Mini-ITX Build Review

[errr]

After many many many revisions and poorly informed hardware purchases, I’ve landed on this configuration for my media server. Goals for this build are to be small, extremely energy efficient and performant enough for multiple concurrent media transcodes. Im pretty happy with all the parts I’ve picked out with the exception of the maybe the PSU. Ideally I’d like a 80+ Platinum/Titanium rated one but they seem to be expensive to the point that they’re stretching my already significantly overshot budget and I’m not sure the energy savings would be that significant in comparison to the gold one I’ve selected. Anyway please let me know how this build looks and if you have and suggestions. Thanks!

	Part	Cost (USD)
Motherboard	Supermicro X10SDV-2C-TLN2F (used)	$250
CPU	Intel Pentium D-1508 (integrated)	$0
RAM	1x 16gb Samsung RDIMM ECC (“open box”)	$38
GPU	Nvidia Quadro P400 (used)	$50
Case	Fractal Design Node 304 (new)	$80
Boot Drive	180gb Intel m.2 SSD SSDSCKJW180H601 (new)	$18
PSU	EVGA 500 GD (new) EVGA superNOVA 650 P2 (new)	$55 $80
Drives	4x HGST HMS5C4040ALE640 4Tb (used)	$37 x 4 = $144

Total without drives	Total with drives
$516	$660

 

[NugentS]

AMD Quadro P400 - whats that - or do you mean Nvidia??
Scale or Core

 

[errr]

AMD Quadro P400 - whats that - or do you mean Nvidia??

My bad. Fixed. Haven’t researched GPUs much yet, I’ve just seen this card recommended a lot and assumed (incorrectly) it was AMD.

Scale or Core

Scale.

 

[NugentS]

As long as you can get the hardware transcoding to work you should be good. Without it you will struggle, a lot. I assume the drives are in Z1.

I note the drives are used - which is fine. Do you have a backup for when they do fail eventually?

 

[errr]

As long as you can get the hardware transcoding to work you should be good. Without it you will struggle, a lot.

Ya, the pentium by itself is pretty underpowered, but should be nice and efficient for when the server is idle. In regard to the Quadro, according to this post here, surprisingly Nvidia is supported and not AMD so I’m glad I picked out an Nvidia card on accident lol.

I assume the drives are in Z1.

I note the drives are used - which is fine. Do you have a backup for when they do fail eventually?

I actually have 6 drives total and am planning on putting them in Z2 because I do 100% expect them to fail at some point. These drives did do exceptionally well in Backblazes reliability report so I’m hoping they have a good amount of life left in them. Still working on figuring out a backup solution nonetheless. Once I get my media library to a size that losing it would be unfortunate, I’ll start thinking more seriously about backing it up. Right now the tentative plan is just building a second server with a big striped pool with no redundancy.