Best CPU for HTPC

[Imy]

Hi all,

I need some recommendations for a CPU to put into a HTPC I'm planning to build around the Thermaltake DH103 case.


The HTPC will be connected to a 1080p TV through an A/V receiver and used for the following activities:

• 1080p mkv and bluray playback
• 1080p gaming but only certain types of games. FPS/RTS games I will continue to play on my normal PC but I would like to play some racing games and other games that would typically suit being played on a joypad.
• Multiple TV cards viewing/recording
• Web browsing
• Internet radio

A few other things to consider:

• I don't mind if it's Intel or AMD
• I'm open to overclocking/underclocking
• I'm going to be pairing it with a high-end cooler
• Budget: < £250 (not inc. cooler)

Most important of all

I want a CPU which provides plenty of raw power but is going to be a breeze to cool (pardon the pun). Essentially I want the most powerful cpu I can get away with while still having as quiet as setup as possible.

 

[Imy]

AMD lists it as a 65W part. I noticed they also list similar parts but 45W (e variants).

I'm not necessarily after a budget chip. I want something fast too that's gonna last 5 years. I'm looking for the highest-end part available with a low thermal envelope - not just the minimum to meet my uses as they are now.

I don't mind paying a premium for something that runs quick but requires little cooling.

 

[Imy]

Not bothered about cheap - putting it through my company so I won't be paying corp tax, vat or income tax.

At the same time I'm not gonna pay £hundreds more for something marginally better.

The Q9550S does look very nice.

And I know what you mean about i7's niggvg but I've got 4 other PCs and 2 of which I can focus more on performance.

My focus for this PC has to be noise as I have a brilliant off-the-shelf jobby at the moment which uses laptop parts to stay silent (Philips LX3000). I want to up the size and performance so I can play games but I don't want to up the noise.

I rarely ever upgrade anything other than graphics cards. When I fancy something better I like to build something from scratch again and demote old kit to other specific tasks - or give them away.

As mentioned before I noticed AMD do "e" variant chips. The most sensible of which looks to be the E version of the CPU cmnd_andi recommended. How would that chip compare to the Q9550S? Obviously one is quad and the other dual (bonus for CoreAVC) but the AMD is 45W vs 65W of the Q9550S.

 

[Imy]

My assumption was that the higher the TDP, the more difficult (relatively) it is to cool the chip. Is that not the case?

I will be using a decent cooler regardless (but don't want it to go above low fan speed setting). I've got a TRUE in one machine and a Noctua in another. Will probably get another Noctua for this - there's less messing around involved.

I don't mind Socket 775. Like I said I don't upgrade, I replace. Plus DDR2 RAM is dirt cheap - or at least it was a while back.

 

[Imy]

That's excellent ham_mcfist. Are you using CoreTemp to measure temps?

Re: Big.Wayne

Yeah I know.... but as I'm spending nearly £200 on the case alone (I really like it) I might as well go the whole hog, but at the same time the 240E might be exactly what I need, cost regardless.

I'll look further into the performance difference between it and the Q9550S and the i7 860 tomorrow.

It's going to come down to a decision on how serious I want the gaming aspect of it to be I think.

Thanks for ALL the replies so far, much appreciated.

 

[Imy]

I also feel that the AMD Athlon II is the best choice for you. However no one has mentioned the Athlon II X4 Quad Core E variant CPU's which only use 45w also and might be preferred given the gaming requirement, unfortunately OCUK don't have any listed but the same is also true for the Dual Core ones...

Here are the details of the two quads:

AD600EHDGIBOX - AMD Athlon II X4 600e Energy Efficient Quad Core, S AM3, 2.2GHz, 2MB Cache, 45W, Retail
AD605EHDGIBOX - AMD Athlon II X4 605e Energy Efficient Quad Core, S AM3, 2.3GHz, 2MB Cache, 45W, Retail

They are definitely worth a mention. I did glance at them but I'm somewhat concerned at their single-thread app performance.

I can understand spending a lot of money on a good chassis although £200 is probably a bit OTT . . I assume its gold plated with a built in LCD touchscreen for that kinds money!
Does look good though!

Can probably get it for £170-ish but will likely cost more to get from a preferred supplier. My other cases consist of: Lian Li PC-A77, it's little brother Lian Li PC-A17, Coolermaster Cosmos (v1) and a mini pc (Philips LX3000). I see all my cases as pieces of furniture so I like them to look as good 5 years down the line as they do now.

Are you building a HTPC or are you building another gaming PC for your lounge, you really don't need to spend big money on anything apart from a nice chassis (which u got specced already) and a nice graphics card that runs cool but is powerful enough to drive a 1920x1080 gaming session . . . that's the only challenge you have really and that's where the bulk of your money will be spent if your wanting some serious fps

I don't like consoles much so I would like it to also be my gaming centre for the lounge. Obviously gaming on a large TV is a different experience to keyboard+mouse in front of a relatively much smaller monitor. I'm positive the Athlon II 240E will serve all my needs now, and in the future, except I don't know for gaming. When playing games at 1080p with say an ATI 5850, what will be the bottleneck, CPU or GPU?

