£700-900 for a HTPC

hamehax

hamehax

hamehax

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Hi guys!
Looking to build a HTPC for HD/Blu-ray playback and possibly some very light gaming. As the title suggests £700-900 is ma budget and there a couple of must haves:
Decent sound card
Not an Atom/Ion combo pleeeeeeeease
Probably not 750Gb of storage
Blu-ray drive (not a writer)
Small and quiet (Yes I know that's a given)
And finally an SSD boot drive would be a nice touch

So if anyone could spec me a system that would be much appreciated. :cool:
 
£700 is a lot for a HTPC, a £400 machine will do the job. Generally speaking HTPCs only go over when they use fancy cases like Origen AE's cases or Silverstone's more expensive models.

How small/what shape are you after? Most HTPCs are AV Amp size, using mATX components which provide a lot of flexibility in the build (enough expansion slots for a graphics card, two TV cards and a sound card). Some of us however, are now using smaller mITX sized rigs. There's only space for one expansion card in those and they tend to use smaller components (slimline optical drives, low profile CPU coolers, small power supplies) but they can be a lot smaller while still being quite powerful.

I'd recommend finding a case you like first, then asking for help with the spec. For that money you can choose just about any case you like and then we can help spec up stuff to fill it :)
 
Right first off your budget is wayyy over the top. Second why on Earth would you want an SSD in a media PC. Third what are you doing sound wise exactly? Plugging into AV receiver?

£400 will be able to give you a nice HTPC that will suit your needs.
 
The cost v performance increase for a SSD in a cheap HTPC is just too much to be honest. Just seems illogical to have one in their.
 
if you are building it to a tight budget then yes i can see where you are coming from.
but mine was not built to a budget and the op has a fairly high budget also.
my htpc boots quicker than the hd dvd player it replaced and the loudest thing in it is the ocz psu.
 
Azza said:
The cost v performance increase for a SSD in a cheap HTPC is just too much to be honest. Just seems illogical to have one in their.
Click to expand...

True but it really depends on the form factor used when building the HTPC, for example mine takes 2.5" laptop drives which are notoriously slow, sticking in an 80gb Samsung SSD halfed the windows boot time, things like the SQL database for the movies stored on the machine loads much much faster etc.
 
WMC also responds a lot nicer on an SSD. It stutters through the menus on a traditional HDD (maybe not noticeable until you use an SSD?).
 
Ok then I'll Explain further the circumstances! I'm having a room in my house done up as a Home Cinema. This is gonna have a couple of grands worth of speakers a 1080p or higher res projector and will generally just be awesome! The case I wanted to base this on was an Antec fusion or micro fusion. Ive been assigned 700 by my dad and whilst Im aware the that the Atom is capable I want this to be truly special if thats any help. Thanks fo rthe previous replies!
EDIT: Just for reference gonna need outputs HDMI for the projecter and the full shabam for the Audio
 
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dane - its a nice set up you posted (for gaming), but not quite what the OP is asking for: Great sound and stated above he wants the antec Fusion or micro fusion.

If you really want to go new tech, SSD and great sound you could get something along these lines:

Intel Core i3 530 2.93GHz (Clarkdale) (Socket LGA1156) - Retail £99.98 (£85.09)
Asus Xonar DX 7.1 PCI-Express Sound Card (90-YAA060-1UAN00Z) £59.98 (£51.05)
Patriot Viper 4GB (2x2GB) PC3-10666 1333MHz Dual Channel (PVS34G1333ELK) £88.99 (£75.74)
Intel X25-V Value 40GB 2.5" SATA-II Solid State Hard Drive (SSDSA2MP040G2R5) £86.99 (£74.03)
Antec Micro Fusion 350 HTPC Case with Remote - Black/Silver (350W PSU Included) £79.99 (£68.08)
Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 5570 1024MB GDDR3 PCI-Express Graphics Card £69.99 (£59.57)
Gigabyte GA-H55M-UD2H Intel H55 (Socket 1156) DDR3 microATX Motherboard £69.98 (£59.56)
Samsung SH-B083L/RSBP 8x BluRay ROM / 16x DVD±RW Drive - Black (Retail) £66.99 (£57.01)
Western Digital Caviar Green 640GB SATA-II 64MB Cache - OEM (WD6400AARS) £47.99 (£40.84)
Sub Total : £570.97
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £11.25
VAT is being charged at 17.50% VAT : £101.89
Total : £684.11

Though that is probably over the top :D
(don't know how well i3 runs 1080p - hence the 5570)
 
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Guardsmons posted spec is ideal, if you are adding post processing effects like pixel sharpening, de interlacing, denoise and contrast enhancing you really need the extra ooomph of a dedicated gfx card.
for media duties 2gb would be enough but as you say you want to do some light gaming and other stuff the extra 2gb would be handy.
i would get a bigger storage drive though as they fill really quickly :D
 
Azza said:
Right first off your budget is wayyy over the top. Second why on Earth would you want an SSD in a media PC. Third what are you doing sound wise exactly? Plugging into AV receiver?

£400 will be able to give you a nice HTPC that will suit your needs.
Click to expand...

depends what u want in a media center.

and SSD can be suitable for several reasons.

if your media center is mosly streaming, then you dont need a lot of space, just enough for the OS, and media center apps, etc.
so for that, even a cheap SSD will be plenty big enough.

Theres also the increased boot speed, which is more useful in a media center tbh, if you just want to watch something, u can just turn it on and have it booted very quickly and usable.

also, as mentioned, the size can also be a consideration depends on the case used.

and finally, SSD's are silent, mechanical drives are not. Its enterily possible to build a fanless HTPC, so the only sound would be from the HDD, if you use an SSD, it'll be completly silent
 
Doesn't the case only have 1x internal drive bay so the ssd would have to be fixed elsewhere?
 
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