Your Home Setup

I am always curious as to what Hardware/Software people use in their home networks so i thought i would create this thread to see what people have setup i will give you my details first

Main PC:
Intel i5 2500k - CPU
Gigabyte P67a-UD4-B3 - Motherboard
8GB DDR3 G.skill Ripjaws X - Ram
128GB Samsung 830 SSD
1TB Western Digital Caviar Black - Hard Drive
Windows 8.1 Pro x64 - Operating System

Home Server:
Intel Q8400 Quad-Core - CPU
4GB DDR3 1333mhz - Ram
Asus P5P43TD - Motherboard
21TB - Western Digital Green Drives
320GB Toshiba 2.5 Laptop Drive For OS
Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 x64 - Operation System + NzbDrone and Sabnzbd

I also have some HTPC’s One is a Refurbished HP DC7800 with 512mb Nvivia GeForce 210 Graphics Card the Other is an AMD FM1 Triple Core with onboard Video

Networking:
Billion 7800n - Modem/Router
TP-Link 5 Port Gigabit Switch
TP-Link TL-WR1043nd Gigabit - Router (Running as switch)
Two TP-Link WIFI Adapters 1 External 300mbps High Gain USB and the other 450mbps Dual-Band PCI-e

Please post what you can i am always tinkering with my setup and have tried to deploy Linuix on the server before but always came back to simpler windows only linux machine currently is one of the HTPC’s running Openelec

Main PC:
Intel i7 4770K 3.50GHz 8MB - CPU
Gigabyte Z87X-UD3H iZ87 - Motherboard
Corsair 2x4GB, DDR3, PC12800, CL9 - Ram
GeForce GTX760 DCII OC 2GB - GFX
~250GB Cant remember the make - SSD
2 x 1TB Western Digital - Hard Drive
Windows 8.1 Pro x64 - Operating System

Home Server:
-± Synology DS 412+
Intel Atom Dual Core 2.13 GHz - CPU
1 GB DDR3 - Ram
4x 3TB - Western Digital Red Drives (RAID 5)
DSM 5.0 - Operation System + (Awaiting package for NzbDrone), PLEX media centre, Sickbeard, Couchpotato, Headphones and Sabnzbd

HTPC:
Zotac IONITX-TE - Motherboard
Intel Atom D525 1.8GHz Dual-Core - CPU
NVIDIA ION™ w/512MB DDR3 - On board video
Kingston 2GB 1333MHz DDR3 - Memory
Seagate Momentus 7200.4 SATA 3Gb / s 500GB - OS HDD
Windows 8.1 Pro x64 - Operating System -> PLEX Home Theater & XBMC

Networking:
Netgear Switch GS108T-200GES 8P 1Gbit
Cisco Linksys E1200 Wireless-N Router

awesome setup and i thank you for going into that much details i didn’t expect everyone to spend half and hour writing every detail out :slight_smile: so that is great though you did basically just CPU/RAM/OS/HDD

Sinclair ZX81 and mono speaker. :slight_smile:

1 Like

You’ve got a speaker?!?!?! Luxury!! :slight_smile:

Was my first actually , 1kb of memory that I expanded to 16kb , cassette tape for saving my basic routines hahaha , I even moved on up to the Sinclair zx spectrum when it came out then did a jump to an Amstrad cpc 6128 that had in the build in floppy drive. From there I made a leap to the amiga 500 which was pretty advanced for its time.
Then I made the final leap to an IBM pc, was a 286 with a 5 1/4 floppy (hated them) and on board video of 64k which I upgraded to 128k.

Those were the days , no windows and only dos on the 286 in some ways I enjoyed it more back then than I do now.

