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PostPosted: Sun Mar 03, 2019 5:50 am 
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From what i recall there was the Q9550 ( Q9550S or maybe Q8200S or Q8400S or Q9450s.. SLGAE..? SLG9S..?? etc), VGA debug cable ??, and 4GB memory ram (Mushkin Enhanced Silverline 4GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Desktop Memory Model 991762) upgrades but wasn't sure which model was best with regard to the CPU, how high of a capacity you could go with for hard drives or how new of a server software you could use 2011, 2012, which softwares you'd need for doing remote access, antivirus/internet security, file duplication etc?

If you could list the best and or a variety of choices to consider for upgrading the Mediasmart EX495 to make it capable of handling 4k or at least blu ray streaming/remote streaming if possible with largest capacity, what the trade offs are, including model numbers for specifically which are the best components to look for, it'd be greatly appreciated.


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PostPosted: Sun Mar 03, 2019 12:20 pm 
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Well not sure what would help with 4k movies but it would need to be hardwired due to the bit rate.I have yet to find any wifi that performs without out stuttering . It has to do with bit rate
when you say streaming ,4k and bluray will not do well with dnla like twonky or servio. They need to be played on a media player reading the raw file from a storage device like your ex495. If you are using some conversion software with compression like handbrake, Then you loose the reason for buying 4k movies to begin with.
Yes they may play and appear to be dolby sound hd video but there is a loss.

You are limited to the hardware in the ex495 like buss speed for the drives since it is not sata3 nor the usb ports are not usb 3

But anyway to answer the cpu a Q9550 is as high as you can go followed by a Q9450 to fit in the ex495.
The s suffix is a low wattage which is very hard to find and you will pay a premium. they will run hotter no matter which you get but the non s models may get so hot the unit shuts down. unless you turn up the fan speeds.

As far as the debug cable they are no longer in production so ebay may be your best source to find them. it is needed to edit bios to say adjust the fan speed for the cpu you are looking at as well as installing non native os software.

For the memory which I have never upgraded it sounds like it is the one. But going from 2gb to 4gb will not help much if you don't have a higher cas latency ram card. That is what makes it speed up and usually is rated from 0-10 ten being as fast as it can be. the higher the cas the more dollars.

Drives are easy.
With the stock os whs 1 2tb drives are the max for pool drives.
a spinning drive at 7200rpm like a wd black will be slightly faster but does get hotter. most of us use wd reds now. They are slower but hold up longer because they are designed to run 24x7 and they run cooler.

If you go with a newer os like 2011 it does support higher capacity drives but drives will never perform as the specs state because they are all sata 3 drives and you don't have sata 3 available in the ex495.

The rest of your questions. I need more detail.
Like what format are the bluray and 4k files stored in, When you say streaming both local and remote how do you plan to play them with what.
The reason is if you look at my signature I have tried most options for a media library and it maybe that you are better off leaving the ex495 as is with say maybe a ram upgrade just for storage and get a media player. it would cost far less. and contemplate on spending the money for a nas that has sata 3 for storage in the future.

Just as a note ,
Since I bought my nas which is sata3 but the same wd red drives. The stutter is gone on bluray and 4k and it only has 2 gb ram.

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PostPosted: Mon Mar 04, 2019 5:42 pm 
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Hey Ruben,

I'm not that savy on streaming high def from a MSS as I don't have much in the way of stored vids. Thanks for the advice on the player.

You did note a few other things that caught my attention.

Ruben Rocha wrote:
The non s models may get so hot the unit shuts down. unless you turn up the fan speeds.

I've found that if you only need to run 3 drives, leaving the second drive space empty so there is no drive above the OS drive seems to keep the OS drive temp down closer to the data drives, even with fan speeds set to full. Since the 775 chips are so cheap now, to try and keep the heat down, Ive been gathering a few up to do some benchmarking with temps and passmark to try and find a sweet spot. So far I have a Q9550s, a Q8400s, a E5200, and the EX490 Celeron. I'll post the results once I have a few more chips to fill in the blanks and do the testing.

Ruben Rocha wrote:
As far as the debug cable they are no longer in production so ebay may be your best source to find them. it is needed to edit bios to say adjust the fan speed for the cpu you are looking at as well as installing non native OS software.

