[Help] Home Server Hardware Suggestions

[MikeFallen]

Hey guys so the situation is i just recieved my CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Associate) and my basement was under renovation to become a new home theater setup so i decided it would be a cool project to wire my whole house with cat5e to enable a nice and clean fully networked home. Well that all went smooth and i decided to put everything onto a centralized home server that will be acting as a (print server, file server, ftp server.. etc) This server was made up of random excess computer parts i had sitting around.

Now the server's current specs are:

CPU: 1.8Ghz dual core opteron
Mobo: Nvidia nforce 4 (early sli) socket 939
Ram: 1 Gig
Gpu: Evga 7600 gt
Nic: Dlink DGE-530T Gigabit
HD: 2 2Tb Data disks, 1 250gig sys disk
PS: corsair 400w
OS: Windows Home Server Vail Beta (based on windows server 2008 r2)

And eventually this will be in a Server Rack and not in a tower.

The problem is when its streaming 1080p content to my media player (popcorn hour a-200) it sometimes studders Network bandwidth is not a problem its on gigbit wired, it does this when streaming using ether NFS or SMB so im stuck guessing its a hardware deficiency.

Please keep in mind that the server is NOT transcoding in real time as the media player Nativity supports pretty much every format, its just serving the files.

Should i upgrade to a Core i3 setup, or do you think the problem could be something else like disk I/O



Everyone likes Pictures :)

[_dangtx_]

hey dude. its possible. im leaning more towards the nvidia chipset handling things and the like.

give it a try, but perhaps core i3 would be too much for it? look for a gigabit board, or dual gigabit so you dont deal with anything extra. see if it works out. athlon II's are cheap. same with associated boards.

[3.0charlie]

Probably the Realtek network adaptor - invest in a 30$ Intel Gigabit NIC. And if you look for a used server case, drop me a line. I have a Norco 2U available.

[JD]

I'd say its partially due to the nForce chipset and the NIC.

If you can afford an i3 setup, I'd say go for it. I prefer Intel RAID/AHCI over anything else, and most people would agree with me. AMD isn't too bad, but it's a bit slower I hear.

So and i3 530 + H55/57 board. Maybe toss in an Intel Gigabit CT NIC as well. Should be noted that the H55 lacks RAID though, so you'll want the H57 if you need RAID. 2GB of DDR3 should be adequate, but you can toss in 4GB if you think you'll be running a bunch of apps. I'd say you're looking at $300 approximately?

Though if you go AMD with a 880G/GX board and AMD Athlon II 250, you'd probably be closer to $200.

Some barebone packages to ponder:
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NCIX.com - Buy NCIX Value Bundle Deal Intel Core i3 530 2.93GHZ CPU & MSI H55M-E33 DDR3 mATX Motherboard - i3 530 & H55M-E33 In Canada.
NCIX.com - Buy NCIX Value Bundle Deal Intel Core i3 530 Dual Core HT CPU & Gigabyte H55M-S2 DDR3 Motherboard - Core i3 530 & H55M-S2 In Canada.
NCIX.com - Buy NCIX Value Bundle Deal AMD Phenom II X4 920 AM2+ CPU & Gigabyte GA-MA785GM-US2H DDR2 Motherboard - X4 920 & MA785GM-US2H In Canada.

[MikeFallen]

Thanks alot for the input guys, raid isnt really a problem because windows home server uses its own software raid for storage drives....i know its not nearly as fast as hardware raid but .....alot cheaper and i dont need it to be very fast.


again thanks

@ charlie 3.0 sending you a pm about that server case

[snoosebum]

I'd lean towards the NIC, but 1 other idea not yet suggested and only a small chance of this but you didnt by chance use tooless keystones? or possibly some wiring problem?
I've managed to drop my throughput from around 70 MB/s to about 11 MB/s moving from patch cable to tooless keystones. Must be noise I've added trying to get my chubby fingers to thread those little wires.

[MikeFallen]

nope these are sata cables straight to mobo no patch cable or backplanes

[JD]

I believe he was referring to your network connections. Looks like it's a bit messy ;)

[DCCV44.2223]

Originally Posted by MikeFallen

Now the server's current specs are:

CPU: 1.8Ghz dual core opteron
Mobo: Nvidia nforce 4 (early sli) socket 939
Ram: 1 Gig

If you're running ftp/web servers and all the bells/whistles then the RAM looks a bit low. For Vail 1GB is minimum requirement, I'm running Vail refresh on a E8500/4GB that's doing nothing except as a file/media server and memory usage is sitting at 2.6GB. I know processes will grab as much RAM as possible so that figure might be a bit exaggerated but even on my WHS v1, 1GB would not be enough and stuttering media was typical when it only had 512MB (which was the minimum for v1).

[MikeFallen]

Yeah i was thinking it could be the ram too ....i haven't upgraded to the refresh version yet.. you think its worth moving 4tb of data off of the server and then back on for the refresh?

i dont even think its really worth buying ram for that old of a machine tho, i think its like ddr 400 :(

@jd

O yeah never thought of that....all those wired are hand crimped by myself....that took a while... yeah i think ill check that out try a different Ethernet cable.