Main Server
System Overview
unRAID Version: unRAID Server Plus, Version 5.0
Motherboard: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. - GA-A75-D3H
Processor: AMD A8-3870 APU with Radeon™ HD Graphics - 3 GHz
Cache: Internal Cache = 128 kB (max. 128 kB)
Internal Cache = 128 kB (max. 128 kB)
External Cache = 1024 kB (max. 1024 kB)
Memory: 8192 Module (max. 16 GB)
Bank0/1 = 4096 MB, 1333 MHz
Bank2/3 = 4096 MB, 1333 MHz
Bank4/5 = No Module Installed, 1333 MHz
Bank6/7 = No Module Installed, 1333 MHz
Network: eth0: 1000Mb/s - Full Duplex
Uptime: 3 days, 14 hours, 15 minutes, 27 seconds (i keep adding plugins. reboots)
7TB
40GB SSd ATADA Cache drive

Roku 2
Macbook PRO
Sony laptop

Network
Asus rt-n66u

Main System:
Windows 8.1 Pro x64
Core i5 3570k @ 4.6Ghz
16Gb DDR Corsair Ripjaw Z @ 2133mhz
ASUS Maximus Formula V
Geforce GTX680 @ +100mem/+100core (Lazy)
120Gb Corsair Force 3 SSD / 2Tb Samsung HDD / 500Gb Seagate HDD
Fully Watercooled

Spare System:
Windows 8.1 Pro x64
Core i5 3570k @ 4.5Ghz
8Gb Geil Evo Veloce RAM @ 1866Mhz
ASRock Z77 Extreme 4
Sapphire Radeon 6850
WD Raptor 10k 320Gb

HTPC:
Windows 8.1 Pro x64
Gigabyte Brix GB-BXi3-4010
i3 4010U @ 1.7Ghz
8Gb RAM
120Gb Samsung 830 Evo mSata SSD

HTPC is connected to a LG 50PZ950 active 3D Plasma and Onkyo TX-NR515AE

NAS:
Synology DS1813+ / 8x3Tb WD Red in RAID 6 / 4Gb RAM

Networking:
ASUS DSL-N55U and a few Gb Switches around the house.

Loving these setup posts guys i think we should start posting pictures of our rigs next :slight_smile:

Interesting to see the majority running Windows 8.1 despite all the hate put on it i have found it really rock solid stable and fast and responsive especially with an SSD (I got a Samsung 830 128GB)

I want to run it on my home server as i am not very experienced with linux nor do i have the patience to spend hours researching all the things i need to do and can do in a few clicks with windows at this time however i cannot run my server on Windows 8 or Windows Server (have tried this too and works great) the reason for this is my system being used as a server is getting old now and they stopped driver support at windows 7 so until i can afford to replace it with something newer i have to run it on windows 7 which really is fine i am big fan on both Windows 7 and windows 8 i just don’t like the Start screen in windows 8 but that can easily be avoided :slight_smile: and both windows 7 and windows 8 run reliably for me

We’ve been using Windows 8/8.1 for our customers for ages, unless a vendor doesn’t support it (ie: MYOB before version 19.8). You might find the drivers are actually “in image” in Windows 8/Server 2012 if it’s somewhat recent hardware, and if not, for the majority of things the Windows 7 drivers are actually fully functional.

On the start screen though: From Vista onwards, anyone that isn’t using search from the start menu is doing it wrong. Press Start Key on keyboard, start typing. Simple. I haven’t needed anything else for ages.

I like photos, they give me inspiration and ideas. I’ll see if I can remember to post some after I get some sleep (1:15am atm)

Main server

Custom-built Lenovo T60 laptop (very efficient!) Core 2 Duo T7200 @ 2.0GHz 3GB Ram 500GB HD Windows Server 2008 R2

File server

Core 2 Duo E6750 @ 3.5GHz Asus P5Q-E 4GB RAM 5.5TB storage spread over 6 HDs (3TB + 1TB + 2 * 500GB + 2 * 250GB) ... :p Windows 7 x64

HTPC

Athlon 64 X2 4850e @ 2.5GHz Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H 2GB RAM another 6TB (4 + 2) built-in Radeon 3200 graphics...getting a bit slow for 1080p :( Windows 7 x32

Main PC

i5 2500K @ 4.5GHz 16GB RAM 120GB Samsung 830 SSD Radeon 6950 @ 6970 Windows 7 x64

@Markstar

thanks for the post an interesting setup you have it also confirms my suspicions that more than i thought especially on these forums choose the Windows route for their Home server setup over Linux I am too also in this camp It all comes down to ease of use and simplicity as much as Linux is touted as the be all and end all to servers the fact remains windows is still simpler to setup

sure ok you may have to reboot it more the average is once a month after updates have been grabbed but unless you are running a datacentre is it really that much of an inconvenience to spend a couple minutes every 30 or so days to hit reboot.

