New HTPC setup

[Nightmare77]

Just thought i would update everyone on my progress, my plan is below , currently i have some parts and I am in the process of building the HTPC. It will be running at 1920x1080 res and output to a HD plasma at 1920x1080 res as well via DVI>HDMI cable.

Server
---------
Athlon XP 3200
1.5gb RAM
Gigabit network
TV server / media server

HTPC
-------
Intel Core 2 duo 3ghz
4gb DDR2 ram - 2 x 2gb
Gigabyte I-ram - 2gb - For OS
ASUS motherboard
ASUS 860GT - fanless
Gigabit network

Ill post some screenshots when i get the last few parts. Hoping to keep windows xp and MP down to under 2gb to fit on the IRAM. Also going to be running without a windows pagefile. And no other hardrives, this will make the computer virtually silent with any luck.

[finrudd341]

This is interesting - so the O/S and MP sits on the I-Ram, and is just pointed at the media on the network? Nice idea, and not one I had seriously considered before, but one I will look into for a multi-room system I am planning. What switches & cabling are you using for the Gigabit network out of interest?

In your server, how are you dealing with data integrity/security - are you running a RAID array, and if so, what sort of coolling are you using in the server to keep the drives temperature down?

Sounds interesting anyway, and I look forward to hearing how this performs - off to google i-Ram now!

EDIT: Ok, I looked at the i-Ram, which seems a good idea, but I had a few concerns. Mainly is that it needs to be perma-powered, or after about 10 hours, it will loose all the data on the RAM. It does have a nifty battery, but it doesn't last forever. A weekend away with someone turning the PC off at the plug would kill the O/S and require a full re-install of the O/S and Media Portal, plus any plug-ins, skins etc.

There's quite a good write up here of the i-Ram: Gigabyte's i-RAM storage device - The Tech Report - Page 1

However, it certainly seems faster than normal Hard drives for booting, and will be silent. Power consumption seemed to offer no advantages over HDD, but heat should also be better. It got me thinking about alternatives, and I am looking to see what the options are for compact flash drives...someone asked me why couldn't you just use an 8GB thumb drive for the same thing at a fraction of the price, and I guess the answer is to do with the jiggery-pokery required to install Windows on a USB drive at all?

EDIT II: Final thoughts on this (the SSD + Network idea is great!) are that I love the idea of the i-Ram Drive, but am just not sure about the i-Ram concept itself - have you got this already, or is this what you intend to purchase? I have been looking at the SanDisk SSD SATA 5000 2.5" which comes in various sizes, and seems to perform an idenitical function with lower power consumption and without the problem of needing to be powered on 24/7. In the report below, the SanDisk booted XP 54% faster than a standard HDD:

DRAMeXchange - How the SanDisk SSD SATA 5000 2.5" Boosts the PC Performance

another good review here:

Solid State Disk Drives Are Here : Flash-Based Storage's Achilles Heel - Tom's Hardware

There are any number of videos on Youtube showing PC's booting extra fast using SSD, but I am never sure how reliable those sorts of videos are. (I also found a video of someone's baby reading the Financial TImes newspaper, and don't beleive that either!)

I currently have a 160GB boot drive in my HTTPC setup, which I would dearly like to use as extra media strorage, and I think this may be the solution I am looking for to free up this drive.

Once again - it will be great to hear how you get on with this setup - solid state really does move towards the truly silent PC, and should offer better Green Credentials & improvements in heat build up, due to lower power consumption.

[Nightmare77]

ill give you a bit of an update, even tho it hasn't totally been finished yet.
Im using a Gigabit switch to connect my house up using CAT 6 cables, this should allow the network to run at full gigabit speeds so i can run the HD movies over the network and have enough bandwidth to not cause any slow downs.

I'm not running any RAID on my server, mainly because most of the data i have on the media server i have on backup discs eg, DVDs and so forth, my music is backed up as well so i dont' really have a need for RAID, i have considered but haven't jumped into it yet, was considering trying windows home server tho.

With the I-RAM from what i have read the battery isn't really an issue. From what i have heard is that because the computer always has power even when its off the battery doesn't kick in so if the computer is off , there is still enough charge to keep the OS/Iram in tack , the only time you have issues if the computer is physically unplugged form the wall or there is a blackout for more than say 20 hours. Then the memory will discharge the contents and i will loose my OS and have to reinstall.
So its really only a problem if i move the computer and forget to plug it back in.

The main reason i haven't done the USB key which would be a lot cheaper are the reasons below. i may be wrong but im pretty sure i read most of this online.
Reason 1 - I heard that the read and write speeds of USB keys weren't to crash hot, heard they were lowere than HDDs. And much lower than I-RAM.
Reason 2 - I had a few DDR ram sticks lying around as spare , so i found IRAM as a solution to this by using the spare DDR chips.
Hope to post some pictures of the build, and yep i do have the IRAM already

[canarygsr]

there is a thread from last week talking about CF cards, Search XPe then there is a link there with a how to.

But Basicly you install onto CF card, and then everything runs off the RAM, its only realy good for Clients tho unless you put in a hard drive as well

[Hildebrandt]

You could make a ghost-image - several programs allow you to make a snapshot of the hdd (or i-RAM as it will behave like a harddisk) and save it elsewhere... So if there is an outage you just plug in the cd with the ghost image and it automatically restores your harddrive (=i-ram) as i was when you made the image...

[Nightmare77]

just to update, i sort of have everything working now, for anyones information who are considering this type of setup , i would highly suggest getting 4 gb of IRAM, 2gb is quite small and i have had issues with the space filling up from bloated XP. I tried xplite to get it down but ran into issues with missing components that i removed that were obviously needed.

some pictures attached.