old hardware died.... new options

[justdeb]

Hi All,

Have been away for a while...been spending time with the new additions to the family and have had no time to tinker.... let alone sleep!!!

my existing core has died terminally.... so i a am considering a new core.....

I am looking at a i5 2600k processor, G-B P67A-UD3B3 mainboard, ram etc....

I reviewed hardware and there is nothing comparible... at the time of writing this...

I am and will be happy to add this to the wiki, but would like thoughts from others before i outlay the $$

In terms of specs of the GB mb....it appears to have the features that would be suitable for a core.

I already have a dual dvb-t card(haupage nova t-500) that will work in both vdr(preffered) as well as mythtv...

So my question is would this be suitable as a core?

OR is there other options that anyone would suggest?........keep in mind that i am in australia.... so if there are au lmce users or anyone who could add comments please do... i will be documenting this as i go along and will be happy to add comments from au users..

TIA

Justin

[purps]

All I will say is don't spend too much money, even a mini-ITX atom board can be used as a core. Personally I only use mini-ITX boards as MDs though. My core is a "normal" desktop.

My core fried not so long ago as well, and I bought the cheapest dual core CPU and cheapest 2 gigs of RAM I could find. For the motherboard, I needed a full ATX board with x3 PCI slots (as rare as rocking horse shit) - I notice that the one you're looking at only has two, which might limit you. I have x2 Nova-T-500s and the second NIC of course, so the extra PCI slots are very much needed in my case. That said I'm sure there are PCIe NICs you can use, but I fear change.

Just bear in mind that with a modern motherboard, you might have to fart around with the onboard NIC a little bit to get it to work. For this reason I would try and make sure it's Realtek, and this seems to be what most people have. Just bear in mind that some Realtek PCI NICs won't play nicely with their onboard brothers, unless you are able to hack the drivers/modules about. Not sure what your expertise is, but I was certainly out of my depth with this.

Cheers,
Matt.

[LmceCape]

I have tried the Zotac ION with the Atom 330 as a core, but it just seems to struggle a bit too much. Thats with no additional MDs' just a webcam for security and an iPhone web-orbiter.

Work great as MD's though.

[klovell]

jestdeb - I'm sorry if this is a thread Jack, you may be interested in any answers.

Is there a write up or chart with the expectations for a core?  What am I to expect if I use a Atom board as a core?  I may have phrased that wierd but let me explain.

I see a few post every so often about using these things as cores and i just don't get it.   I am using a Athlon dual core 2.0 or 2.3...I can't remember right now, and I would like something a little faster, I'm also known by most as being too hard to please... but still.  I can only imagine i'd be pulling my hair out if I switched to anything slower like an Atom based core.  The only solid numbers I have for an example is memory size.  I read on the Wiki a P4 with 512mb is minumum requirement, but when my core which has 2GB of ram is up and running not playing media or doing anything obvious i only have about 115MB of Ram available.  If a 2GB core uses all but 115MB what's a 512MB core going to look like?!? 

I maybe rambling, but "a mini-ITX atom board can be used as a core.", what does that mean?  How long would that take to boot?  How many MD's can that support?  How long would it take for an MD to boot?  Or all MD's after a system restart? Or while the core itself is playing and/or recording video?  Will it have enough power to utilize all the features of LMCE?  I just can't visualize how this could work as a full blown core and be fast enough to say it's usable.

I'm not attacking anyone or the project, I just don't get it.  Does a guide or chart like this exsist? If not shouldn't we start a thread to poll users system types and performance statistics?  Obviously we can't cover every board on the market, and this isn't meant to be an end all for all the "Is this a good core" questions.  It's more to set expectations.

[Marie.O]

If you run a core only (as opposed to a hybrid), the only thing where the core will have real benefits is on Orbiter regeneration. This is something that happens mainly when you start with LinuxMCE (every time a new genre gets detected, LinuxMCE will prompt you for regeneration). If you have multiple tuner cards and want to store multiple concurrent HD channels, you might find out, that you are better of investing in a Raptor harddrive, but that's about it. If you browse through the forum, you will find multiple places where totallymaxed outlines his home core, which, iirc, is a Atom 330

[justdeb]

thanks to all for your comments

Purps- i totally missed that fact... will need to revisit the mobo thing..... as i will need to run 2 x nova t's as well.... and obviously the network card..... the other thing that i was considering was a dvb-s card...

In terms of MD's i have been reading the wiki/forum and the zotac or asus options appear to be the way to go. Given that i will need roughly 8 units.... should i still look to use a multicore cpu as well as a reasonable amount of ram.

Klovell - i understand where you are coming from and i believe everyone who first dives into lmce has similar questions.... your thought in relation to the poll might be an interesting exercise..... and my gut feeling is that there will be quite number of systems which will be a few years old and will be using between 1 -2gb ram and more than likely a cpu of around 1.6 - 2.0 Ghz...

Some other things to consider in the poll would be whether users ustilise an internal or external nas...

overall i know from my limited experience that there are many many configurations, and depending on where you are situated in the world... the type of components that are available vary greatly...

[justdeb]

in terms of new mobo's.... any sugestions.... i am keen to move forward..due to the fact that my original hardware died..

i need a mobo that au users are using that is currently available ....... and it needs to have at least 3 pci slots....

TIA as always

Justin

[purps]

I want a satellite tuner also, but am going to go USB for this I think, unless there's a PCIe one that works. Or as I said, you might be able to get a PCIe NIC. Just don't limit yourself with PCI slots.

I bought the cheapest AMD x2 core available at the time (about 6 months ago) with 2 GB of RAM, and I'm running around 5 MDs at the moment (mostly mini-ITX) with no issues.

Cheers,
Matt.

[Marie.O]

I am using two DVB-S2 PCIx1 dual tuner cards (cineS2) in my 1004 core with VDR. They work nicely.