Building a Media PC

corkyo4

corkyo4

corkyo4

Associate
Joined
19 Dec 2009
Posts
68
Morning all,

I am toying with the idea of building a media PC. Had a quick search on the internet of the tpe of things that can be built, however i am unsure as to what exactly is the best approach to building one.

I would like HD capable with Blu-Ray and a sizeable HDD. What im not sure of is how powerful these machines need to be, intended use is TV, internet and Blu-Ray using surround sound.

I have read that AMD have the ability to decode using hardware as opposed to software????? I have always favoured intel, but i am not sure where the techonology of each is at.

Any ideas, advice would be great, also i have noticed that these machines can end up quite large, compact would be more beneficial to me.

Thanks

Tom
 
Corky, nvidia and amd both offer DXVA. This is hardware decoding and I can help you set up the software side of that (Shark007 codec pack will do it).
I would set a budget for me I managed to do it for £600 including Tv tuners.
Now as for tv tuners I would go for Wintv nova hd s2. They have good drivers and are made by huappage, I would get two of them for dual tuners.
Secondly, Have you wired your house by Ethernet?As if you are using it as a fileserver you may need to do some wiring.
As for the hardware, go for a dual core or a quad core. Perhaps even overclock it if you want, sandy bridge would be overkill though.As for the motherboard you will need two pci slots for the tv tuners so just remember that, and they both have to have enough room for the graphics card so leave one slot inbetween the dual slot graphics card.
As for the graphics card, I would say that you could pick up a gtx 460 quite nicely and that would work well.
Hard drive, definitely 2 Tb at least. Hd recordings eat your hard drive.
Also remember to leave room for more hard drives, have at least 6 sata ports. 2 Will be needed for HDD+blu ray drive and it is good to leave more room.
Power supply, any 600 w modular would do.
Case- All down to preference, personally I am using the antec 300 and it is good because it has good airflow + dust filters. Make sure it has dustfilters if you are using it in a carpeted room.

Now as for software, do not spend money on windows. There are ways of "Obtaining" it.
Software wise I would go for this set up.
Windows 7 64 bit
Remote potato
Media center master
Wtv meta-renamer
Shark 007
And all your bog standard drivers.
 
If all you are building is an HTPC, you can run it perfectly well on an energy efficient CPU and integrated graphics (if you choose carefully). Impressive stats are always nice, but you need something that won't gobble up the power too quickly (lower electricity bills, less heat = less fan noise).

My HTPC is a couple of years old and handles TV, blu-ray at 1080p and internet browsing perfectly. It's an Athlon X2 4850e (2.5GHz, maximum 45W) and a Gigabyte motherboard running integrated HD3200. This wouldn't be up to gaming at all, but for playback it's perfect and only nibbles at the electic. :) I coupled this with a couple of cheap 1TB HDD's, a 40GB Intel SSD for boot (not necessary, but I fancied it and it was cheap enough), two dual-tuner DVB-T cards for freeview, a second-hand HVR-1700 (to connect the cable box), 7.1 Creative speakers (off the onboard), a BD drive, Windows 7 64-bit, and an Antec Fusion case. It works perfectly and the family like the Media Centre interface - everyone happy all round. That said, this isn't a small build as I wanted to be able to use standard sized components rather than have to look for low height PCI cards, etc.

Chaosdestro has posted some very good advice there, although I would say if you're not planning on gaming on it a dual core and integrated would be fine - quad and discrete graphics card is overkill IMHO. You also don't mention what kind of TV you are planning on watching on it - if it's Freeview you'll need DVB-T cards, if it's satellite you'll need DVB-S ones.
 
Confused Stu said:
Impressive stats are always nice, but you need something that won't gobble up the power too quickly (lower electricity bills, less heat = less fan noise).

My HTPC is a couple of years old and handles TV, blu-ray at 1080p and internet browsing perfectly. It's an Athlon X2 4850e (2.5GHz, maximum 45W) and a Gigabyte motherboard running integrated HD3200.
Click to expand...

Yes the HTPC you're specifying GOBBLES a lot of leccy. Please measure with a power meter and post back results rather than guestimating.

Power consumption is the main reason why I don't build HTPCs no more. Last one I built had a celeron in it TDP was around 35W / onboard gpu like yours and the power consumption was just not acceptable.

For a 24/7 htpc torrent box I aim for between 10 and 20Watts (idle/load)

chaosdestro0 said:
Obviously it does not have tv tuners,and building is half the fun of it.
Click to expand...

Fair enough.... I personally would only consider building a gaming HTPC for everything else ION1 or 2.
 
Subliminal Aura said:
Yes the HTPC you're specifying GOBBLES a lot of leccy. Please measure with a power meter and post back results rather than guestimating.

Power consumption is the main reason why I don't build HTPCs no more. Last one I built had a celeron in it TDP was around 35W / onboard gpu like yours and the power consumption was just not acceptable.

