Advice/Reccomendation's Small Form Factor Media Centre Build

Brutalraw

Brutalraw

Brutalraw

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Joined
8 Dec 2011
Posts
7
Location
Warrington
Hi Everyone ,

im just looking for a bit of advice really .

its been a good 5 years since ive built up a new System and could really do with someone's help in reccomending Hardware to meet my need's .

I've managed to Acquire an Intel Core 2 Quad (Q6600) and im looking to build my Family a little media centre PC that will sit underneath the Tv downstair's (Mainly because our Freeview/HDD recorder combo died at christmas).

At this point i only have the Q6600 and 2 x 2GB DDR2 RAM Module's.

so i wondered if somebody could reccomend me a few part's to match up with the processor , i would ideally have it in a case that is as Slim as Possible but realise by doing this im limiting my option's in regard's to performance .

all we really need it to be able to do is Take a TV card and a receiver for a remote control so we can watch TV via Media Centre .

Im completely open to suggestion's.

CPU : Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600
RAM : 2 x 2GB Corsair XMS (will check the Model and speed tonight)
Case : I was thinking something like an Antec Fusion Micro ATX case? but again its completely open to discussion .

Graphics Card : ?
Power Supply : ?
TV Card : ?
Wireless Card : ?
CPU Cooler : ?

Budget : Ideally something around the £400-£500 mark but can stretch a bit further if needed , i will just have to wait off untill the next payday .


Thank you in advance for anyone willing to help .

BR .
 
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Hey,

Great case choice. But remove the link from the post as it gets frowned upon in here.
(just replace it with this link)
Reason I like the case is because it takes full height cards.

So the rest of it.
The motherboard you will have to look else where, because the only Socket 775 boards OcUK sell only take DDR3 RAM. Not that much of an issue as you can get 4GB for £20.
SO lets say you did swap RAM (and didn't mind maxing your budget):

YOUR BASKET
1 x Antec Fusion Remote HTPC Case - Black £129.98
1 x Seagate Barracuda Green 2TB SATA 6Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM (ST2000DL003) £104.99
1 x OCZ Agility 3 60GB 2.5" SATA-3 Solid State Hard Drive (AGT3-25SAT3-60G) £59.99
1 x Compro VideoMate S800F PCIe Quad Mode DVB-S / DVB-T / Analogue TV / Radio Tuner and Remote £50.99
1 x ZOTAC GeForce GTX 520 ZONE Edition 1024MB GDDR3 PCI-Express Graphics Card £41.99
1 x Asus P5G41T-M LX Intel G41 (Socket 775) DDR3 Motherboard £39.98
1 x Corsair Builder Series CX 430W V2 '80 Plus' Power Supply (CMPSU-430CXUKV2) £34.99
1 x Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/4GX) £19.99
1 x OcUK Value 300Mbps Wireless-N PCI Adapter £16.99
Total : £512.39 (includes shipping : £12.50).


Just as an example anyway.

The GT520 is passively cooled so you won't have a fan making too much noise. I also can output over HDMI. That will take up the PCI-e x16 slot on the motherboard.

The TV card will take the PCI-e x1 slot above it, and can receive DVB-S and DVB-T signals.

Wifi card is PCI, as there are no more PCI-e slots left after we plug the other two cards in.

PSU is quiet and very solid.
You have a solid state drive for OS and programs. This will be quick and quiet.
Then 2TB of space for recording. If your recording HD you'll need it :)

ANyway, its just to give you an idea.

Optional extras:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Samsung SH-B123L/RSBP 12x BluRay ROM / DVDRW DL & RAM Lightscribe SATA-II Optical Drive - Black (Retail) £56.99


If you want to play Blu-Rays

YOUR BASKET
1 x Scythe Shuriken Rev.B Quiet Low Profile CPU Cooler (Socket 939/940/AM2/AM2+/AM3/LGA775/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA1366) £27.98


Low profile CPU cooler which will be quieter than the stock intel fan.
 
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Thank You for the Reply

R088ieS86 Thank you very much for your reply .

thats exactly what i was looking for , and yes i will swap the DDR2 for DDR3 thats no problem . the DDR2 was from a pretty Old AMD Black Edition build a while back so is probably very dated by now .

Cant thank you enough for getting back to me , i was really sturggling to find the right kit to fit the Mobo size i needed but that post pretty much covered it all.