OP, Ebay still has a VGA (only) cable listed. you can use the usb ports for your keyboard and mouse.

Ruben Rocha wrote:
For the memory which I have never upgraded it sounds like it is the one. But going from 2gb to 4gb will not help much if you don't have a higher cas latency ram card. That is what makes it speed up and usually is rated from 0-10 ten being as fast as it can be. the higher the cas the more dollars.

I always thought lower CAS latency (CL) was faster (and more expensive).

Ruben Rocha wrote:
Drives are easy.
With the stock os whs 1 2tb drives are the max for pool drives.
a spinning drive at 7200rpm like a wd black will be slightly faster but does get hotter. most of us use wd reds now. They are slower but hold up longer because they are designed to run 24x7 and they run cooler.

If you go with a newer OS like 2011 it does support higher capacity drives but drives will never perform as the specs state because they are all sata 3 drives and you don't have sata 3 available in the ex495.

I'm with you on the heat issue. With the 7200 rpm WD Gold's and full fan speed, they will run around 38 degrees.

Ruben Rocha wrote:
Just as a note ,
Since I bought my nas which is sata3 but the same wd red drives. The stutter is gone on bluray and 4k and it only has 2 gb ram.

It sure sounds like the stuttering issue you had was that the HDD's were saturating SATA 2. But doesn't SATA2 cap at something like 150MB/s. Most modern hard drives seem to struggle to get past half of that.

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PostPosted: Tue Mar 05, 2019 11:07 am 
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You are correct on the cas numbers.
I was thinking of the class numbers on a sd card.
RAM Speed. DDR, DDR2, and DDR3 memories are classified according to the maximum speed at which they can work, as well as their timings. RAM Timings are numbers such as 3-4-4-8, 5-5-5-15, 7-7-7-21, or 9-9-9-24, the lower the better. ... The real clock of the DDR, DDR2, and DDR3 memories is half of the labeled clock speed.

As far as sata drives.
It is the Mbit rate that matters on HD video not Mbyte rate.
The drives are just part of the equation then you have the drive controller your bus speed and then nic. all are bottlenecks for bitrate.

Here are the speeds for each sata version
Difference between SATA I, SATA II and SATA III
What is the difference between SATA I, SATA II and SATA III?

SATA I (revision 1.x) interface, formally known as SATA 1.5Gb/s, is the first generation SATA interface running at 1.5 Gb/s. The bandwidth throughput, which is supported by the interface, is up to 150MB/s.

SATA II (revision 2.x) interface, formally known as SATA 3Gb/s, is a second generation SATA interface running at 3.0 Gb/s. The bandwidth throughput, which is supported by the interface, is up to 300MB/s.

SATA III (revision 3.x) interface, formally known as SATA 6Gb/s, is a third generation SATA interface running at 6.0Gb/s. The bandwidth throughput, which is supported by the interface, is up to 600MB/s. This interface is backwards compatible with SATA 3 Gb/s interface.

SATA II specifications provide backward compatibility to function on SATA I ports. SATA III specifications provide backward compatibility to function on SATA I and SATA II ports. However, the maximum speed of the drive will be slower due to the lower speed limitations of the port.

Example: SanDisk Extreme SSD, which supports SATA 6Gb/s interface and when connected to SATA 6Gb/s port, can reach up to 550/520MB/s sequential read and sequential write speed rates respectively. However, when the drive is connected to SATA 3 Gb/s port, it can reach up to 285/275MB/s sequential read and sequential write speed rates respectively.

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PostPosted: Wed Mar 06, 2019 1:01 am 
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Im still having a hard time with SATA2 being saturated fully saturated by a HDD

Lets start with this. 1 GB/s = 8 Gbits/s

It has been shown by several reputable web sites that a modern day SSD will saturate out a SATA2 interface somewhere in the area of 275 GB/s (2200 Gbit/s) as you stated.

Using this site as reference: https://hdd.userbenchmark.com/

• A 2TB 5400 WD Red will read at 141 Mb/s (1128 Gbit/s)
• A 2 TB 7200 WD Gold will read at 159 Mb/s (1272 Gbit/s)
• The saturation point of SATA2 is roughly 275 GB/s (2200 Gbit/s)
• Ergo, the commonly used HDD in a MSS feeds data into the MSS server's SATA2 interface at roughly half of it's capacity

So the MSS SATA driver efficiency would have to be less than 60% efficient for the interface to be saturated. That's highly unlikely but would be easy enough to confirm by benchmarking the drives in a single and multi drive MSS.

