Fill in my media centre spec gaps.

[Gingerbread Man]

Right guys, I come to you hoping for a spec and advice.

I currently run a Sony Blu Ray 350 player and a Logitech Squeezebox connected to a Denon 1910 amp which plays out to the surround sound and sends the image up to the TV.

I plan on building a media centre that I'll rip all of my DVD's to and my music collection. This'll replace the Blu Ray player and the Squeezebox.

I used to love building and modifying my PC, but it's been a few years now and I'm not really up to date with what's on the market. I've also never built a HTPC, so lets see how it goes.

Some rough requirements that I was hoping to meet;

• 
  Must be able to play DVD's/ Blu Ray's/ CD's which aren't ripped to the hard discs.

• I seek good quality in my music and films. I plan to watch 1080 HD films from it and I hope to get the best out of the lossless music from it. I also want to be able to output everything via a signal HDMI to the AMP.

• Being a HTPC, noise levels are an obvious.

• Finally, I don't want to play games on it. Only to watch and listen to music. I might load up iplayer/ 4od/ ITV catchup online to watch on the TV. Oh, and it would be useful if it was powerful enough to be able to rip music CD's and DVD's, but if this would up the budget a fair bit, I can do this from my main computer and transfer the data across.

I've got a rough starting point, but I'm open to what I'm doing wrong and right. So here goes;

Case: LIAN LI Black Aluminum PC-C37B (I did originally hope to have a screen built into the case so I didn't have to load up the TV when listening to music, but not liking the case/ height issues, I've turned my back on the idea).

OS: Windows media centre 7

Motherboard: ?

CPU: ?

RAM: 4 gig

HDD: 2x 1.5tb drives. I had planned a RAID 1 setup to backup all of the media. If not a RAID setup, then still two hard drives which I'll manually/ timed sync to back up.

PSU: BeQuiet Pure Power L7 530W.

DVD Drive: ~£50 Blu Ray drive.

Graphics: Something like the GeForce GT 430 1GB.


So guys and girls, hopefully (!) a simple fill in the blanks for you there.

David


Oh and a question: Currently I can control my Squeezebox from my main PC/ iPhone without having to look at the Squeezebox if you follow me. Is there a way that I can control the media centre, so I don't have to have the TV on to select and play music tracks. For example, when I'm using the main computer and want music on in the background.
Can I remote access the media centre via this main computer?

 

[95thrifles]

Hey
Welcome to forums
Intel are releasing their latest Tech called SandyBridge on the 9th, so I think youre prob best waiting for that and then just getting a H67 SB mobo and CPU, add 4 gig of RAM and youll be good to go for all your needs, you wont need a separate gfx card so you can ditch the 430
And yeah you can access the media centre from your main computer just set up a home network through windows and share the appropriate folders

Edit: If you cant wait then this mobo and this CPU would be best, if its more than you planned to spend you could drop the cpu back to an i3 rather than an i5 but the i5 will be much faster at encoding if you can splash for it

Re-Edit: Have a look at this PSU too as its more efficient and quieter than the Corsair, only a few quid more, and is in stock which the Corsair isnt

 

[Gingerbread Man]

Intel are releasing their latest Tech called SandyBridge on the 9th.


You wont need a separate gfx card so you can ditch the 430


And yeah you can access the media centre from your main computer just set up a home network through windows and share the appropriate folders


Re-Edit: Have a look at this PSU too as its more efficient and quieter than the Corsair, only a few quid more, and is in stock which the Corsair isnt

Ideally I'll spend what I need, but I don't need an all singing all dancing as it won't need much processing power apart from playing Blu Rays. Will I be spending extra for the new tech 'Sandybridge' when maybe I don't need the latest tech for a non gaming low end system?



In regards to the 430. I've read that some motherboards built in graphics can't handle stutter free HD viewing. I guess built in graphics is getting better with each year. I thought a seperate cheap GPU would maybe take some strain off the CPU??
But this is where I bow to greater knowledge!



So I can get the media centre playing through my amp by tapping into it via the network with this computer. Brilliant.

 

[95thrifles]

The SB stuff is rumoured to be same price as current stuff so shouldnt add any extra cost, the current Intel stuff makes short work of 1080p and SB is meant to of made quite big leaps in terms of gfx performance, Im 99% sure youll be ok, but if you did encounter problems you could always add a dedicated card later

 

[Gingerbread Man]

The SB stuff is rumoured to be same price as current stuff so shouldnt add any extra cost, the current Intel stuff makes short work of 1080p and SB is meant to of made quite big leaps in terms of gfx performance, Im 99% sure youll be ok, but if you did encounter problems you could always add a dedicated card later

Okay, thanks for that. I just did't want costs to spiral, but I see you've thought of that. Would being an early adopter be a problem, or should it be hassle free?

 

[Gingerbread Man]

Right, so now this new CPU is out, what one to go for?