Build advice Multi purposed systems

[mmonster]

So I plan to build 2 or 3 systems over the next couple of months for our new home.

System 1 (Main use by me but the wife might use for casual browsing). I do a lot of things in one time so need build something that can cope with multi tasking including browsing, video, file downloads, IRC, compressing and decompressing files. Don't do PC gaming but would like it to be able to cope with it if I decided to. For this setup I can go with liquid cooling & SSD for primary storage device for OS.

System 2, will be on 24/7 and will act as file storage for streaming various media types througout the house as well as handling a torrent client and an FTP server. This needs to be quiet as possible as well as low on power consumption seeing that it will be on all year round but at the same time it need to handle any file transfer demands thrown at it. This will have few HDD's attached to it to make up 6 to 10TB of disc space.


Any advise would be appricated, cost is a factor so I'm more leaning towards AMD configs but don't want to rule out Intel. Ram setups & speed, motherboards, etc.

 

[little_pob]

When you say "video" do you mean watching? editing? re-encoding?

Bit-tech have just reviewed the new A10 flagship chips from AMD: AMD A10-7850K and A10-7700K (Kaveri) Reviews | bit-tech.net - see how they stack against the £95 Intel Core i3 4330.

For system 2 consider one of the HP microservers, @oneman should be able to advise more on this. Alternatively you could grab an LGA1150 mini ITX board and Intel Pentium G3420, and build a Linux media server/NAS box/FTP host.

 

[mmonster]

For the first setup it will be either video playback or editing as for the second setup it's just video streaming for playback. I was reading a little bit last night and kind of tempted to go Intel i3 3.30Ghz for the server/streaming PC and AMD 8 core something like the piledriver 5.00Ghz setup.

When you say "video" do you mean watching? editing? re-encoding?

Bit-tech have just reviewed the new A10 flagship chips from AMD: AMD A10-7850K and A10-7700K (Kaveri) Reviews | bit-tech.net - see how they stack against the £95 Intel Core i3 4330.

For system 2 consider one of the HP microservers, @oneman should be able to advise more on this. Alternatively you could grab an LGA1150 mini ITX board and Intel Pentium G3420, and build a Linux media server/NAS box/FTP host.

 

[oneman]

For the file server you could look at the microserver, serverplus has it for £288 inc delivery and 3 year next day on-site warranty, but HP are currently doing £166 cashback bringing the price to £122. You'll need to add keyboard/mouse and a O/S. its compact, quite and efficient.

HP 704941-421, UR482E ProLiant MicroServer N54L bundled with 3 Year NBD On-Site Warranty | ServersPlus

Alternative would be one of the smart NAS devices like the synology.

What's your budget for the first PC ?

 

[mmonster]

The first setup I want to keep it under £700. I will probably build the second PC first seeing that I want to keep it under £300 and I already got 250GB WD new HDD with windows 7 pre installed license as well as another new 500GB Segate HDD and a used 1.5TB Hitachi HDD all of which will go on the server PC. I also got 4 brand new 17" Samsung monitors that I want to get rid of first so I can get something like 24" or 27" wide screens. Most of the parts I got were given to me in exchange for work I carried.

 

[little_pob]

For the first setup it will be either video playback or editing as for the second setup it's just video streaming for playback. I was reading a little bit last night and kind of tempted to go Intel i3 3.30Ghz for the server/streaming PC and AMD 8 core something like the piledriver 5.00Ghz setup.

Just be careful with AMD - their APUs have muddied the waters a little. You need to make sure there are 8 CPU cores, rather than 4CPU + 4GPU (for example).

You could go with a hyperthreaded Intel (e.g. 4 cores would give 8 threads), but it's a feature that isn't on all their CPUs.

The first setup I want to keep it under £700. I will probably build the second PC first seeing that I want to keep it under £300 and I already got 250GB WD new HDD with windows 7 pre installed license as well as another new 500GB Segate HDD and a used 1.5TB Hitachi HDD all of which will go on the server PC. I also got 4 brand new 17" Samsung monitors that I want to get rid of first so I can get something like 24" or 27" wide screens. Most of the parts I got were given to me in exchange for work I carried.

£700 budget, some video editing, potential for gaming, SSD... I'll get some specs together.

 

[little_pob]

AMD build - £666.82: Lists | Ebuyer.com

Intel build - £704.32: Lists | Ebuyer.com

Personally I'd go for the Intel build, but drop to the non-hyperthreaded i5 4670K and take out the water cooling. The ~£100 this frees up would be spent on a bigger PSU and a decent air cooler.