I have spent time testing out linux in the past and i still continue to do so in fact i am gonna run a test server using Lubuntu soon and see how it performs against the Windows server I know from personal experience and seeing the many posts here about issues with Mono for NzbDrone in Linux that windows has the edge on stability for NzbDrone this is likely down to .NET

anyways great setup it seems your HTPC functions partially as a server with 6TB in it :slight_smile: i am curious as to what you use your Main Server for seeing as it only has 500gb in it probably not for storage

I am studying computer science, so I always felt I should be using Linux. I tried, I really did. But the fact is that not only is it much harder to set up, many things are out-right impossible to accomplish (like proper fan control, look at my post back from '08: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=948674). In the end I even had a friend who works as Linux admin at the university advise me to stick to Windows, as I also had plenty of weird issues that I could never resolve. I keep going back to it (e.g. I just downloaded and installed Mint 16 on a 32GB USB stick), but find that the hurdle is too high and I have to sacrifice too much. I love the idea of Linux and many aspects of it, but when it comes down to it, I just want something that works fairly well.

The main server is the one up 24/7, running SABnzbd, ÎĽTorrent, eMule, as well as my development web and FTP server. It is located in a corner somewhere and remote-controlled with VNC (which works from everywhere around the world, which is nice).

Since I have A LOT of data, having everything on one PC has been a pipe dream until very recently (as it would just require soo many HDs to have all of it, which also means quite some energy (plus money for buying all the hard drives). To get 20TB in RAID5 already requires 6 4TB drives, and that is pushing the limit already, as more hard drives will require another controller. I had hoped we would be further along in the hard drive storage era, but sadly the progress has pretty much come to a halt ever since the earthquake (combined with some other factors like Seagate buying Samsungs HDD department). I already have a case ready for the time when it all goes into one nice machine, but this will take a while (especially now that we shoot more and more HD movies with our Canon 70D).

Instead, the T60 uses far less than 10W (sure, 6-8W doesn’t sound like something special nowadays for a PC but I have been running this for years) and I just move the downloaded content to the appropriate PC (e.g. movies to the file server, TV shows on the HTPC).

That is why I would be so happy if NzbDrone would at least support setting the download quality manually! I just cannot believe the majority keeps all their shows in one directory or doesn’t mind showing the status incorrectly.

I wouldn’t call the HTPC a server, since it only runs when we watch something. And I really need to do something about it soon, the 1080p issue is becoming more and more of a problem, especially when watching stuff online. In theory the PC should be fast enough, but whatever OS I try, 1080 video playback is always a bit off (especially the audio).

Oh, and btw, I also remember the datasette drives in my Commodore C64/128…those were the times! :slight_smile:

Home Server

CPU: E8400 @ 3.0GHz
RAM: 8GB
Boot Drive: 1TB WD Black
Storage: 12.7TB (available 4x2TB 2x3TB), no RAID ATM

@Markstar said:
I just cannot believe the majority keeps all their shows in one directory or doesn’t mind showing the status incorrectly.

One directory is easy when you use drive pooling, UnRAID, Drive Bender, Drive Pool and plenty other platforms/applications make this trivial, some with RAID-like capabilities. If it wasn’t for drive pooling I’d have a hard time keeping track of where everything went.

Home Server

Host (Photo) CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1230 Mobo: Supermicro MBD-X9SCM-F-O RAM: 16 GB Kingston ECC DDR3 PSU: Seasonic 760W Platinum SAS: IBM M1015 with Intel SAS Expander RES2SV240 Storage: WD Red 2TB and Corsair 256GB SSD (for ESXi datastores) Case: Norco RPC-4224 in an Ikea "LackRack" on wheels VMWare ESXi 5.5

Guests
Windows 7: NzbDrone and Plex Media Server
unRAID: 21TB of WD Greens and Reds
Ubuntu 13: Misc internet services
Windows XP: APC server

Computers

Apple MacBook Pro retina 15" Apple MacMini (HTPC)

Media Players

GoogleTVs (Sony NSZ-GS7 and Vizio Co-Stars) Roku 2 XS Google ChromeCast

Network

Asus RT-N66U with Merlin's firmware Trendnet 8-port Gigabit "Green" switch

One directory is easy when you use drive pooling, UnRAID, Drive Bender, Drive Pool and plenty other platforms/applications make this trivial, some with RAID-like capabilities. If it wasn’t for drive pooling I’d have a hard time keeping track of where everything went.

