Building a Tuner Farm/Server

[Leo123]

Hi there,

I am currently running Mediaportal on a an HTPC that is acting as bother Server and Client.
I would now like to build a dedicated Server that that hosts Mediaportal as a Server only and shall hold all my TV tuners and do my recordings and stream all my media to other computers on my network.

I will also have iTunes on the server, downloading new podcasts whenever available.

In essence, I need a quiet and efficient Server that is going to do all the above. Some ideas for what I might need:

RAM: 4GB
CPU: Core I3-200T
Motherboard: Not Sure on m-ATX or ATX - needs to have lots of PCI-E slots for various video cards and must have USB 3.0 for backing up. As I don't need powerful graphics (the server is going to be run headless, I don't need a P67 motherboard).
PSU: Needs to be quite and efficient
Case: Depends on which size of motherboard, but is it better to go for a tower or an HTPC-style horizontal case?
Hard Drives (I think I shall need three):
* 1.5TB AV-GP WD (for making all recordings) - already have
* 2TB Samsung F4 (for storing all media other than recordings) - already have
* A Small Laptop Hard drive for the operating system (for those that don't know, Mediaportal uses a dedicated hard drive for time-shifting to avoid thrashing the hard drives where all your media files are kept) I would partition the first part of the hard drive for the OS and leave the rest for the time-shifting.

The reason that I am using a laptop hard drive is to try and save some unnecessary noise/power, though I realise that depending on the case I get, I might have to get a 5.25" or 3.5" to 2.5" adapter.

Your views on some suggested specs for this server would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks very much.

A

 

[Tak Ne]

Tower or desktop case is down to preference really but tower cases generally have more hdd space for expansion and HTPC cases are easier to stack with other media boxes.

Will you be doing any transcoding with the server? If you've got a few tuner cards running & converting video that CPU might be a bit underpowered.

 

[Dangman]

A few questions:
1) How many TV tuners are you planning on adding to that server? Are all of them PCI-E?
2) How much additional storage are you planning on adding to the server in the future?

 

[Leo123]

I will not be doing any transcoding on the server - any manipultation of files will be done on a separate computer.

Difficult to predict exactly what tuner cards I shall be using, as there is suddenly a shift towards HD over here in the UK.

At the moment, I have two Hauppauge cards - one HVR-2200 (PCI-E) and a Nova-S2 (PCI).

My plan is to have 4 freeview channels and 4 freesat channels (at the moment I have only 2freeview and 1 freesat), so what will probabtly happen is that I shall end up selling the Nova Card and getting a TBS DVB-S2 Quad tuner (to give me four satellite feeds rather than one) and add an extra HD dual freeview card such as the Black Gold BGT3620 dual DVB-T2. This will probably mean that I will need three PCI-E slots in total.

In terms of additional storage, in addition to the three Hard Drives already mentioned, perhaps I would need to add one additional large Hard Drive if absolutely needed though certainly no more than four Hard Drives in total.

I have also noted a slight error in my proposed CPU - that should be a Sandy Bridge i3-2100T.

Thanks