[jjordy]

Hi guys. I am going to be building a media server soon to take care of all my media so I can get it off of my gaming machine. Currently I only have about 750g of Media that needs to be stored so at the time of this post I will not be using unraid. My question is regarding my hardware choices and a few things im not sure about. Below I have outlined my choices so far and will state my questions below.

Case: LIAN LI PC-Q08B Black Aluminum Mini-ITX Tower Computer Case
MainBoard: ASRock Z77E-ITX LGA 1155 Intel Z77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Mini ITX Intel Motherboard
Processor: Intel Core i3-2120 Sandy Bridge 3.3GHz LGA 1155 65W Dual-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 2000 BX80623I32120
PSU: SeaSonic S12II 520 Bronze 520W ATX12V V2.3 / EPS 12V V2.91 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC Power Supply
RAM: G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-4GBRL
SSD:Crucial M4 CT128M4SSD2 2.5" 128GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

Questions:
1. Regarding the Processor. Let me preface this by saying that this computer will be running windows 7 with almost nothing on it except Utorrent and Ember Media Manager for scraping purposes. Is my processor choice overkill for my solution I am not really sure weather a processor with this much power is needed to strictly act as a storage point for my media?

2. SSD: Do I need to put windows on an SSD? Benefits I can see would be fast boot time, and the OS being on a different drive than the large media drives(there will be 2) any incite on this would be greatly apprciated.

3. PSU: Is 520 watts overkill for this setup only having 3 drives total 1 SSD(if needed) and Two 2TB drives for media.


Thanks guys, any help would be apprciated. or any comments regarding my proposed setup or ways to better it. Im trying to spend as little money as possible while also building a system with some longevity.

[jangjong]

1. I think CPU maybe overkill for your purpose. G530 or G540 may work for you with half of the price

2. I would separate OS drive and DATA drive... so making SSD as your OS drive. it can help with not just fast boot time, but fast loading time for some apps on the server itself. Also, if you have some kind of power saving solution for your media drive, if you're not accessing the drive, those HDD can be spun down to use less energy..

3. I personally have an unRAID server with 7 HDD's (5400 rpm / 7200 rpm mixed) + 1 SSD with 430 W psu. 520 is more than enough to handle your parts, but it's nice to have extra for additional parts.

[jjordy]

Jangjong thanks so much for your input I will definitely check out those processors that should allow me to bring my price below 500.