Hmm, I’ll look into that, thanks, but I assume all of these solutions require the included drives to be always online, which is not really feasible in my case, as there are just too many of them spread over several computers. But yeah, eventually I’ll hope to accomplish this as well as soon as I can afford the drives and the power bill that comes with it. :slight_smile:

@sdjaime: Now that is a serious server. :slight_smile:

@sdjaime that looks nice i have always wanted to do a build with a norco case and a lack rack but those norco cases are either hard to get or stupidly expensive here in australia for a decent size one so i have been using gaming cases as they are big enough for the amount of drives and have good cooling

@markus101
What OS are you running?
yours is an older beast like mine the Q8400 and Asus P5P43TD in mine just wont die i think i am gonna have to retire it first

i am planning my new build soon but so far looks like Intel i5 3330 & Asrock B75m-Pro4 (8 onboard Sata ports plus PCI slots for more expansion

wasn’t going to use something like an i5 in my server but i had a computer given to me (HP P6-2300a) that someone bought and then broke like two weeks later and was too lazy and stupid to get it repaird (Fried Motherboard) so having more money than sense just went and bought another and told me to throw it now i don’t care who you are any nerd worth their salt is not going to throw away a Intel i5 with 6GB DDR3 1600mhz Ram, 1TB HDD and Nividia GeForce 620 so i stripped it clean and using some of these parts for my server cannot beat Free that the best price of all :slight_smile: all i gotta do is buy a $73 Motherboard

@protocol77 Server 2012 right now, should have waited for R2, but its working great. Drives are pooled with Drive Bender.

@markus101

Cool how have you found it in terms of being stable and secure I assume you might be using essentials which i am trying to stay away from so i don’t have to deal with all that domain stuff i don’t want i have tried Standard and it seemed to work well from what i could test although due to my aging hardware driver support was lacking for some of PCI sata ports so drives kept dropping or i couldn’t boot with them plugged in at this stage i need them as i have more hard drives than sata ports so had to for now revert back to Windows 7 x64 Ultimate which is the most recent that has drivers for them

I didn’t get a fair enough time to test out Server 2012 although i have found windows 8 to be stable so if that is any indication i thought about once again tackling linux and trying to setup my server with that put i simply just don’t have the patience or time to spend 6 hours learning to do something i can do in 4 mouse clicks in windows

I have also read and been told that if the majority of your network is windows throwing a linux server in there might cause problems it would work best to simply keep everything on windows.

there is a lot of articles around suggesting Windows 8 as a Server OS for Home environment as it is so much cheaper than Server 2012 and if you don’t use half the server features why bother i can see the point as like WHS 2011 was Windows 7 with a few tweaks the same goes for server 2012 and Windows 8

Ok so this is what I am currently using and to be honest find it perfect for my needs.

Case : SilverStone Milo ML03B MATX HTPC Desktop Case Black
Motherboard : Gigabyte H77M-D3H
CPU - Intel I5 3330
Video - Enhanced Intel HD Graphics 4000/2500 integrated with the processor
Memory - 8GB DDR3
Boot drive - Adata SP900 SSD 128GB
Storage drives : 6 x 3TB Western digital set out as follows
1 drive as current and running series
1 drive as finished series
Both of these are in a Welland Tera Hard Drive enclosure USB3.0
each of these are backed up to another drive and these are western digital mybooks on USB3.0
The other 2 drives are 1 for movies and the last drive is a backup of the movies.and these are in the main case.

Running windows 7.0 32 bit

This is linked to my tv which is a 55 inch Panasonic plasma (dropped 4k on this but was worth it)

This is a pic of the setup