Leaving the theoretical, HD 1080p BluRay was introduced in 2006, If SATA2 couldn't handle HD playback, how was it being done before late 2009 when SATA3 was introduced?

So what is the data transfer rate when playing a video?

4K BluRay has a maximum supported bitrate of 128 Mbits/s for the largest triple layer discs.
• So the slowest portion of the platter in a 5400RPM disk is still at least 8 times higher bandwidth than the peak bandwidth of a 4K BluRay
• 1080p needs far less bandwidth than 4k
• Surprisingly even today, the current 1080p blue ray drives are equipped with... wait for it, SATA1.1

So I don't see how SATA2 could be an issue when playing back recorded BluRay. That leaves us with the other two variables, CPU and NIC.

The 2.5Ghz e6XXX series Core2 Duo, the 3.0+ e6XXX series Pentium, the 2.5 Ghz e8XXX series Core2 Duo, and the QXXXs series quad cores all have a sufficient FSB to run 1080p. In fact, even the mid range & higher Ghz Conroes (Core2 Duo) did it just fine.

What's the CPU that's in the NAS you got?

My intent in posting all this is not to negate your experience of swapping in your Reds to a NAS with the result of having good video playback. It only leads one to think the issue of stutter on the MSS may not have been caused by the SATA2. Did you happen to benchmark the data transfer rates of each device before and after?

Is it possible the issue may have been how the NIC was setup?

Anyone else with video playback experience on the MSS care to jump in?

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Last edited by lioninstreet on Thu Mar 07, 2019 8:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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PostPosted: Wed Mar 06, 2019 10:33 am 
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i am/was using a q9450.

years ago I found a good article to explain the discrepancy on a mss with HD video and slow copy speeds and posted it here. But can't seem to find it now.
You do a lot of homework.

Yes the first bottleneck is the nic in the mss which is only 10/100 as you questioned. my nas has 10/100/1000

Another inherent issue with windows is sustained bit speed. they all slow down after a while. so a sata 3 starts off with a higher bit rate so it will compensate for loss better than sata 2
So run a 2 hour hd movie from the mss and see what happens .
Now a internal cdrom drive playback will choke on occasion after a while on direct playback in a pc with some blueray movies.
But send the data to a external device , add in the network loss plus the playback device loss. pretty soon it becomes unstable, unless you over compensate from the source.

The only thing I did not try on the mss was increase with faster ram and try a external nic but the usb is slow also so I figured I was wasting my time.
As you can see from my signature I tried different media players with the same issue.
There is nothing more aggravating than watching a 2 hour movie and it gets hosed up 1 hour into it.

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PostPosted: Wed Mar 06, 2019 1:19 pm 
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I couldn't find a HP direct reference on the ex49x NIC, but according to Alex Kurtz it's actually a 10/100/1000 (gigabit NIC).

http://www.mediasmartserver.net/2009/09 ... and-ex495/

Meaning a slow latency that is NIC related would more likely be driver and setup related, yes?

I understand the issue with the OS. While loosing latency during MS OS playback is certainly an influence, I go back to how did SATA2 devices playback 1080p on Windows before 2009's introduction of SATA3 if the OS latency losses was a culprit.

This sounds like a test project is in my future... I've always had in the back of my mind that there has to be a way to better measure and improve the MSS file transfer speed over what I am experiencing now. Thanks for bearing with me at the bottom of the learning curve...

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PostPosted: Wed Mar 06, 2019 1:30 pm 
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I never could get tru gigabit out of the nic.
I changed cables ,switches, routers with no luck.
Now I never did check it between the updates ms and hp sent out.
They came out fairly quick one after the other except for a couple of ms security updates.

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PostPosted: Wed Mar 06, 2019 1:36 pm 
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Interesting. What were you using to benchmark the file transfer speed? I have a spare ex49x to use and could play around with this.

