Got almost all parts for my upgraded HTPC minus the storage. The build is an Asrock Deskmini X300. I mean, I did a dumb mistake and believed that the M.2 slot will accept an MSATA drive, which it didn't. Now, I am free to choose either go with traditional SATA SSD or go crazy with NVMe. So, I was thinking about getting 2 NVMe drives and set them up in a raid 0 , just for the kicks. Yay or nay? It's just an HTPC a but we only live once.
Ok thanks for the advice. Nevertheless, a small NVMe boot drive (256 GB) is faster than SATA. Giving the choice, and having the same price, I prefer NVMe over SATA because it is a small computer case and having less cables to deal with is a win. What I mean is spending 40€ and get a single 256 GB NVMe as a boot/OS drive and have the build up and running.
@anticupidon , hola my old friend. I have more or less the same set up for my htpc. Been rocking an Asrock deskmini A300w with a 3400G apu 16gb of ram @ 3600Mhz , 1 nvme 512gb boot drive and 2x 1tb ssds for storage ( movies , music etc ... ) on a 5.1 surround sound speakers set up for over a year now and i love it , great htpc . I'm going to give you some links of hardware that you might want to buy for an easy useful upgrade since it got so little usb ports and you might need more. Also the cheap realtek sound chip it's really bad and only can do 2.1 speakers set up , i will give you a link for a cheap C-media Oxigen sound card that will sound great and can do 7.1 surround sound ( i'm using it at 5.1 surround sound speakers set up ) Grab this 2x usb ports upgrade : https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00L1XU5WS/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 Grab this usb-c to usb 3.1 adapter : https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01GGKYXVE/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 Grab this usb sound card : https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002LM0U2S/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 I hope this helps with your future upgraded and improved htpc Asrock deskmini 300 experience , enjoy it bro.
@chispy buddy, long time no see. Thank you for all suggestions and links. Will that USB sound card work under Linux? Not much info, I am looking for an USB DAC anyways. Learned from the start that the X300's sound is not stellar, it was a compromise that I accepted, with the prospect of upgrading it to better one down the road. And yes, lovely small computer. The only thing to learn and apply, is the upscaling old content to better resolution, or better media post processing. But this is for near future, for the time being I want to solve the sound issue and the boot drive.
No idea if the C-Media Oxigen sound card will work under linux bro :/ , i'm running w10 and the os downloaded the drivers itself. Maybe you can dig a little more and find out , it's a perfect upgrade for the shity realtek onboard. Great to see you around bro , i rarely visit guru3d now. ** Based on newegg details it seems only windows is supported :/ - https://www.newegg.com/startech-com-icusbaudio7d/p/N82E16829128010
Well, "faster" in a way that doesn't matter. If with the SATA SSD booting takes 11.9 seconds, with an NVME it takes 11.6 seconds. Example: Yey...
@RealNC yes, I know that there a small , nil difference regarding boot speed. But giving the choice, nowadays I choose NVMe over SATA. No cables and smaller footprint. And write/ read greater speed.
Yeah, I agree. I was just mentioning it in case you already have a SATA SSD. There wouldn't be a point in wasting money for an "upgrade" to NVME. If you're buying more storage anyway, then of course NVME makes more sense since now they seem to cost virtually the same as SATA SSDs.
Haha bro, everyone does that these days, NVMes were developed so they can be much much faster than SATA yet everybody buys them not because of their speed but just because they are more compact and don't need extra wiring. What was mostly seen as secondary unimportant feature is now driving their sales, it's kind of odd situation in terms of hardware parts for sure.
As most have said, NVME RAID is a complete waste of $ and not worth the time - or the risk - or other efforts required. It's only needed in a fraction of the RAID-use situations that the older RAID setups many of us enjoyed - reason being is that YOU DON'T NEED IT anymore as drives got faster. Raid in itself was always for the top 1% of PC users and servers. I used to have an LSI card in my old PC, don't need that with SSD's anymore. Buy a better SSD not a RAID card today. If you have a chunk of change burning a hole in your pocket, get a PC that supports PCI-E 4.0 and a recent drive that does also (Sabrent, a lesser-known but still OK brand, just released an updated PCI-E 4.0 NVME drive that's better than some but still no Samsung). Any decent NVME SSD, even my generic brand (Inland Pro 1TB - which was on sale when I got it), will boot Windows in a few seconds. I only see the BIOS screen for a few seconds - not even enough time to pull the chair out and sit most times - and then it's asking for my Windows password (AMD 3950x CPU, plenty of memory, Creative soundcard, Nvidia RTX GPU) So even a generic NVME drive will get you leaps and bounds above whatever the best HDD could try to do on all but capacity. From what another poster I think Chispy said: OUCH, 2 channel Realtek audio has to hurt. I have no idea how people can tolerate that (are you DEAF? sorry if I sound snobbish, I assure you I'm not or am not trying to be) on anything besides maybe an office PC. For your email PC it doesn't matter but definitely for HTPC be on the lookout for a nice - or anything else out there that's better - USB soundcard. I am still a Creative fan here, even if their drivers occasionally cause an issue at some point (it's been quite a while actually - 10~12+ years?). Good sound cards will have Dolby/THX Sound support and digital out which on a HTPC and sometimes even gaming PC are nice-to-haves but not always absolutely required. If you just have the sound output to cheaper Walmart TV speakers you might not notice the difference. A good USB hub is almost a must if you don't have many 3.x ports but have lots of devices - don't get one based on price alone. You get what you pay for - if you, the kids, or the pets, might bump them - get a good one! Don't get a cheap one, and be like me and manage to plug something in backwards (it wasn't usb C ) and shut the whole PC off (short-circuit protection thank you for existing). I did it twice before I finally disconnected the thing and got a better one. BZZZZZT. Live and learn, good luck with your mini-PC. Not everyone needs a giant gaming tower. Though I will say that if you can't tell the difference on sound card solutions with decent source audio, start saving those hearing-aid coupons that come in the AARP magazine
Well, there's still the redundancy benefit with RAID 5/6. One NVME bites the dust, it's fine, your data is still safe and you just replace that one NVME ASAP. But RAID 0? Nope.
@bobblunderton live and learn. Thanks for the advice. I went and bought an 500 GB Crucial NVMe SSD. At first I told myself that 128 GB is plenty, because all the media content will be stream from my Xpenology box or from on-line providers. But after second thought, I went for a 500GB. I will use some emulators or Steam games, but nothing heavy nor with high end requirements. Also, I bought an level entry USB DAC, the Sharkoon Gaming DAC Pro S V.2 as an experiment and to start from there. Don't worry, that DAC will be my first and I have many computers with low end sound chips, so will be used in one or another when I will upgrade to something better.It was cheap and somehow i has to spend some Amazon credits, so don't sweat it. While at it, bought an USB type C to USB 3.1 adapter as @chispy graciously advised and an USB 2.0 extension.
Mi amigo , your built is shaping up to be a great htpc , you and your family will enjoy it a lot. I have been enjoying my tiny Asrock a300w box for over a year and use it 24/7 ( with a magnetic air filter on the top ) and only reboot to install updates . Enjoy it my friend !