Wow, that was fast. I tried to sleep, but couldn't shut my mind off, so I'm back. (I hate when that happens)
I cleaned up my list, so it's more readable now.
I didn't realize I could use the 5.25" bays for more drives, that's excellent to hear.
I thought I'd read that unRAID supported 3TB drives, but I've bounced around so much, i don't really remember; so I'll take your word that I'll need the beta version. Maybe I'd read that it works with SATA3. I'll double-check before I get too far along
I already have the 3TB SATA3 drives; newegg had them on sale for 110/each free shipping, and I figured it'd be better to have SATA3 in the future, and they were about the same $/gig as 2TB, and less drives means more room
I bought 4 of them. i have 4 1TB drives in there now, and only have about 100Gb free, so I'm trying to move somewhat quickly, before I have to start moving stuff to external drives.
The 4gb of memory is already in there, and I have no use for it outside of that board, so even if overkill, that's fine
I'm not familiar with Air Video, but it's done fine to convert 1080p files to stream with Gizmo, so more options are always good.
The SuperMicro PCIex4 card looks great, but it's only SATA2, and the Foxconn board already has 6 SATA2 ports, and the SATA3 card I found adds 4 ports for the new drives, so that gets me to 10, and I only have 8 1TB or larger now, so I'll hold off on that (unless I discover the SATA3 card won't work).
I've read several people say you want a single rail Power Supply, or I'd use the one I already have (Antec EA500 Earthwatts 500W Continuous Power ATX12V v2.0 SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC).
As for re-using parts, I'll likely use these for the new desktop.
Case SILVERSTONE Grandia GD01 Silver Aluminum front panel, 0.8mm SECC body GD01S-R ATX Media Center
Power Supply Antec EA500 Earthwatts 500W Continuous Power ATX12V v2.0 SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC
Video Card XFX Radeon HD 5550 1024MB GDDR2, PCI-Express 2.0, DVI, VGA, HDMI
SSD Kingston V+ Series 64Gb SSDNow 2.5" Internal SSD
I still need to decide on motherboard and processor, memory will likely be 8GB of something, since it's pretty cheap. I think AMD is still cheaper/performance, but I'll need/want something powerful enough to process video (and play Diablo 3 when released), so I'll likely end up with an i5. Will that be fast enough to process all video? if not, maybe another nVidia card (good job ATI for not being helpful with hardware deinterlacing!!!)
Finally, the HTPC. Since I'm not planning on using it for gaming, I'm *considering* trying to use my old SUPERMICRO MBD-C2SBA+-O LGA 775 Intel G33 ATX Intel Motherboard in there. An unimpressive processor, but I'm buying a GeForce 550Ti for it, so if I can get confirmation that I really don't need any processor power for video processing (LAV CUVID and madVR), I'll find another socket 775 processor, and reuse the board.
The SuperMicro motherboard above was replaced by the Foxxcon I'll put in the unRAID box, so I'd like to put it to use, but it still sells for decent $$, so i may just sell it and get something more current. I just don't know how powerful a processor I need, since the new GeForce should handle all video processing fine.
I hope that all makes sense, I'm still tired
sorry to somewhat derail my own thread with the other computer parts discussion, but you did offer some input
If you post the exact models of the mobos you have I could try to come up with some solutions for you.
I appreciate all the help. I'm feeling pretty decent about the unRAID box setup, but still need to confirm SATA3 and 3TB functionality, but otherwise I should be under $250 for the new parts I'll need; which seems reasonable to me
Thanks again; I'm really going to sleep now