Have Everything: NAS, Home Theater and Gaming Smooshed Into One PC

So you want a NAS box (ASUStor?), Home Theater (Nexus Player).. PC (VivoPC?) but as gamers we also want to chill on the couch and play big titles like Minecraft, DOTA 2 or Civilization V/Beyond Earth on a big screen with a keyboard and mouse (so GR8). But you don't want separate devices each requiring a plug and idle power: it has to be a combination. That's a big ask, but we decided to take on the challenge and build a 'HT-Gaming-NAS-PC' that covers everything.

• Page 1: Component choice (below)
• Page 2: Putting it together & initial BIOS setup
• Page 3: Setting up AI  Suite III for silence, tweaking the BIOS for performance and gaming benchmarks

What do we need?

NAS: Plenty of storage space.

Despite Cloud storage becoming increasingly popular there are many hurdles that still push people towards local mass-storage. For example the price of many-TB hard drives is far more favorable, most of the stored family data is generally required only at home and there's less risk of losing it all if someone cracks your password.

While HDD currently scale to 6TB, with 8-10TB coming soon for consumers (at the time of writing), 2-4TB hard drives are now the sweet spot in price-to-size ratio. A couple of drives in RAID 1 will provide some redundancy (Note: redundancy is not backup), but really we want space for four to allow for future expansion without requiring more expensive replacements to increase capacity, or, we can get more total performance from RAID 5.

Build decision: A case that has four 3.5-inch HDD slots.

NAS/Home Theater: Very low idle power, very low noise, small size and good sound quality.

Without doubt we want a small, neat case; which means mini-ITX. Full HD movie playback is an easy task for any modern processor graphics; be it an AMD APU or Intel HD Graphics. Low power is then a key focus as this lowers heat output and, ultimately, fan noise.  There has to be great fan control, low idle power and good power supply efficiency to keep overall power use and noise to an absolute minimum.

Build decision: Mini-ITX motherboard with AI Suite III fan control, good quality sound, a minimum of four SATA ports with an extra M.2 as a bonus so to avoid using a HDD SATA port. We need a Mini-ITX case with quality power supply.

• Chassis: In Win MS-04 with 265W 80Plus Bronze PSU.

• Motherboard: Considerations include Maximus VII Impact with SupremeFX Impact II, ASUS Z97-I Plus or H87-I

Gaming: Good Performance

Our build is aimed at 'light games' in terms of processing needs - rather than 'casual gaming'. ROG fans are certainly not casual gamers, and we recognize all types of game styles are played and enjoyed. Gamers spend hours playing Minecraft, Civilization V/Beyond Earth, Racing Sims, indie titles and more, and these are perfectly playable on modern processor graphics. Since the 'HTGNASPC' aims to be powered 24/7, a PCI-Express graphics card would just sit there sipping power for no reason a large percentage of its on-time, so in this build we've opted to leave it out. FPS-nuts and likewise will still dedicate themselves to their GTX 980/R9 290X rigs gaming rigs with fast 144Hz monitors and a more intimate gaming setup than the big TV.

As ASUS is buoyant in Intel mini-ITX motherboard choices, we've opted for an Intel 'Haswell' CPU with 8GB of fast memory. Two memory DIMM will take 2-4W more power than a single DIMM, but since we require the best possible processor graphics performance we it's a small offset. If you're reducing power at every opportunity though, consider T-series 35W CPUs, a single DIMM and the most efficient power supply you can afford.

Build decision: An Intel 'Haswell' CPU with 8GB of fast DDR3.

• Intel Pentium G3258 'Anniversary Edition' or Core i5-4690K
• 8GB of DDR3 2133+MHz (thanks to G.Skill for a pair of Ripjaws-Z)

 See Page 2 for putting it together.

Build Guide

Right, so, we've rounded up several LGA1150 mini-ITX motherboards - it's certainly not an exhaustive list of what ASUS makes, but it's food for thought. The H87I Plus is a reminder that - with a BIOS update - even the 8-series boards are compatible with any Intel LGA1150 CPU. The H87I-Plus (on the left) is attractive because it has six SATA III ports, plus Intel Ethernet, plenty of connectivity and AI Suite III software. The H-chipset does lack the option of overclocking though, and on the H87I-Plus there's no bundled WiFi or M.2 SSD support. To add these missing features, look at the Z97I-Plus (on the right): it has the full mix of overclocking, WiFi and an M.2 on the back. Likewise, the Impact offers much the same as the Z97I-Plus, but takes it up a notch with ATX-level overclocking and a richer ROG BIOS, faster M.2 x4 PCIE SSD support and SupremeFX audio, which offers premium sound for the home theater part.

