If you're really on a budget, you can make a media center out of a raspberry pi.

i use the internet. (eg: https://pcpartpicker.com/ )

also HD is overrated

Orthaic, I got a decent TV so I do enjoy streaming in HD. On a laptop or a smaller screen I totally understand. Also, that's a great looking site.

Abg, that building it from a raspberry pi sounds like a ton of fun but would it be powerful enough to support all the transcoding?

No idea for budget. I was hoping to figure out how much it would cost and then figure out if I could afford it.

I don't know. You could read up on it. It would be the cheapest option though.

With computers it's better to have a budget, but I'd guess $200 if you didn't need to buy a case.

Alright, I'll look into Raspberry Pi and let you know what I find.

And, yeah, I can scavenge a case and any other old transferable parts.

I recommend focusing on making money rather than doing things 'on a budget'. If you are going to do something do it well, and that usually takes money. It's just the better way of living.

Just make more money?
https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-O3kqcj78bvE/T3mKtXh3IwI/AAAAAAAADT8/IhVy2EkwSh0/s1600/charlie-aws-job-land.jpg

Here's a good place to start: http://lifehacker.com/5936546/how-i-built-the-media-center-of-my-dreams-for-under-500

Subtract the Case, Optical Drive, and Windows and you're at $300. This post is also a year old and these prices look high, so I still think $200 is reasonable.

Yonni, I think I misunderstood what you're doing. You're using this computer as a media server and you stream to Roku, yes? So this machine doesn't actually connect to your TV. Is that how you want to keep using it? That would require a different build than what I initially suggested.

oh, sure, like Greece was just a "misunderstanding" ;)

I think I'd recommend something like this. I'd pick up 2 Barracudas so that you can mirror your data. Perhaps someone with more media server experience will offer their suggestions.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813132052
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231193
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148834
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117374

http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=206

WHAT HAVE I DONE??

Do you see how much fun you're missing by not building your own? How's the laptop, BTW?

I was referring to my own initiative affecting the entire forum and me feeling like that dude who invented nuclear bombs.

Things will never be the same again.


On the plus side, the laptop is great. Every good idea clearly has a deep black lining..

my raspberry pi 2 can play 12gig mkv's without a problem. If you want a mediacenter, go with that. It's really cheap

Abg, yeah, the plan is to have a media server that streams to the Roku. I suppose I could make room for a computer in the tv room and plug it straight into the TV and get a remote for the computer. Not the craziest idea. And the laptop is chugging away fine, thanks.

What's the point of mirroring? Just redundancy in case one fails?

Gonnor, I think the problem is transcoding, not playing. The Roku can only play some file types and all the transcoding is done server side so it takes a bit power.

If you have a server I assume you have a lot of media files? That is what I would mirror.

Yeah, that makes sense. Just making sure I had the gist of it.

How much storage do you currently use? 2TB was a complete guess on my part

2TB would be about right for me.

Hm than I don't understand what you're trying to build. you don't need roku when you've got a raspberry pi with a 2TB external.

He is making a server that streams video to different devices, such as a roku.

Yeah, Gonnor, with plex running on a server I can stream to any of my devices connected to the internet. For instance, the Roku attached the tv or my laptop while I'm bored in the lab.

For reference:
https://plex.tv/

"I was referring to my own initiative affecting the entire forum and me feeling like that dude who invented nuclear bombs."

You mean the guy who is oft referenced with this quote: "I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." (see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lb13ynu3Iac )

Yeah I know plex. Ok I understand you now. Hm than I wouldn't use a raspberry pi for that, but a htpc. You can get that for fairly cheap, and you can put it somewhere in your house and don't have to look at it again.

for specific components i can't help you further, but I think with an 4th gen i5, 4-8gigs of ram and maybe a older gen gpu aswel will give you what you need and beyond. i'd look second hand and build your own htpc

That's quite over specd and over busget...