For a 24/7 htpc torrent box I aim for between 10 and 20Watts (idle/load)



Fair enough.... I personally would only consider building a gaming HTPC for everything else ION1 or 2.
Click to expand...

Very true that my setup will use way more than 20W - my aim was to try to get a fully featured PC running at less than a 100W bulb (that was the way I explained it to the wife). Never have got round to getting a power meter to test it out - probably mainly due to fear of what it'll show and get me paranoidly buying new parts to save 1W here and there! :)

You may well have a very good point about an ION build. It wasn't quite around when I was building (I don't think) but would definitely be something I would look into if I was starting from scratch now, like the OP. Good suggestion there mate.
 
Confused Stu said:
Never have got round to getting a power meter to test it out - probably mainly due to fear of what it'll show and get me paranoidly buying new parts to save 1W here and there! :)
Click to expand...

ROFL ! Welcome to my life. Bought one a few months back and it's revealed so much like how watching youtube uses three times as much leccy than when hardware acceleration is turned off. Never use a laptop battery again. Suspend to RAM and WOL is my new best friend. Ultramon desktop shortcut to disable 2 monitors leaving me to work with just 1 etc etc

WAIT ! You're right ... my life sucks :(
 
I take it these machines can end up power hungry?? (makes me wonder how much power my main pc draws :s)

The aim for me is to build this as cheap as possible, and where possible using a case that is as small as possible, im seeing some examples that are bigger than a VCR.

Surround sound is a must too.

im thinking around the 2ghz mark with prolly 4gig ram not sure how good the gfx card has to be for HD.

why is there a need for 2 TV cards?

One other question, i like the look of this case http://www.**********/products/cit-mtx001b-black-mini-itx-case-with-300w-psu
however when referring to drives it says it has 1 3.5" internal bay and 1 5.25" external bay, does this mean that the optical drive will be housed outside of the case?


Tom
 
Last edited:
corkyo4 said:
I take it these machines can end up power hungry?? (makes me wonder how much power my main pc draws :s)

The aim for me is to build this as cheap as possible, and where possible using a case that is as small as possible, im seeing some examples that are bigger than a VCR.

Surround sound is a must too.

im thinking around the 2ghz mark with prolly 4gig ram not sure how good the gfx card has to be for HD.

why is there a need for 2 TV cards?

One other question, i like the look of this case http://www.**********/products/cit-mtx001b-black-mini-itx-case-with-300w-psu
however when referring to drives it says it has 1 3.5" internal bay and 1 5.25" external bay, does this mean that the optical drive will be housed outside of the case?


Tom
Click to expand...
Yes so you must not skimp on the motherboard because you need it to have surround sound
2 tuner cards because it is nice being able to record two channels at once.
Or you could use one card and record, and using tunerfreeMCE watch another stream (low quality though).
And about the card you just mentioned ( was just thinking why I did not get that one) then I realized that you could not record BBC one Hd and Itv Hd at the same time, also it is not S2 so may die out some time. Also for my set up I have replaced bbc one regional with bbc one Hd and the same for ITV 1. This is a good idea, as you will not forget to put it on HD.
 
Last edited:
chaosdestro0 said:
Yes so you must not skimp on the motherboard because you need it to have surround sound
2 tuner cards because it is nice being able to record two channels at once.
Or you could use one card and record, and using tunerfreeMCE watch another stream (low quality though).
And about the card you just mentioned ( was just thinking why I did not get that one) then I realized that you could not record BBC one Hd and Itv Hd at the same time, also it is not S2 so may die out some time. Also for my set up I have replaced bbc one regional with bbc one Hd and the same for ITV 1. This is a good idea, as you will not forget to put it on HD.
Click to expand...

what card do you use?
 
In my HTPC I've got a Hauppauge WinTV Nova TD-500 and a KWorld PlusTV PC160-2T. Both are dual-DVB-T cards (so you can watch 1 channel and record another) and use the PCI slot. The Hauppauge gives you the option to use 2 aerial inputs to receive one channel for better reception - at the cost of only receiving one channel at a time rather than 2. I've never used this feature and so have never noticed any difference between the Hauppauge or the cheaper KWorld.

In my main PC I've got a Peak DVB-T Digital Dual Tuner PCI card, which again works perfectly and doesn't require a stronger or weaker signal than the others. They all seem to be virtually identical in use in Windows Media Centre.

My step-son's PC has another Hauppauge WinTV Nova-TD500 in it. All I would say is that putting 2 of these cards in 1 PC caused issues where the PC would lose 1 after waking from sleep. Putting two different cards in one PC seems to work fine - go figure! :)
 
i was looking in to a mini itx case and mobo but, they seem so ideal, especially with the integrated processor. They just dont seem to have what i want,

hdmi graphics,
5.1 sound
2 pci slots

i can find mobos with either of these, but not all together and i was hoping around the £100 mark too

perhaps i want something for nothing, maybe a micro atx would be better
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom