TV Server Hardware: thoughts please? (1 Viewer)

[DragonQ]

I currently have two PCs in my home entertainment setup:

Home Digital Assistant
Intel Celeron G1610 (Ivy Bridge @ 2.6 GHz)
60 GB SSD
9x HDD (5 native, 4 via PCI-E SATA controllers)
BlackGold BGT3600 & BGT3630
Windows Server 2012
Software: MediaPortal TV-Server; FlexRAID; Deluge; JDownloader; Linux VM; MS Forefront Security; VPN server.

HTPC
Intel Celeron G530 (Sandy Bridge @ 2.4 GHz)
nVidia GT 430 (passively cooled)
40 GB SSD
Windows 7
Software: MediaPortal; AnyDVD HD; Foobar.

I want to try separating the TV server out completely because live TV and recordings are too susceptible to interference when there's any other activity going on (e.g. downloading, transferring files, watching a film, software raid updates). Hopefully having a dedicated minimalistic TV server will help with that (my signal is already optimised, all the cables are new, and my tuner drivers are already up-to-date). Basically I was thinking of splitting the current server into two machines (so three machines in total), like this:

Home Digital Assistant
Intel Celeron G1610 (Ivy Bridge @ 2.6 GHz)
60 GB SSD
9x HDD (5 native, 4 via PCI-E SATA controllers)
Windows Server 2012
Software: FlexRAID; Deluge; JDownloader; Linux VM; MS Forefront Security; VPN server.

TV Server
Intel Core i5-4440 (Haswell @ 3.1 GHz)?
SSD (for OS, software, and timeshift folder)
1x HDD (for recordings)
BlackGold BGT3600 & BGT3630
Windows 8.1?
Software: MediaPortal TV-Server; MPExtended.

Do you guys think this a good idea? If so, what CPU would be sufficient? I'd like to be able to transcode live TV and my archived films/shows using MPExtended so I'm thinking I need a beefier CPU than a Celeron this time around. I'm also conscious that MediaPortal 2 will feature centralised databases so a good CPU will help with that too. Also, what OS would be best? Considering I won't be using any server OS features I could just use Windows 8.1 I guess?

Obviously this'll cost some money (although I get Windows for free) so would like to hear some other opinions before giving it a go. Thanks.

 

[regeszter]

Timeshift in SSD is not recomended.

 

[DragonQ]

Hmm well in that case would it be better to use the recording HDD for timeshifting too, or to just use an HDD for the OS, software, and timeshifting?

 

[regeszter]

There is one SSD for OS and a hdd for timeshift & recordings (and movies, music, pictures).

 

[DragonQ]

Would it not be a problem using a single HDD for timeshift and recording then? What if I'm recording 2 HD channels whilst watching another?

 

[regeszter]

I can watch 4 channels at same time.

 

[DragonQ]

OK so I'll try having both the Timeshift and Recording folders on the HDD. Does anyone have any comment on whether an i5-4440 will be sufficient for video transcoding? I know that my Celeron G1610 isn't quite good enough for the transcoding options in MPExtended, so I'm hoping that having an extra two cores and a higher clock speed will help. IIRC MPExtended uses ffmpeg for transcoding, which is multithreaded, right?