Thanks for the help so far. Going though an American store doesn't work because our god damn dollar is down to $0.73 compared to the greenback so I've done some searching through the Canadian stores.

I can get it to around $300 but I want to make sure I'm not bottle necking or getting some super shitty parts that I'll soon regret.

CPU:
AMD A4-7300 3.8GHz - $50
or
Intel® Celeron® G1840 2 Core 2.8 GHz Processor - $53

I know AMD as a brand is shittier but it's on sale and 3.8>2.8, right?

Memory:
G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 1600MH - $32
or
Kingston HyperX Fury Black 4GB 1600MHz DDR3 CL10 DIMM - $30

MoBo
Gigabyte GA-F2A68HM-H Micro-ATX Motherboard - AMD A68H Chipset, FM2+ Socket, DDR3 2400MHz (OC), Gigabit LAN, PCIe 3.0 x16, USB 3.0, HDMI - $53
or
Asus H81M-E Micro-ATX Motherboard - LGA1150 Socket, Intel H81 Chipset, 1600MHz DDR3, 8-Channel HD Audio, USB 3.0, Gigabit LAN - $67

HD:
Seagate Desktop HDD 2TB 3.5" SATA3 64MB Cache OEM Hard Drive- $95
or
Seagate 3TB Internal Desktop Hard Drive - 3.5" Form Factor, SATA III 6 Gb/s, 64 MB Cache, OEM Package - $110

I'll prob just spend the extra 20 to get the bigger HD. I'll back things up periodically on an external that I already have so I don't need to buy two.

PSU:
Corsair CX430 V2 Series CP-9020046-US 430W Power Supply - $45

No idea how much power I need but scaling down from the gaming computer thread I figured 430W would probably be enough. I can try find a way to calculate it.

Fan:
Not quite sure - Around $20

I have peripherals and a box so I think that's all I'd need. I also don't really need an optical drive/can get one off an old machine if I decide I do.

General advice about computer components. The only the to know how well a component will perform is by looking at benchmarks. Trying to compare two CPUs based on frequency, for instance, is never going to end well because architectures are so outrageously complex. With that in mind, let's compare the two CPUs you picked along with the CPU stupidfighter is planning on buying for reference:

cpubenchmark.net (Higher is better)
AMD A4: 2178
Intel Celeron: 3011
Intel i5: 7720

GeekBench 3 (Single Core) on cpuboss.com (Higher is better)
AMD A4: 2088
Intel Celeron: 2208
Intel i5: 3649

Anyway, the point is despite the faster GHz, the AMD is actually quite a bit less good than the Intel.

Man, they love to add jargon and useless numbers to the description of electronics. It's such a small minority of the consumer that actually knows enough to cut through it.

The plex website suggests a PassMark of 2000 or higher so the Celeron's 3011 should be good enough.

Well, to be fair, back when every process was single core, you actually could get a good idea of how good it was.

...based on the GHz.

Ah, ok. So I wasn't completely misguided all those years ago.

Right. Up until 2000 or so the main improvement in CPUs was the clock speed. The issue with this was faster clocks dissipate more heat and it got to a point where there was simply no way to increase the frequency without the CPUs literally just melting. When they switched over to multicore architectures, everything (including software) became significantly more complicated.

Looks like the H81 mobos might need a bios update if I go that route. Is that a tough road to go down?

What's the update do?

Make it compatible with the more recent CPU. Even though the celeron isn't that new, a couple forum posts I read suggested that H81 might need an update depending on when exactly it was manufactured.

OK, that may be an issue. The easiest way is to buy a cheap CPU and then flash the BIOS, but that's quite a waste of money.

Gigabyte does have a feature called Q-Flash Plus that allows you to flash from USB without a CPU installed, but I doubt that feature is on such a cheap mobo. You can check, though.

Have you spoken to anyone that's used something like the Intel NUC? That seems like it could be a pretty eligent solution for a media server.