2011-08-25, 13:26
Hi guys,
I currently have an Asrock ION330 working with XBMC Live. It's exactly as it came, so 2GB of RAM and 160GB system hard drive. I have 3 * 500GB USB hard drives attached with ZFS/RAID-Z for media storage.
I'm thinking of replacing this with an HP Microserver but I'm confused about graphics cards. I priced up a G210 which is dirt cheap and available either with a fan or fanless for about £20. I have a mix of content, mostly .mkv x264, some DVDs that I've ripped straight to ISOs for convenience, some old .avi (not even sure what codecs etc). Am I correct in thinking that the G210 will be able to play everything the Ion can? I wouldn't like to upgrade and then find that some of my content doesn't work as well.
Also, I would like to use the 4 Microserver bays for a bigger storage array (probably 4 * 2TB in RAID-Z2), and I'll need an optical drive for playing back my DVDs, so I'll have used all the factory bays. Is it just long boot times which is an issue with USB booting? I never reboot my HTPC (which is why I like low power boxes) so I don't care much about long boot times, but is a USB pendrive going to cause it to be slow in operation as well? I would probably put 8GB of RAM into the Microserver and set up a tmpfs filesystem for use whenever possible which should help the speeds while the box is up and running I think?
Cheers for any advice and any opinions on whether it's worth the hassle or not!
I currently have an Asrock ION330 working with XBMC Live. It's exactly as it came, so 2GB of RAM and 160GB system hard drive. I have 3 * 500GB USB hard drives attached with ZFS/RAID-Z for media storage.
I'm thinking of replacing this with an HP Microserver but I'm confused about graphics cards. I priced up a G210 which is dirt cheap and available either with a fan or fanless for about £20. I have a mix of content, mostly .mkv x264, some DVDs that I've ripped straight to ISOs for convenience, some old .avi (not even sure what codecs etc). Am I correct in thinking that the G210 will be able to play everything the Ion can? I wouldn't like to upgrade and then find that some of my content doesn't work as well.
Also, I would like to use the 4 Microserver bays for a bigger storage array (probably 4 * 2TB in RAID-Z2), and I'll need an optical drive for playing back my DVDs, so I'll have used all the factory bays. Is it just long boot times which is an issue with USB booting? I never reboot my HTPC (which is why I like low power boxes) so I don't care much about long boot times, but is a USB pendrive going to cause it to be slow in operation as well? I would probably put 8GB of RAM into the Microserver and set up a tmpfs filesystem for use whenever possible which should help the speeds while the box is up and running I think?
Cheers for any advice and any opinions on whether it's worth the hassle or not!