A sort of 'spec me a HTPC'

Golden Ape

Golden Ape

Golden Ape

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18 Oct 2002
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Afternoon there. I've been asked to put together a HTPC for my dad, he's impressed with one I built a few years back for myself (Antex HTPC case, some cheap dual core intel CPU, etc). Problem is that I'm a bit out of touch with what's what and need a little advice. He's on a budget, let's say £300-400 for hardware tops. The machine will mainly be for TV viewing ultimately to receive freeview HD and probably for bluray.

I've had a quick look at the Intel I3 chips and they seem pretty impressive but would they deal with HD - I'd been assuming I'd need a GPU with some sort of hardware decoding? Any advice on other components or a cheap setup. I don't think we need more than 2Gb ram and I will probably go for a 1gb western digital 'green' hard disk. Thanks.
 
if all you want it for is watching media, then an ION would be perfect.

the onboard GPU is designed to do hardware encoding of video, and can handle 1080p/Bluray just fine.

there about £100-150 depending on which one you get, then just add ram.
 
The ION would also require a USB TV card for Freeview HD.

If he's not interested in games then the i3 would be perfect for HD material, as no separate GPU is required unless he wants to bit stream DTS-HD over HDMI (I think you need an ATi 5xxx for this...). If not then he can use optical anyway if he has an amp. The Core i3 and i5 come with onboard graphics.

Motherboard-wise, I'd look at Gigabyte's range of H55 MicroATX boards.
 
Yeah the Ion systems can run things like media centre for TV or xbmc perfectly fine, they will stream the content pretty much perfectly but they are sluggish in the menu's and the movie library browser parts. If you don't mind then you can pick up a Revo for about £200 or a nt330i for a bit less. The I3 would be much more responsive outside of the content streaming though.
 
With a budget of £400, I'd far rather build an HTPC than buy a Revo or something. You'll end up being able to do so much more and it will be upgradeable also. I know you can stick more RAM in the Revo but that's about it.

I also know he currently only wants to watch TV and Blu-ray, but that may change and he could browse the internet, encode video, burn Blu-rays, expand memory ad infinitum, improve CPU, HDD and GPU, a few years down the line, upgrade. I don't know his Dad and he may not be interested at all in this, but he find with an HTPC that he finds himself wanting to do things that he never even knew existed.

The HTPC brings future-proofing as when the next media socket comes along, he can upgrade the GPU rather than bin the entire thing a la Revo :p.

Also as above the Revo is slow at everything but playing media.
 
Robbie G said:
If he's not interested in games then the i3 would be perfect for HD material, as no separate GPU is required unless he wants to bit stream DTS-HD over HDMI (I think you need an ATi 5xxx for this...). If not then he can use optical anyway if he has an amp. The Core i3 and i5 come with onboard graphics.

Motherboard-wise, I'd look at Gigabyte's range of H55 MicroATX boards.
Click to expand...

No H55 and i3 bitstream DTS-HD over HDMI making them perfect for HTPC
 
Intel Core i3 530 2.93GHz (Clarkdale) (Socket LGA1156) - Retail £86.94
(£73.99) £86.94
(£73.99)
OCZ Gold 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C9 1333MHz Low-Voltage Dual Channel (OCZ3G1333LV4GK) £69.99
(£59.57) £69.99
(£59.57)
ASRock H55M-GE R2.0 Intel H55 (Socket 1156) DDR3 microATX Motherboard £66.96
(£56.99) £66.96
(£56.99)
Sub Total : £190.55
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £9.00
VAT is being charged at 17.50% VAT : £34.92
Total : £234.47
 
easyrider said:
Intel Core i3 530 2.93GHz (Clarkdale) (Socket LGA1156) - Retail £86.94
(£73.99) £86.94
(£73.99)
OCZ Gold 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C9 1333MHz Low-Voltage Dual Channel (OCZ3G1333LV4GK) £69.99
(£59.57) £69.99
(£59.57)
ASRock H55M-GE R2.0 Intel H55 (Socket 1156) DDR3 microATX Motherboard £66.96
(£56.99) £66.96
(£56.99)
Sub Total : £190.55
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £9.00
VAT is being charged at 17.50% VAT : £34.92
Total : £234.47
Click to expand...

Hi easyrider, I'm looking into building a HTPC too so interesting to see your spec.
And sorry to hijack the thread a little, but what software would you recommend using to browse the films you have on a network drive etc?
 
Nice spec easyrider, what case would you recommend?

So many different set-ups to choose from getting a little confused in the HTPC world! :)
 
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