Lastly I'm not convinced the *e* versions of the Athlon II are worth a Premium as the regular Athlon II's seem to undervolt pretty well (assuming you choose a motherboard with vCore adjustments).

£13 difference at one supplier (~£43 vs ~£56) - I'll just have to go lighter on the accelerator pedal for a couple of weeks but seriously that kind of money not many people will lose sleep over - hardly what I'd call a premium.

It's exciting to spec and build an expensive machine but things are moving so fast now that as an investment it doesn't make sense to spend big bucks on hardware today that will be outmoded and outpriced by the new tech coming through in 2010, your money spend it as you wish but there really is no need as the budget kit for sale doesn't perform like budget kit anymore, it's high end!

That's always been the case and it's good advice but if you followed that advice ALL the time then you'd never have anything --nice--. Sometimes impulse buys can be good! I understand though when you give advice to people that's what you have to say everytime as you don't want to be responsible for people spending more than they need to - and yes budget kit these days is comparatively faster than budget kit of a few years back - hence why I've not ruled it out.

PC equipment depreciates VERY quickly. That's why businesses can write off PC equipment as having no value after just 3 years (50% depreciation in first year then 25% + 25% for years 2/3). That's unlikely to change anytime soon so the choice is simple. Buy what seems like good value kit then upgrade every few years or spend a bit more and buy what you like and it will last longer SO LONG AS you forget about how much quicker new kit is. Example: I bought a P4 3GHz chip on launch day along with the original Raptor HDD which had also just launched. That PC lasted me well for 5-6 years of heavy use and in fact is in my Cosmos case now still running - but history sees that chip as pretty poor because of the standards we're used to now. A couple years ago it was replaced by a PC based on the Q6600 GO @3.2GHz. It is still serving all my needs as well as it did on day 1 because my I'm still running the same applications. I can't see myself replacing it for quite a while yet.

Buy a cheap dual core now if its good for your current tasks. If you ever need more CPU power you can upgrade to Quad/Hex core. AM3 is supposed to last quite some time

One of the reasons I hate upgrading CPUs is because it either means you're throwing away a perfectly good CPU or you have to buy a new motherboard + ram as well and then you have to find a home for the old kit.

For gaming the Phenom II 550 is a great CPU. There is always the chance that it could unlock to a Quad too!

80W... a little high just for a dual-core - baring in mind the Q9550S comes in at 65W. I'm sure it's a great bang for buck CPU if low noise isn't the top priority (and price/value is).

 

[Imy]

i7-920 vs Q9550S

I've just finished reading an interesting article on Anandtech which compares the i7-920 and the Q9550S (amongst other CPUs).

The i7-920 is a 2.66GHz 130W part and the Q9550S a 2.83GHz 45W part. Based on those figures you'd expect the Q9550S to be the most energy efficient out of the 2. Apparently not...

Over the past few pages of performance, power and efficiency graphs we’ve proved that the Q9550S offers lower power, but also lower efficiency than other Intel CPUs. In particular, the Core i7 is a far more power efficient processor thanks to its significant performance advantage.

So why choose the Q9550S over the i7-920?

The answer lies in the thermals. I took a few of the chips and used CoreTemp64 to record temperature data while running Prime95. I ran Prime95 for 10 minutes and averaged the temperatures of all four cores.

I don't know about you but 50c under full stress conditions seems very impressive to me.

Of course you'll never see that kind of load under normal use but it should mean it's a lot easier to cool and thus the system should be quieter with a Q9550S than a i7-920 (assuming lower fan speeds required for the former).

That said, the 240E might manage the same trick at even lower temps. The question is would it be quieter? After all if you could (I don't actually know for sure) cool a Q9550S with fan speed set to low, then even if the 240E had lower temps, the system wouldn't be any quieter.

Source: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3505

 

[Imy]

GPU, for more info please visit the Graphics Card forum for endless debate on the subject

Sorry just to clarify, your answer is based on using the 240E with a 5850? If that's the case I don't need anything faster than the 240E. After all, my Phillips LX3000 only has a 1.6GHz laptop Core 2 in it and can play 12-15GB 1080p .mkvs fine (with CoreAVC installed). With a discrete graphics card I should be able to offload video processing to the GPU anyway.

Look after the pounds and the hundred of pounds look after themselves . . . .as you so flush you can make a voluntary donation of £13 to every person who gives you helpful advice in this thread as a consultancy fee

Hahaha you're absolutely right - I merely meant £13 aint too bad value given the potential benefits (on paper at least)

Buy what you want, don't mind us giving out opinions on what we think you need!