All make good choices, but for this build - and since we're ROG! - we're using the Maximus VII Impact as its core.

With the CPU, two DDR3 DIMMs and motherboard installed in the In Win GS-40, we've hooked up the four SATA III ports to the HDD racks internal IO connector. Shown are the four SATA cables bundled in the Impact box. Two Molex power connectors from the PSU are required and routed around the top.

 

• 
• 
•  

 

The front panel USB 3 ports are hooked up. They are neatly placed in the top corner of the case.

 

• 
• 
•  

 

An internal 2.5 inch SSD or 3.5 inch HDD can be fitted as below. It's shown installed and wired up below so you can see how it looks. Otherwise the mPCIe Combo IV on the Maximus VII Impact will fit an M.2 SSD, avoiding the use of a SATA port.

 

• 
• 
•  

 

With the cables tied as best we can and with the rear 120mm fan is hooked up, there's sufficient airflow.

 

• 
• 
•  

 

From the sides:

 

• 
• 
•  

 

  See Page 3 for BIOS setup, AI Suite III setup and performance testing.

Setting up AI Suite III for silence

Fan Xpert III

ASUS AI Suite III has full fan controls for low-noise, so when temps are very low they can be slowed as much as possible. This is ideal for a NAS as it means when the hard drives are idle, the system is completely silent in your living environment.

We kept the stock Intel heatsink because it is both low-profile and low-noise, rather than opt for a more powerful all-in-one liquid cooler as that requires its water pump to be constantly powered. For those who still the extra cooling performance, an AiO liquid cooler can be fitted to the rear 120mm exhaust fan in the MS-04, providing the radiator does not exceed the width of the fan itself.

Firstly tune the software so it can measure the fan speed profile exactly.

 

• 
• 
•  

 

A low profile heatsink does not give much cooling overhead, but with AI Suite III's slow spin-up option, it does mean that any oscillation in fan on-off is unnoticeable.

EPU power saving and Away Mode

AI Suite III controls can also switch the EPU to optimize the system for low power use as well. This is clearly measured within the app. When activating Away Mode, AI Suite III can limit the CPU to a lower power threshold (25W) saving overall power and reducing the heat output indefinitely.

There's also a hard-wired EFU energy saving mode in the UEFI BIOS too:

Tweaking the BIOS for Performance

Here's our before and after performance benchmarks from Minecraft 1.8, Civilization V and Assetto Corsa (Early Access).

Overclocked specs:

• 4690K & G3258: 4.4GHz (all cores) @ 1.2V, 1.5GHz GPU (1.15V), 2400MHz DDR3 (XMP)

Game Settings:

• Civ 5: 1366x768, Medium-Low, DirectX 9, No AA
• Assetto Corsa: 1366x768, Medium, No AA
• Minecraft 1.8: Full detail, Fullscreen

Minecraft is very playable in all scenarios, although the G3258 at stock speeds and Assetto Corsa are begins to push the limit of smoothness, running between 30-35FPS. The (overclocked) 4690K pushes nearly twice that at 50-55 FPS, and it's definitely an benefit.

For Civ 5 we used the late-game benchmark, which is particularly heavy with 300 units on screen presenting a 'worst-case scenario' for the system. Civ 5 loves CPU cores so the 4690K is clearly the better choice here. Overclocking both the CPU cores and HD4600 graphics pushes it to the 25-35FPS mark, which for this type of game-play is adequate. If you're a serious Civ 5 player though, you'll want a graphics card not just for DX11 and some extra eye-candy, but also to boost the frame-rates.

Easy performance tweaks to try:

• Within the UEFI BIOS set CPU Level Up. Simply click the target frequency and let ROG's engineering do its work.
• Within the UEFI BIOS set XMP in AI Overclock Tuner (if your memory has it). This is the easiest boost to processor graphics since it is limited by memory bandwidth, so the faster your memory settings the better your FPS. We've opted for a pair of G.Skill 2400MHz DIMMs in this case, so XMP set the memory to 2400MHz, CL11 automatically. Memory frequency and timings cannot be changed within Windows so pre-setting in the BIOS is essential. Both can be set together, however CPU Level Up must be activated first.

 

• 
• 
•  

 

• Alternatively, overclock using the TPU within AI Suite III to overclocking using the settings we applied above as a reference. Firstly preset XMP in the BIOS then once in Windows apply the CPU overclock.

 

• 
• 
•