Building a Custom Home Media Server
In a previous post, I wrote about my plans to build a custom home media server to store all of my digital media files in a single, secure location. As I mentioned in that post, there are a number of different ways to tackle this project. However, because I am a PC enthusiast and do-it-yourselfer at heart, I thought building the server from the ground up would be the most appealing.
For some, building a system of this type may sound a bit daunting. But I don’t think so and don’t think you should either. I hope that by the time I am done detailing the process, most of you will agree. In this post, I am going to discuss the component selection process and briefly explain why I chose each individual part for the build. As you can probably surmise, the criteria for choosing the parts of a home media server will differ greatly from some other types of systems, like a high-end gaming rig for example.
I am of the opinion that a home media server should offer a massive amount of storage and it should operate quietly–preferably in near silence–while consuming as little power as possible. Performance is a concern as well, but keep in mind that remote machines will access the server over a network, so things like GPU and CPU performance are less important than NIC (network interface card), memory, and storage performance.
I’ve got $1000 to work with for this project, so I must choose components carefully if I’m going to end up with an adequately configured system, that also fits within my budget. Right off the bat, I knew I wanted to run Windows Home Server on the machine, for its ease of use and compatibility with the other machines on my network. OEM copies of WHS can be found for $139–which immediately cuts my hardware budget to $861.
Choosing the “right” processor, motherboard, and memory combination for the rig wasn’t quite as straightforward–all of the choices are dependent on the others. I wanted a low-power CPU that could be passively cooled to keep noise and power consumption down. The motherboard needed to be passively cooled as well, but I also wanted it to have at least six native SATA 3.0Gb/s ports, integrated graphics, and a good PCI Express-based network controller. After a bit of searching and deliberation, I ultimately decided on an AMD Athlon 64 X2 BE-2400 45W processor for its low-power characteristics and affordable price, an oversized ZEROtherm passive CPU cooler, a Gigabyte GA-MA74GM-S2 motherboard because it met all of my criteria, and an inexpensive 2GB DDR2 memory kit from Kingston. The specific memory kit I chose was the least expensive Kingston kit, that also happened to have integrated heat-spreaders. I could have chose cheaper memory, but I wanted something from a reputable brand that also included some sort of heatsink to aid in cooling. The motherboard is particularly well suited to my needs as well because it sports arguably the best IGP currently on the market, plenty of SATA ports, and a Realtek 8111C PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller. The combination of these components working together should offer more than enough CPU performance, plenty of memory bandwidth, more than ample graphics, good network performance, and relatively low power consumption.
Next I turned my attention to storage. I don’t believe a media server can have “too much” storage space, so I wanted to use an array of the highest capacity, lowest power, reliable drives I could find. Ultimately I chose three 1TB Western Digital Caviar Green hard drives, for a total of 3TB of storage. These drives feature a 3-year warranty and Western Digital’s Green Power technology that saves power. Couple those features with solid performance and a relatively low price, and WD’s Caviar Green drives were a perfect fit for this build. Complimenting the hard drives in the storage sub-system is an inexpensive LG 22X DVD+DL writer. In addition to installing the OS and possibly ripping a few DVDs, the optical drive will also be used to backup some of the more critical files stored on the server. I chose this particular LG drive because it was very inexpensive, uses a SATA interface–which requires a nice thin cable–and because it had the fastest dual-layer burn speeds available.
With the major internal components for the build selected, I turned my attention to the case and PSU. There were a broad assortment of cases and power supplies that would have fit the bill. I’m not one to skimp, however, so I decided I wanted a mini-tower, that included ultra-quiet cooling fans and ample internal 3.5″ drive bays and the PSU needed to be modular. I ended up choosing the Antec Mini P180 case and Neo Power 500W PSU. The case has a great layout, a two quiet exhaust fans–one of which is a huge 200mm–and the hard drive bays are vented, which will help keep the drives nice and cool. The PSU was the lowest priced, modular PSU I could find that was built by a reputable manufacturer. I wanted modular cables to keep internal cable clutter to a minimum and maximize internal air volume.
That just about does it as far as the hardware goes. So far, the complete parts / cost breakdown for the system is as follows…
$139 - Windows Home Server
$39 - AMD Athlon X2 BE-2400
$47 - ZEROtherm BTF95 CPU Cooler
$55 - Gigabyte GA-MA74GM-S2
$39 - Kingston KHX6400D2LLK2/2GNR
$129 - Western Digital Caviar Green (3)
$159 - Antec Mini P180
$69 - Antec Neo Power 500 500W
$25 - LG 22X GH22NS30 DVD+DL Writer
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$959 - Total
You may be asking why I don’t list a monitor. It’s because this media server will not require a monitor the vast majority of the time, so I decided against purchasing a dedicated monitor for this build. I plan to hook it up to an existing display during the setup and configuration, and to perform routine maintenance, but otherwise it will be a semi-headless server.
As you can see, the components and OS fall within my budget–so far so good. In my next post, I’ll write about some pre-assembly considerations and do some initial hardware setup. Stay tuned.
