Hi Bros. After trying for quite a while, I've settled on a mixed wired/wireless network that is served by a hefty custom built Windows desktop/server. I was especially pleased last month when I could access our home media library from the airports and my hotel rooms in South Korea and Singapore, and continue watching the TV series I'd been watching, and a few movies as well. Sure, those countries have great Internet infra but my watching would not have been possible if our media server were not up to playing its critical role.
Our media server is built around an Asus Z87I-PRO MOBO in a Bitfenix Phenom Mini-ITX case. I opted for a Intel i7-4770K CPU and 16GB of 2133MHz OC'd memory because it would have to transcode possibly several streams at the same time. It does also have a AMD R7 200 card that is used somewhat (the CPU is shows heavy loading) when transcoding.
Transcoding is very CPU intensive which translates to heat generated. Getting rid of that heat is very important if you want your electronics to have a long and productive life. So the CPU, which is setup to dynamically overclock depending on the workload, has a gaming rig water cooling system. The GPU card as can be expected has its own built-in fan. And there are another 3 high grade fans installed on the front, back and top sides of the chassis. Actually, there would have been 4 chassis fans but the CPU cooling system tubes got in the way.
For storage, the server has an SSD for boot and 4 HDDs with a total label capacity of 14T over which our media files are spread. The Bitfenix case is nice because it can hold up to 6 HDD in its cages which is important to me to avoid external drive cages connected via USB and the heartache we experienced involving about 9TB of storage.
With so many HDDs and near gaming rig hardware, I was actually worried about the power consumption. Surprisingly, according to the APC Backup-UPS 1100, supplying the server, only about 2.74 kWH (114 watts) are consumed on a daily basis and that even includes the 25" LCD screen, a network switch and access point. When transcoding the consumption does go up to 190 watts. Really not that bad IMHO.
The server connects to the network through a gigabit Ethernet port on the Z87I-PRO, which also includes an 802.11 a/b/g/n NIC but we only use the Ethernet.
Our wireless network is pretty hefty and I'll get to that shortly, but IMHO there is nothing like a wired network by far. So as a rule, if the end device is not going to move then it will be wired. Anyway, nowadays, ready to use CAT6 cables are easy enough to find, and gigabit switches are affordable enough. The slightly higher unsightliness or hassle of installing the cables is IMHO well worth it.
Right now, we are still using the built-in gigabit switches on the old SOHO wireless routers we still have around. I don't really recommend this path for the non-technically inclined because it requires fiddling with the router's settings, and gigabit switches are relatively cheap. I'm just being patient enough to save up so we can replace these with managed switches.
Wireless access in our network is provided through three Ubiquity UniFi AP-PRO access points. A bit of an overkill as these high-end access points with both 2.4GHz and 5GHz radios, a gigabit Ethernet port, mesh capability, and other you-don't-need-them features. From experience however, you can't be skimpy when it comes to wireless because links speeds degrade very quickly from the label speeds, as do other label "promises" wireless routers manufacturers make. In fairness, the Asus RT-N65U and Buffalo G450 and G300 wireless SOHO routers did do fairly well. They could even do wireless streaming to some degree but they cannot of course compare to the Ubiquity APs that with just one streamed to 2 laptops, 2 tablets and 3 android phones all at the same time.
This is I guess already off-topic but another key to being able to access our home media server from South Korea and Singapore, is the pfSense 2.1 gateway that is running on a PC Engines APU-04 box. The server was running Serviio and I had my laptop set to "medium" resolution on the browser UI. Our library material is all ripped at 1080p with lossless audio so it safe to say the server was transcoding everything.
The above was not a "straight shot" with he setup went through several iterations. I thought to share this so that other might take a straighter path.
Cheers