I already have a 2TB HDD but was thinking i may get a SSD for the OS install .

but will deffinetly be getting a Blueray drive later down the line .

I Apologise about Hotlinking also that was a genuine mistake which i porbably should have thought about prior to Posting it up , i will edit that out now .

*Apologies to Admin's also really was a Genuine mistake*

Kind regards

BR
 
I would be more inclined to get an AMD Llano A6-3500:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-308-AM&groupid=701&catid=1967&subcat=2060

I would look at this motherboard:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-377-GI&groupid=701&catid=1903&subcat=2058

The IGP has UVD3.0 which will be great for media decoding and the IGP itself is relatively powerful.

The CPU has extremely low power consumption too:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5696/puget-systems-echo-intel-and-amd-showdown-at-65-watts/4
 
Thanks For Reply

Hey CTF ,

Thanks for the reply , its something i will take into consideration but ideally i wanted to Re-use my Quad as i have it spare .

Thanks for the input eitherway .

BR :)
 
Looks like the Antec Fusion is a no go ,

Out of stock on OCUK and everywhere else by the looks of it .
Any suggestion's on a SFF Case that would house the following :

1 x OCZ Agility 3 60GB 2.5" SATA-3 Solid State Hard Drive (AGT3-25SAT3-60G) £59.99
1 x Compro VideoMate S800F PCIe Quad Mode DVB-S / DVB-T / Analogue TV / Radio Tuner and Remote £50.99
1 x ZOTAC GeForce GTX 520 ZONE Edition 1024MB GDDR3 PCI-Express Graphics Card £41.99
1 x Asus P5G41T-M LX Intel G41 (Socket 775) DDR3 Motherboard £39.98
1 x Corsair Builder Series CX 430W V2 '80 Plus' Power Supply (CMPSU-430CXUKV2) £34.99
1 x Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/4GX) £19.99
1 x OcUK Value 300Mbps Wireless-N PCI Adapter £16.99

Taking into consideration i wont need the "Seagate Barracuda Green 2TB SATA 6Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM (ST2000DL003) £104.99"

so i have about £200 to play with there on a decent case as Antec Fusion was the only SFF case i could find that took Full Size card's and had a nice black piano finish to match in with the current T.V setup.

Again any advice is very much appreciated and thanks again to R088ieS86 for his help so far.

BR
 
Brutalraw said:
Hey CTF ,

Thanks for the reply , its something i will take into consideration but ideally i wanted to Re-use my Quad as i have it spare .

Thanks for the input eitherway .

BR :)
Click to expand...

The thing is though,idle power consumption of the Q6600 is quite high(I have one myself) and I just get the feeling the A6 would be a better choice in the long run and also it will be easier to cool quietly too.
 
CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
The thing is though,idle power consumption of the Q6600 is quite high(I have one myself) and I just get the feeling the A6 would be a better choice in the long run and also it will be easier to cool quietly too.
Click to expand...

After quite a lot of thought on this speaking with my Dad last night i think your quite right CTF your suggestion may be a better one long term in regards to consumption and for remaining quiet underneath the TV , im holding fire on Buying the part's now until the end of April anyway maybe even May .

but i have the Q6600 + Mobo and RAM already so I was just looking to utilise some spare part's so i may just end up sticking those in a full ATX tower case and buy a seperate SSD , GFX card and PSU for my friend as he is suffering along with an old Acer Laptop running a Celeron (poor guy) .

then as you Suggested maybe i will get the GBA55M Mobo and the Llano A6-3500 CPU , but will this be as efficient as running the Q6 i leave myself asking?

Also this will still leave me enough slot's for the Wifi , GFX and TV card's R088ieS86 has kindly suggested so looks like a winner .

R088ieS86 said:
Silverstone do some nice cases:

SilverStone Grandia GD02(pic is in white but does come in black)
SilverStone Grandia GD06

Zalman also brought out a htpc range like:
Zalman HD503 Home Theatre PC Case
Click to expand...

Again R088ieS86 great find thanks for your help ,

think i will opt for either the Zalman HD503 or The SilverStone GD06 but i have a whole month to decide on that so thanks for taking the time to look for me , ive not kept upto date with my IT/PC stuff for a few years so looks like ive got a lot to read up on .

Thanks again guy's .

