Best setup for HTPC? AMD or Intel?

fobose

fobose

fobose

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When I was looking at HTPC's on here a while ago the 780G chipset seemed to be the popular choice. Do Intel offer anything as good yet for a HTPC?

I would like to keep costs down so I think onboard graphics seems the best route, and helps keep temps down. Here is what I have spec'd myself:

Antec NSK 2480 MATX Desktop Case Black & Silver - With 380W EarthWatts PSU: £64.64
Pioneer DVR-215DBK 20X SATA DVD±RW DL Int Black - OEM £16.40
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium OEM 64-bit: £65.55
Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H 780G Socket AM2+ mATX Motherboard: £54.57
OCZ 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 800Mhz Memory GOLD DUAL CHANNEL: £55.10
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4850e 2.5GHz Socket AM2 Energy Efficient Retail: £50.47
Scythe Mini Ninja Socket 478/775/754/939/940/AM2 Heatpipe Cooler: £28.91

This comes to a total of £335.64.

I haven't selected any hard drives yet as I wanted to see what you guys thought of the spec as it is. I will be running two small (250-320GB) disks in RAID 1 for redundancy as my media storage will be else where on the network. I could also do with a dual tuner TV card too.

I was also wondering if I need to use a third party CPU cooler, is the stock one loud? I want the system to be dead silent really and the Minja is meant to be able to run passive? Is it worth £30?

Looking forward to what you guys think.
 
this is far better

Capture-8.jpg


and AMD for HTPC's

if youve got extra cash to spare get a 1TB HDD
 
Thanks for the relpy. I like the Asus board better but the competitor where I was looking doesn't have it, so I will get it from OCUK as long as they still have free delivery when I order.

The antec fusion just seems to be twice the price for a slightly higher wattage PSU and a knob on the front of the case? As I will be using Vista I deffo want 4GB of ram, and I dont want to have to upgrade the memory later on when it will probably be a lot more expensive!

Is a dedicated sound card really needed? I thought the onboard sound on those boards was pretty good? I could get a hauppage nova T PCI dual tuner for that price, which comes with a remote that works in vista's media center apparently?

One last thing, is that CPU really neccessary? I thought the 780G chipset off loaded the HD content on to the onboard graphics so you could use a low wattage CPU? A bit confused now :confused:
 
I was thinking of getting 2x Maxtor STM3250310AS 250GB SATAII 8MB Cache drives as these are £28 (and I already have one in another PC, they run pretty quiet and fast - 85MB/s), besides my media will be stored elsewhere on the network!
 
fobose said:
Is a dedicated sound card really needed? I thought the onboard sound on those boards was pretty good? I could get a hauppage nova T PCI dual tuner for that price, which comes with a remote that works in vista's media center apparently?

One last thing, is that CPU really neccessary? I thought the 780G chipset off loaded the HD content on to the onboard graphics so you could use a low wattage CPU? A bit confused now :confused:
Click to expand...
nope a sound card isn't really needed..

the hauppage nova T PCI dual tuner remote should work in media center .,

that cpu isn't really neccessray..
 
So I could get away with going for a slightly cheaper 4450e (2.3GHz) rather than the 4850e I spec'd? Its only £10 saving but if I dont need it I would rather use the money elsewhere. What about the CPU cooler though? What is the stock fan like?
 
fobose said:
So I could get away with going for a slightly cheaper 4450e (2.3GHz) rather than the 4850e I spec'd? Its only £10 saving but if I dont need it I would rather use the money elsewhere. What about the CPU cooler though? What is the stock fan like?
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yes the 4850e is fine.

if your not overclocking then the stock fan is fine and should be quiet .
 
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id say you need the £50 sound card because that will give you excellent sound quality, unless you have standard speakers, in that case it doesnt matter too much,

the CPU i put is basically the same price as the one you listed, and AM2+ i would avoid

the stock fan would be fine, AMD's dont overclock well and its not needed to overclock a media center, the 2.7Ghz 5200 is very good.

yes you would get free postage, log into your OCUK account and there is an option to add your forum account details.
 
