Build check for 720p gaming htpc

Hi all,

Looking at building a Vesa mountable HTPC that is capable of a little gaming at 720p. The reason for this resolution is that it will be outputting to a pico-projector over miracast, fortunately this lower resolution also benefits me for cheaper and cooler running hardware.

I had been contemplating an NUC as they seem to very tidy little systems and the Skylake iGPUs seems to of made a lot of progress, but they drivers don't seem to be particularly stable and they're are a bit pricey to boot for what you get.

The following build is looking the most likely route unless news of the Boston Ridge APUs comes before I pull the trigger and they offer desktop models.

Antec ISK 110 VESA- Small and cheap, little worried by the cooling and 90w power supply though

Noctua NH-L9a Low Profile Quiet CPU Cooler- Seems the most suitable for a case of that size

16GB (2x8GB) Corsair DDR3 Vengeance Pro Series - Not to clued up on memory but I've heard bandwidth is pretty important to APUs, don't think kaveri officially supports 2400mhz, but I've heard of people getting benefits from it, stick with this or is there a safer bet with some 2133mhz varieties?

AMD A10 7800- I know there's some slightly more powerful offerings, but the option to switch down to 45w twp seems handy in such a small enclosure with a small power supply.

MSI A88XI AC V2- Pretty much picked at random, if there are better FM2+ m-itx boards let me know, main things are having wifi built in, but if there are some speed or heat savings available let me know.

480GB Crucial BX200- Software drive, last time I built a system SSDs were still a little sketchy with Samsung being a safe bet, have things stabilised now and is this stable drive or would I be better off getting my hands in my pockets for a more reliable drive.

2TB Seagate ST2000LM007 Mobile HDD- Media drive, seem to be some larger capacity ones on the verge of coming out but the cost savings seem worth it.

Comes to just over £500

Aside from the performance of components I'm also wondering if this Hardware supports AMD wireless display with a miracast compatible projector?
Also I'm planning on mounting this underneath a coffee table so its out the way and can just be plugged in and projector placed on top off table when in use. I can see this possibly causing heat issues as the case would normally be in a vertical position rather than horizontal and the motherboard will be a the top so hot air could be trapped against it. I'm hoping the fan of the cooler will be able to push enough air out the sides to prevent this happening. Anyone with more experience have any ideas on how well this will work?

Thanks for any help

Why not Mini-ATX? It will give plenty more options and turn out cheaper imo all awhile still being small.

Mainly because its for occasional use, we don't have a TV, so it's just for the odd movie night/game with friends, so it would be handy having it stowed away close to where the projector is positioned when in use (we live in a small property so we just rest it on the coffee table with a handy draw for when its not in use). I have thought of m-atx in the past but haven't got a suitable place to locate the system (as far as I'm aware none are vesa mountable) plus if I did it would probably end up costing more as I'd get tempted to add additional hardware such as optical drives and dGPUs.
To be fair nearly £200 of the build is for the SSD and hard drive, could easily save a few quid by getting smaller capacity drives but software seems to be getting bulkier and it gives room to expand the media collection.

On another note any advice on wireless controllers, I know x-box 360 controllers with adapters were the tool of choice have they been superseded by Xbox one wireless controllers? Also how picky on line of sight are they, as I'm thinking of mounting the sensor in the edge of the table? Same goes for a suitable wireless keyboard/mouse, for browsing the net/tinkering with system rather than gaming?

I use DualShock 3 controllers because they are cheap and they already have the wireless working, just need to use something like MotionInJoy to get it to work (And a £1 bluetooth dongle). I'd say all in all that the build you put together isn't bad but I do wonder if there is something with a slightly bigger PSU, if you could find one with a 150w PSU you should be able to add in a better APU.

Aye there is a case that you can buy a 150w power supply for, the m350 only real downsides to that are you have to buy the power supply and brick separately which brings up the cost a fair bit and slightly more faffing about as it only has one sata power connecter and one molex so would need an adapter, not the end of the world but more wires n more chance for error.
Are there any APU's that offer significant performance benefits? I know of the A10-7850 and its slightly up-clocked rehashes, but most of the performance increase seems to be on the CPU clocks, the a10-7800 has the same architecture and I think most importantly the same number of graphics cores/shaders. I'm not against a more powerful APU but at present I'm unaware of one that won't come with substantial temperature increase.

How are you finding the MotioninJoy drivers, I tried experimenting with them on the laptop but had a bit of a nightmare getting them to work and then they messed up the on board Bluetooth to the point I had to do a reinstall. Quite like the dualshock 3 controllers and I wouldn't have to worry so much about line of sight issues with Bluetooth, but I do worry about it playing nice with other Bluetooth peripherals.

Thanks for the ideas by the way sounds like I trying to shoot them down, but its all food for thought

I never use bluetooth with my PC so I don't mind the MotionInJoy drivers but you are correct that it does ruin all other bluetooth capabilities as far as I'm aware. I have seen other drivers out that do now support DS3 so might be worth looking however it would be much more simpler just to get the xbox controllers with native drivers that work out of the box, even if it is slightly more expensive.