BR
 
The thing is that the A6-3500 has a very decent IGP,and AFAIK it is better than low end decode cards such as the HD6450 and GT520. It does have 320 shaders so does have a reasonable amount of power for an IGP. The higher end cards such as the HD6570 and GT440 would be better IMHO,but I would first try the IGP out.

The Gigabyte motherboard does have enough slots for the PCI-E TV tuner and the wireless card too as they are single slot cards.

I would also get this PSU:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-006-XF&groupid=701&catid=123&subcat=

It is more compact than the CX430W,and uses a ball bearing fan and better capacitors. For an HTPC,which is going to be on 24/7 I would get it instead of the CX430W.
 
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Don't bother with a graphics card unless you want to play games on it, the one built into the A6-3500 is plenty good enough for even the largest of videos. Plus it will keep your idle power much lower than the Q6600, it really is no comparison in that way. I have seen the A6 having whole computers running at 20W idle.

How about a 150W pico psu? That should be good enough for what you run.
 
saitrix said:
Don't bother with a graphics card unless you want to play games on it, the one built into the A6-3500 is plenty good enough for even the largest of videos. Plus it will keep your idle power much lower than the Q6600, it really is no comparison in that way. I have seen the A6 having whole computers running at 20W idle.

How about a 150W pico psu? That should be good enough for what you run.
Click to expand...

so im guessing the A6-3500 with the built in IGP should about cover what i want to run ?

it only need's to achieve running Media Centre on Win 7 so we can record TV show's on there (replacing an old Freeview to HDD recorder combo)

and to Play Blueray (MKV) quality films from my NAS drive

i was just a bit worried that the IGP on that CPU may not be powerful enough to play MKV file's as ive seen some low end card's sturggle playing Film's like Transformer's when it gets to the CGI scene's so thats why i intended to get an Additional Gfx card .

but if you guy's think the A6 with the Onboard chip and the Pico PSU will be enough to achieve what i want then im willing to bow down to Superior knowledge and take your word for it :) .

I will be getting half the parts this month and half next though I think it may be worth getting the 450W PSU just in case i choose to add a card in later on.

As always Thanks for the Input guy's much appreciated .

BR
 
saitrix said:
Yeah it has plenty of power! I use an old Ati 4350 graphics card and it plays very high bitrate mkv's fine, lets say a 100minute video that is 15gb. Have a read of this thread as the guy uses an A6-3500 for media playback. As you can see his power usage is really low.

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18360592
Click to expand...

Strange coincidence that , i was reading that very thread yesterday afternoon just after i posted my reply in here .

im still in 2 mind's wether to run a Pico + Brick (Im pretty bad at making decisions :P ) or just to get the Xfx 450W now as if being honest with myself im probably never going to chuck any games at it to play , just needs to decode a blueray at the most so the lower power consumption and the Pico may be a smarter move .

do you think 120w is enough or should i opt for 150w if i can find one for a decent price? (i have looked but they do end up a bit expensive after you add the powerbrick in ontop of it?)

Ive also managed to find Antec Fusion case i was after online so i might still opt for that in the end.

Payday tomorrow though so going to start buying some of the part's and finish the build in April if all goes to plan .

BR :)
 
Not sure if 120W will be enough, you might want to have a look about at what the max power the A6-3500 will pull. One good thing will be look for a motherboard that allows you to undervolt the cpu as that will save a few watts for free. Plus turning your ram voltage down too helps.

One thing on the performance side of things, these AMD cpu's use the system ram for the onboard gpu so the speed of your ram affects the speed of the gpu. So go for ddr3-1600 as thats the best you can get without spending a lot.

You can get 150W wide voltage input dc-dc boards (just like picopsu) that allows you to use an 8-28v input for £30 delivered. Then you can use laptop power supplys as they are normally 19v, which then just look for one with a rating of 8a or more, which I have seen for sub £20. So yes it costs a little more but it does give you an advantage of being 100% silent and being more efficient. Though it is much easier to sort out a setup with a standard psu!
 
How about moving up to an ATX board and a Lian Li PC-C60. Bit taller but it is a newer case than the Antec and has front USB3 ports.
 
I use a shuttle XS35GT2 with SSD running XBMC to play BR rips quite happily here. You don't need much CPU power if the graphics card is doing all the heavy lifting of decode (ION2 in my case).... Shove a USB DVB-T tuner in the back - silent, small and low power...
 
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