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PostPosted: Thu Mar 07, 2019 3:32 pm 
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task manager comes to mind for one test
Take say 2tb of data and copy it somewhere off of the mss.
For that matter copy it anywhere.
Then watch the transfer rate after a while.
it appears to really slow down after a while then to nothing after 7-8 hours.

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PostPosted: Thu Mar 07, 2019 4:12 pm 
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I'll give it a try, Starting a new thread on the subject in General V1

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PostPosted: Thu Mar 07, 2019 10:32 pm 
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dominick7 wrote:

If you could list the best and or a variety of choices to consider for upgrading the Mediasmart EX495 to make it capable of handling 4k or at least blu ray streaming/remote streaming if possible with largest capacity, what the trade offs are, including model numbers for specifically which are the best components to look for, it'd be greatly appreciated.

BTW OP. It's pretty clear from googling around that using a higher end Wolfdale (Pentium or Core2 Duo), a Conroe (Core2 Duo) or a Yorkfield (Core2 Quad) did not become a bottleneck playing back 1080p HD video. Also, as you alluded, the issue is not necessarily a playback issue, but a the ability of the MSS to provide a sufficiently robust data stream to the playback terminal.

As I mentioned above my personal opinion (for whatever it's worth) is SATA2 would not saturate with either HD or 4K HD using a HDD. This based on the limited data transfer rate actually coming off of a 4k BluRay disk thru a 4k BluRay player being so much slower than a 2tb hard drive.

• The practical saturation point of SATA2 is roughly 275 MB/s (2200 Mbit/s) - See post above
• 4K BluRay Disk's data transfer rate ranges between 82-128 Mbit/s with 1080p HD in the mid 50's. This is the source disk format requirement and far under the SATA2 saturation point. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_HD_Blu-ray

I'd like to do some basic HDD benchmarking in a MSS to confirm this. However, It remains to be seen if the MSS GB NIC driver setup or the OS itself could become a bottleneck.

That said, with 4K playback, the CPU surely becomes more of an issue, especially considering the H.365 HVEC format was just a glimmer in a software engineers eyes around 2008-2009. It's quite possible that Core 2 duo and quad do not even support 4k hardware acceleration (that is if it is needed to simply transfer the data over to the playback computer instead of actually being part of the playback process). As for the video decoding itself, I'm presuming that is done by the CPU handling the playback as opposed to the MSS that is simply pushing the data at the playback terminal. Maybe Ruben would chime in on this.

As reference for the actual playback I was googling around on this subject I found this: https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?t=1252691

Tests, in order of memory:

•i7-4770k using integrated GPU: 4k@60, no issues.
•EVGA nVidia GTX 750Ti: 4k@60, no issues.
•i7-2600k using integrated GPU: 4k@60, no issues.
•G540 Celeron CPU (2013 CPU) using integrated GPU: 4k@30 no issues, 4k@60 a slight slowdown during high action scenes. CPU was pegged @ 100% for majority of the scenes. I believe that this chip is using the same integrated GPU as the 2600k, so it may have simply been an issue of the performance capabilities of the chip.
•EVGA nVidia GTX 680: 4k@60, no issues.

Of course, source video encoding is the most important aspect of these tests, so I tested with three sources:
•Youtube 4k video scene (VP8 codec, I think?)
•Netflix, House of Cards S2,Ep1 title sequence (Silverlight? Windows 8.1 OS).
•Some random MKV that I don't remember the codec of and I'm not sure why I mentioned it.


Another playback reference and benchmarking example is here: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/iv ... 487-4.html found here in the article Is This Even Fair? Budget Ivy Bridge Takes On Core 2 Duo And Quad, it may even be that the e8600 is better for video encoding than the q9550.

It would truly be interesting to see if a Q1 2008 ($369 at introduction) q9550s Core 2 Quad has the chutzpa to hang with a Q1 2011 ($317 at introduction) i7-2700k Sandy Bridge when it comes to pushing 4K video codecs. A post on DP review mentioned that the q8400 oc'd to 3GHz would playback 4k (with an occasional stutter) streaming from uTube. Given streaming is not the same as playback and surely not the same as simply pushing the data out to the playback terminal, but at least it's a reference.

Lastly (and surprising to me), additional legacy benchmarking showed that the q9550 & the q9950s we need to run in the MSS perform quite similar.

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