherewithal to dabble in whatever he's interested in.... which includes low-power computing. ......And he tends to buy things in multiples whether he needs it or not! So, this last trip, he gave me an Intel Mini-ITX MB with an on-board Atom processor. Not terribly powerful, but enough to run a small HTPC. It's in an ugly plastic case, but I'll eventually find it something appropriate like the Habey cases that are clearly Apple Mini knock-offs! We have 3 stand-alone televisions, and there is a PC connected to each of them. Is that all?

No, not yet! This kind of ugly "beast" of a ThinkPad came to me recently when a friend dropped it off for me to retrieve files for him. Like many ThinkPads, it started life as his work machine, then went on to be his personal PC when his company retired it. After a long and fruitful life it's fan had given up the ghost and he bought a new computer. Like so many others, he hadn't backed up his files and needed me to get them off; after which, he left the old girl with me. Unbeknownst to the beasty, it's about to become the "garage computer"! There'll be a post on the "garage computer", so I'll leave it at that for now.

I know that this is actually under a different category and post, but let me pay a quick homage (the French say it so much nicer) to the little guy that made all this happen: Powerline Networking technology. The original owner whole built our house and spent quite a lot of money installing speakers and running wire everywhere should have done that with networking..... but didn't. So I have a 2 story house with no networking to the second floor! My options were to spend hundred (thousands!?!) for an electrician to run it, but I was able to call on this little known technology that uses the electric wiring in the house to move data as well. In the past, it had been a little glitchy, but the current version is pretty darned reliable and fast to boot! My ability to have all the various computers everywhere is very much thanks to the Trendnet 1200 AV2 kits that came in the mail a couple of weeks ago! Nothing like "wired" networking!

It's In With the New At the Frugal Propellerhead House

It was all "elbows and knees" at Case Del Propellerhead today. With the weather a mess, everything closed down and everyone elses computers out of the way, I started the new year off right! 

With the exception of our various laptops, every computer in the house got worked on. It ranged from the major overhaul of the server to add-in cards for the Blackbird workstation.

The work on the Blackbird was pretty simple, in that all I did was put in a PCI combo USB/Firewire card. You might ask.... what on earth would I need that for given now new that machine is.... at least to me. You won't believe this, but I'm all out of USB ports in the back! I've got so many devices, that I've used them up. Plus, I've still got some Firewire drive enclosures that I do a few things with now and then, so it's nice to be able to access them. I also switch out one of my Hauppauge tuner cards for another one, putting the more sophisticated HVR-2550 vs. 1800 that was in it since I'm much more likely to do video editing in it vs. the HTPC in the living room.

Then it was on to the Viking HTPC (bedroom) rebuild. I haven't discussed this, but in the middle of getting everyone elses' machines done, I picked up a a Silverstone SG08-Lite case. The original (non-lite) version was about a $150+ case, but it included a power supply that I neither needed nor wanted, so I was lucky. Plus it was less than $40 in "like new" condition. Earlier last week, I moved the entire contents of that machine from the Cooler Master Elite 130 case over this this much nicer case. Although almost everything fit nicely, there were a few items that required changes. The location of the drives forced me to switch out the SATA cables to 90 degree versions, and I have a slot loading optical drive coming; although I'm not sure why I'm bothering with that. Old school I guess. Otherwise, this machine is pretty much done and back online again.

 As much as I'd love for this post to be about me rebuilding my HTPC into one of the cool cases with the built-in screen, this is as good as it gets right now. I had previously pulled the old Gigabyte GA-EP45 motherboard out and removed all it's parts with the exception of the drives. Now came time for the other half of the upgrade. I had pulled the Asus E35M1-Pro board out of the Spectre server and now finally having it do the work it was designed to do. These board with their AMD "Brazos" APUs were really intended for media work in set-top boxes and the like, hence the no-fan heatsink set up. Unfortunately for the poor thing, I've had it running a file server up until this point! As we speak, it's running it's 4th round of updates and will soon be able to go back into the living room A/V rack.

All that was great, but the big ticket item of the day was the Spectre file server. Up until this point, it was a Windows Home Server 2011 (Vail) OS machine running 2, 2Tb Hitachi drives off of a HighPoint caching RAID controller. I've grown increasingly annoyed with the controller and now that the WHS has been orphaned....... Anyway, I've been considering moving over to one of the FreeBSD based OS's for some time now. Apparently, now is the time! So the machine got a Core2Duo generation Intel motherboard, along with an additional Intel NIC, 3, 2Tb Hitachi drives (soon to be 4), so I can get 75% efficiency while using ZFS RAID with parity. So "stay tuned". This is liable to be interesting!