I'm well aware I'm the one asking for opinions here! I just like to debate things

I'm very up with eco/low voltage computing and will always encourage people to buy hardware that is low voltage, I'm just saying I believe the *e* versions are not any different from the regular versions, you just paying a premium for them to pre-test the chip and change the VID. not a biggy as you say!

I'm actually not all that concerned about the power usage itself. I was just assuming that low power meant low thermals and thus low noise, the latter of which I'm very concerned about! If it isn't quiet then the whole project is a waste of time as far as I'm concerned.

I understand it's possible to undervolt CPUs to get them near the spec of their energy efficent equivalents but I was under the impression the energy efficient chips were choice picks by Intel/AMD from each batch, giving them a slight edge no matter what.

Thank you for covering the basic rules of depreciation, some may find that interesting . . .

/sarcasm I was writing from a tax perspective (although didn't make that clear). If you purchase through a business, then aside from the (considerable) tax savings, the kit can be written off and transferred to your name after 3 years.

There is nothing to hate? and your not wasting anything, it's called Recycling, its very easy to find a buyer for your older used hardware, in fact the used computer hardware market is booming at the moment as the country goes down the pan amidst the worst financial crysis we had in a long time.

I know I know you could sell stuff as it gets old.... Personally I'm just too lazy for that. I'm also a hoarder

I'm not sure how much more help I can be, you appear to be building a very normal low-voltage gaming machine that will be housed in a HTPC style chassis, apart from the case your build is standard as standard can be and I don't foresee any problems except maybe you overspending, good luck!

You've been a great help, thanks! I think you're making it sound more simple than it is - the difficulty is in finding the right balance (at least to me).

 

[Imy]

I can't see a 2.8GHz processor causing you any problems when paired with a powerful GPU gaming at 1920x1080, of course you will improve framerate if you increase the processing frequency if the card is very capable. The main burden is placed on the GPU at that resolution . . .

OK, good.

That's a trivial task handled by the better chipsets these days (AMD 785G Chipset Overview)

I am really liking the look of the 785G boards.

It does however the Athlon II class chips run very cool anyway, I've not got a fan on mine just a big mama heatsink, works well!

if you have the luxury of a chassis large enough to fit a premium heatsink you got no worries

You've got me interested in running it fanless now! By the way, did you test it prior to lapping? I lapped my TRUE and Q6600 and although it was a bit of fun, I remember thinking at the time whether the cost of the lapping materials (I went down to the shiny bit too) was worth the gain.

I think you made that up!

Hehe naa I read it on a few review sites when looking up these energy-efficient variants. I also remember from when I was overclocking my Q6600 (GO) that some other people had lower stock VIDs on the same CPU. I'm guessing the E and S variants just guarantee a low VID.

Well I can't say being lazy is a good trait, In the time I have taken to write these posts I could have easily made a for sale thread in the members market . . .

Yeah got to admit the members market is a much easier affair than an auction site but there's still the wasted lunch time(s) down the post office I consider. Besides, by the time I usually decide to sell something, I realise it's worth more to me to keep it than to sell it for a few quid (like my P4 system). Heck you should see my mobile phone collection...

If you want something to be a pain/hassle then your gonna make it a pain/hassle . . .if you want a task to be effortless and pain free then make it so, it's all in your outlook and perspective! . . .the mind is powerful!

Yes I have a habit of making simple tasks complicated! I like to think I'm just being thorough though!

The complication comes from the bombardment of marketing guff you are having to deal with, its causing more confusion that doing good, I believe this is a deliberate tactic on the manufacturers behalf as most peoples brain will fry trying to wade through the endless sea of variations and eventually they give up and throw a whack of money at something just to cover themselves!

Yeah manufacturers are no angels with their so called LED TVs (hello Samsung) and their so called unlimited data plans (hello most mobile/broadband providers). With PCs though sometimes I wish I was more naive about things. That way I could just buy something and more than likely be happy with it, rather than worry whether it was the best I could've got or if there was something much better out in a week. Naaa scrap that - the research is almost as much fun as the end product.

You only have one thing to really focus on and that will be choosing the correct GPU, that will produce the most *Heat* and the most *Noise*

Yes I suspect I'll be making a thread in the graphics forum soon (if similar one not already there)

Well I feel a lot more comfortable now getting the 785G/240E package and it's certainly going to be noticeable in the wallet department.

Thanks for all the replies everyone.

 

[Imy]

Very nice. Reminds me of a few Zalmans I've seen with mirror finishes. The TRUE on the other hand; you'll be lucky if it's flat.

How does it compare with the Scythe Ninja II Rev. B and Noctuas (with and without fan)?

 

[Imy]

I've still got a new tv, stand and speakers to choose yet!

Have chosen the amp though.