Yes I have no problem with maxtors, they are just rebadged seagates. The fact they are pretty quick and the cheapest sells it for me too. I am still not sure whether to go with 2GB of ram to cut costs down a bit. What do you think?
 
fobose said:
When I was looking at HTPC's on here a while ago the 780G chipset seemed to be the popular choice.
Click to expand...

I'd stick with the Gigabyte board over the Asus without question.

Take a quick sniff around the Asus support forum for the board and marvel at how much grief people have with memory configs on the Asus board.

Having had a M2N-VM HDMI and an M3A, I doubt I'll ever go back to an Asus board again, as some of the recent boards have been fairly poor IMHO. Both were stroppier than the M3A78 with memory and the M2N in particular had a tendency to flick the HDMI output off and on every few seconds, making the feature useless (despite countless BIOS upgrades and swapping of components).

On the other hand, the Gigabyte board you've specced is an absolute delight and I've had no trouble at all with whatever memory I've thrown at it or anything else for that matter

My spec for the same kind of box is:

Antec NSK2480
Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H
Athlon 64 X2 4200
2x1gb (only using Vista Home Premium 32bit)
Pioneer BDC-202BK Blu-ray
2x320gb Samsung SATA - 1 for OS and misc storage, the other for recorded TV
Happuage dual DVB-T tuner
Vista Media Centre
Rest of "media" (music, vids, pics etc) is on the Windows Home Server box and is streamed to the Media Centre as required.

Unfortunately, because my Toshiba LCD TV is also a little picky about what it'll take a signal from, I've had to drop in a cheap passive Nvidia card to handle display duties and for Blu-ray viewing, but other than that the setup's been spot on.

The suggestion elsewhere of the Antec Fusion, whilst a good case, is wasting money I'd say. No point in paying the extra for the display and having had the 2480 for a while, I've never felt the need for a display.

Sound-wise, use the onboard sound and (if you're able to) take the SP-DIF straight to a receiver for Dolby and DTS from DVD and Blu-ray discs. No point in speccing a sound card at all to be honest with the board you've suggested. My receiver does all the decoding (for stereo music too) so the high end sound card's pointless IMHO.

Having a pile of 8 dead Maxtor drives here that I've collected across the years, I'd recommend the Samsung drives, but that's just bitter experience! the 750gb Samsung F1 drives are the dog's though.

YMMV and all that though.
 
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Thanks very much undergroove, I think I will stick with the gigabyte board even though I have always had asus ones. Although slightly annoyed at my P5K-E for having a rediculiously hot southbridge!

What heatsink are you using on your CPU? I am still undecided on getting the mini ninja as I would like to use a passive heatsink if I can get away with it! I might also take the 300GB seagate I have from my main PC and use it as in my HTPC but I am still thinking a RAID 1 array is best as I dont want to have to mess around reinstalling windows/apps and setting it all up if the hard drive dies!
 
I'd generally stick with your original spec but you really don't need 4GB RAM, even with Vista if it's a HTPC or indeed anything but a gaming PC.
I run a 4450e passive with the stock cooler at 2.6Ghz myself but I do have good case cooling. The stock cooler is pretty much dead silent at 5v so I don't think the Ninja is worth it. You could also get a cheaper CPU and OC like I do.

Re: Intel.
780G is not perfect, if you read around you'll find that some people have problems with loss of signal when using HDMI and the like. The HDMI is also only S/PDIF over HDMI.
Intel have the G45's out which will fully support audio via HDMI, there's an issue with HDMI repeater mode and 24Hz but both are being fixed.
 
I will scrap the ninja then, saves me quite a bit of cash! I take it the G45 boards will be able to run 1080p without any problems? Currently with the change to 2GB of ram, removing the ninja and adding a Nova-T the total cost is £317.86. Not bad really, although I am a bit concerned with the HDMI issues as this is what I am going to be using the board for and dont want to have to add in a dedicated graphics card!
 
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Yes, the G45 handles all the decoding. Intel seem to be focussing a lot of attention on this chipset, they let AMD get one over on them with the 780G so any issues that arise will likely be fixed, and Intel admit to the current problems.
 
My HTPC has the full size Ninja, running passively. I found the stock AMD cooler droany, even at 7v. No fan noise but motor noise was present.
 
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