New htpc, old parts?

miceormen

miceormen

miceormen

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Joined
26 Feb 2008
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Hey all

I'm building a htpc for my folks, needs to have the following features:
- TV tuner
- Big hard disk for recording the above
- HD content playback
- Possible future addition of a bd drive..

However my budget of about £300 is making me wonder whether its worth simply adding a tv tuner and a blu ray drive to an old 939 mobo with an Athlon 3500 chip sat in my loft. Question is, would these allow playback of blu ray movies? (I'd be happy to add say an nvidia g210 to bolster the relatively weak single core cpu)

Any help would be much appreciated as always : )
 
The old s939 chip should be fine for a htpc, it might be a idea to have a look at some ATI cards as they can pass audio though their hdmi output.
 
bump!

Discovered my old 939 system is largely intact, happily found another gig stick of pc3200 in there : ) Don't want to be spending much over £300.

Thus, would the following spec be serviceable for playing back blu rays and watching & recording tv, through a 32" 720p telly:

Asus A8N-E mobo
AMD Athlon 3500 (Winchester core, 2.2ghz)
2gb pc3200 400mhz
+ some new stuff from OcUK:


Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit - OEM (GFC-00599) £84.99

Compro VideoMate S800F PCIe Quad Mode DVB-S / DVB-T / Analogue TV / Radio Tuner and Remote
£52.99

Western Digital Caviar Green 500GB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (WD5000AADS)
£42.99

Corsair CX 400W ATX Power Supply (CMPSU-400CXUK) £38.99

Asus GeForce 210 512MB DDR2 PCI-Express Graphics Card £35.99

Coolermaster Elite 360 Mini Tower Case - Black
£27.99

Will this all work?
 
Yep.. the 210 should cope with hd @ 720 no probs, Plus windows 7 of loads video to the gpu so your athlon will be fine.
Though i would look at a better case for a htpc, the coolermaster is alittle big.
 
snaggster said:
Though i would look at a better case for a htpc, the coolermaster is alittle big.
Click to expand...

Went with the Coolermaster because its a full atx case and i'm running a full atx motherboard. Size isn't a big deal, it'll just sit on the lower shelf of the tv cabinet. Also means better cooling rather than packing it all into a smaller box.
 
Some time back I ran a Sempron 3300 with 2gb of Corsair XMS Pro PC3500LL with a Gigabyte AGP board and HIS IceQ 3850 AGP graphics. This was fine with 720p but not too good with 1080.

I later changed to an Asrock mobo which could use the above ram and graphics card with an Intel E5200 which improved matters.

I would look at the ATI range of cards, my HTPC has the Powercolor passive HD5750 with 7.1 HD audio over HDMI which I think sits nicely with an HTPC for all round pc use and some gaming.

To be honest I think the graphics card will make the biggest difference. But HDMI audio out is only any use if you have an AV reciever which can utilise it. What is worth looking at is the card ability to offload work from the CPU allowing 1080 playback with smaller or underclocked CPU's.

A 500gb drive at £43, an extra £17 can get you a 1tb or 1.5tb drive these days, the real world power saving and silent op difference of the WD Green is not massive and any extra noise can easily be dealt with by using some soundproofing or such. A faster still quiet 500gb drive can be bought for £35.

As for cases, there is not much that will take a full atx mobo, Silvertsone come to mind at around £70 but they are not all that well laid out inside.
 
are you looking for a proper htpc case ?
as that can put the cost up a bit.

one option could be to get an ION based motherboard, u can get them for about £100, then u will have £200 left for the rest of it

they also use a lot less power than micro/full atx motherboards.

have u decided on what software you want to run on it for the media center ?
 
The original plan was to go with a mobo&cpu Atom combo yeah, thus allowing a smaller case, but I'll save about £60 by going with my old 939 mobo+cpu (given that most Itx cases come with a mini psu of some description, but I'd rather go with a bigger case and full atx. Less money, less hassle getting things fixed with my beefy fingers.
 
althou if you need to include psu, heatsink, gpu, etc with ur old parts, then the additional price is a lot less.

reasons i would prefer an ion for a htpc
1) smaller, to fits in any case, giving you more choise
2) Uses less power
3) Quieter/silent

however, if you main concern is the price, then resuing old parts might be the better way to go
 
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