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[adlelare]

I use JRiver for all my home's audio, picture, OTA live TV, PVR'ing, transcoding, streaming, etc....I have multi-factor device home (TV's, PC's, laptops, tablets, phones) with both wired and wireless and i use Gizmo extensively for all non-WIN devices.  I have a new HTPC build centred around AMD 8320 CPU... i store, etc. all media on 1 3TB HDD (7200rpm, 64MB cache) that within weeks will be completely full, but run a SSD for all apps.  so when i start adding new HDD's (i believe my MB can do 6 internal) am i better off (assuming JRiver will be doing multi-streams, PVR'ing and OTA live at the same time) setting up a RAID configuration (i'm not worried about the redundancy capability of RAID, just read/write performance) or just adding new HDD's without raid (say having TV PVR on 1 HDD and movies on a 2nd HDD). WRT to performance i would to minimize crashing, delaying, stuttering, etc. as for instance typical OTA PVR of a 30 minute show is about 2.5gb.

[RoderickGI]

Some of my info may be a bit out of date, but for what it is worth;

Don't use software RAID that came with your motherboard. If the MB fails you will need to find the exact same model to recover your RAID. This may no longer be true for modern motherboards.

I look extensively at third party software RAID solutions last year. FlexRAID particularly, but also others. My conclusion was that they added a lot of complexity and maintenance without significant benefit.

What I ended up doing, since I am also not too worried about redundancy, is to keep each of my five 3TB disks separate and assign them separate tasks, such as recording, music, movies, etc. I then installed HD Sentinal on the HTPC and tuned it so that I will be warned by email and messages if a hard disk is having problems. I check occasionally and the disks are all still 100% good.

I recommend you do the same. But do back up any really important media.

BTW, a modern hard disk will cope with multiple media streams, read or write. I did the numbers ages ago and didn't see the need for the performance of RAID. I only looked at it from a data protection point of view.

If I had a NAS on the network though, it would use hardware RAID and run level 6.

[adlelare]

roderick, thanks.  i had a NAS that i'm selling to fund my HTPC (my PC was very old) and i was trying to figure out (as mobo is raid able) if it was worth it, as i don't need redundancy (important stuff backed up to Inet) and i wondered if there were any real performance gains.  seems i will just stick with unRaid, many disk setup and i will look into HD Sentinel.  thanks.  with 5 HDD's did you have any extra cooling?? right now i have 2 120MM fans (front), a water cooler on the CPU and the GPU has some fan built in have you found a need for more cooling??? here's another Q does anyone ever drill holes into back side of PC (behind the MOBO) to increase flow??? i have flow holes in front, back, bottom, top and panel front side (MOBO facing side) but none on back side, seems to me excess heat will build up there or no?? TIA.

[RoderickGI]

I haven't had any issues with cooling, although I bumped up the allowed hard drive temperature in HD Sentinel a bit after my first settings proved too conservative. I was getting far too many emails about the temperature when it wasn't really a problem. Check the specs of your hard drives carefully and set a realistic temperature for alerts if you do use HD Sentinel.

I just use the standard Lian Li PC-C60 cooling arrangement, which is two 14cm input fans on the right with cross flow to the left, as per this image (front of the PC is at the top in this image, so my right and left are reversed):


I believe in using positive pressure in a PC case to avoid sucking dust in through all the little gaps and holes that are unavoidable. The two input fans are filtered. Rather than drilling more holes, I tend to close them off, if they don't suit my cooling design. But using positive pressure means I mostly just leave what holes are there, as I have with this HTPC case.

In addition to the two input fans on the right I have a Noctua NH-C14 CPU cooler that pulls air in from the top through a 14cm fan hole, which is also filtered. The Noctua itself has two quiet 14cm fans.

All four of the 14cm fans are set to run quietly, and are speed controlled by the motherboard.

The hard drives sit at the front left, where there is another 14cm fan hole, so most of the air blows over the hard drives and out of the case.

Finally, the Seasonic SS-660XP² power supply has a 12cm fan in it that stays off most of the time, but will turn on if the power supply warms up, using its "Patented Hybrid Silent Fan Control". It draws warm air out of the case and through the power supply when it runs. Even when the power supply's fan is off, the positive pressure created by the other fans ensures a certain amount of air flows out through the power supply. That is partly why the power supply fan rarely turns on.


I still need to replace the standard Lian Li fans with quieter versions at some time, as they can be heard close up. I'll probably put Noctua fans in there, as they seem to be the quietest and best at the moment. I don't have a discrete GPU in the case at the moment, since I am using the Intel iGPU of the i5-3570K CPU. When I do add a discrete GPU the cooling requirements and flow will change a bit, but I think what I have will be enough.

I assume your water cooling has a fan that blows air out of the case, and probably runs at a reasonable speed. In that case, if your two 12cm input fans are running at low speed for quiet operation they may not be providing much positive pressure in the case, if any. So any additional holes may result in air being sucked into the PC case, bringing dust with it, rather than blowing air out the holes. I wouldn't be adding any extra holes unless you know that your two 12cm fans are pushing in substantially more air than the water cooling fan is pushing out of the case. I don't think I have ever seen anyone put holes in the case behind the motherboard, although I have seen it discussed, as people were worried about heat build-up. However convection takes care of that, as long as there is sufficient flow into and out of the case, the hot air will be taken away.