If the price is going to cost you much for the brick then I agree just to stick with what you've got because at the end of the day you will be spending an extra +£30 for a slightly better APU and then the brick, for 720p gaming I don't think it will struggle to much especially if you stick to less graphically demanding stuff.

looks like a solid build; I did one with A8-7600 - it ran everything I through at it at 1440 by 900 at least 30 fps med settings. This was WoT; Aion; etc.

7800 will be more powerful; and handle things extremely well specially for 720p gaming. People don't realize just how good these apus really are.

Cheers for the feedback. Think I'll go this route unless Bristol ridge gets release between now and when I've saved enough pennies.

Looks a good build, and will easily manage 720p gaming.
I've been pretty happy with what the 7850K runs, even at 1080p.

My only issue with the MSI board, is the lack of CPU voltage control, but it's not the end of the world. For you running the energy sipping 7800, I guess it wont be an issue at all!

Potential concern, could be the CPU cooler/memory slot clearance? If I remember right (and I've not looked at the board in an age), the slots are quite close to the CPU socket.

Emlyn_Dewar said:

Looks a good build, and will easily manage 720p gaming.
I've been pretty happy with what the 7850K runs, even at 1080p.

My only issue with the MSI board, is the lack of CPU voltage control, but it's not the end of the world. For you running the energy sipping 7800, I guess it wont be an issue at all!

Potential concern, could be the CPU cooler/memory slot clearance? If I remember right (and I've not looked at the board in an age), the slots are quite close to the CPU socket.

Click to expand...

Cheers for the heads up on the motherboard, any recommendations as I'm not against undervolting/overclocking depending on how much head-room I have with temperatures, may as well squeeze out what I can.

Cooler should be ok it's quite compact, though flip side is it's not recommended above 65w which shouldn't be an issue

Glad to hear they perform well too, may I ask what's the most recent graphics intensive thing you've ran on it? Just to get a feel of what I can expect from it.

For me, probably Assetto Corsa, at 1080p. It needs a bit of settings meddling, and is only at 30fps , but playable!

Rocket League, Tomb Raider, Space Engineers and some other random steam library picks have all been fine. I'm not really cutting edge with what I play...

Haha that's cool I barely dabble myself, to be honest I'm expect it to mostly be emulators for nostalgia gaming when friends are round but it's nice to have options.

CPU:
Go for the 7860K, especially if you want to save an option for little overclocking. 7800 is locked.
From what I've understood, the 7860K is the successor for the 7800, and it's also 65W. Should support a 45W mode, as well.

PSU:
Indeed, 90W might be a little too on-the-edge. I would recommend the Streacom NANO-ST120 (£70) or NANO-ST160 (£80). I have the 160W version, using it with the 7800 (@65W). The bricks are included.

MB:
I would recommend Gigabyte first, but MSI should be fairly ok, as well. I have ASRock FM2A88x-ITX+, and there have been some issues (have had to return the board and CPU three times already).

RAM:
I have G.Skill Ares 2x4GB DDR3-2133 CL9, been happy with it. It's fairly low-profile, with good specs, at an affordable price. You probably won't benefit from anything over 8GB. Your CPU/GPU would be the first bottleneck, I think. And indeed, 2133MHz seems like the sweet spot. Above that, you get diminishing returns.

SSD:
I think Samsung kind of brushed off the whole slow-read-access-over-time-fiasco, without issuing a permanent solution to it, so I wouldn't rely on them for SSDs. I don't have any experience on Crucial, though.

Other thoughts:
If you can stretch the budget, then I would recommend taking a look at the Zotac SN970 and EN970. The SN970 is a ready-made Steam solution, while the EN970 is more of a barebones solution, where the user can/must purchase their own SSD/RAM/OS.

If someone really wants to go over-the-top, then they should take a look at the highly customized EN980, a water-cooled solution, with apparently two PSUs. Not available for purchase yet, though? Will be expensive.

Cheers for the heads up on the CPU, motherboard and ram, hadn't realised the the 7860k could run at 45w too, the iGPU already has slightly higher clocks so that and the flexibility to tinker and pretty much identical price seems to make it a winner. I'd heard about Asrock having problems with the VRMs going pop, so I'll take a nosey at gigabyte too.

The EN970 looks pretty much ideal but the price and lack of VESA mount are putting me off (think the earlier models like en760 could), I think self build or take a hit on performance and go NUC are the way forward.

One other thing if you need to you can always upgrade the PSU later and add in a low profile low power discrete GPU to help out, should have no issue with 1080p then (Medium-Low)

Aye if it was for a permanently placed TV I've probably go mitx with a dedicated passive card like a gtx 750 with a streamcom case as the look pretty smart. But a pretty big part of this plan is to have it small and mounted out the way underneath the table due to limited amount of space for furniture. Got a drawer underneath that I can use to stash the pico-projector and peripherals when not needed.