Build or Buy HTPC?

Freakbro

Freakbro

Freakbro

Soldato
Joined
29 Jul 2010
Posts
24,013
Location
Lincs
I'm looking to replace my WDTV box with a HTPC running Windows/XBMC, is it worth building my own or just buying something premade?

It will be in the front room, so being quiet is important, and will be streaming files from a HP Microserver running Unraid through an A/V amp, so DTS sound over HDMI is important too.

The files are in multiple formats, avi, mkv, mp4 etc etc so I guess the HTPC will need to do any transcoding required.

I have used the specs from this guys 'value' build http://mymediaexperience.com/htpc-builds/value-htpc/ and come up with :-



Is the single channel DDR3 ok with this mobo?

But at £400 it seems a lot more than a lot of peoples proposed builds on here at ~£250 mark, especially as I will need other accessories too, like a IR controller and BT Keyboard.

Any advice?
 
You can get an i3 nuc for about 220 add a small ssd and 4gb sodimm for less than 300. It all depends what you use it for. If you just use for xbmc then 400 is a bit of a waste unless you have custom filters etc. you could try something like a minix x8-h. Android based with xbmc and functionality of a tablet for £120 all in. They play 4K but not sure of how smooth but I have seen them run 1080p uncompressed BR with no issues at all.
 
 
That's not a bad spec Andy, the main saving seems to be going to AMD, I'm a bit out of the loop with their processors having gone with intel for the last decade.

But that minix x8-h also looks a good all in one solution and not bad for £120.

Since I'm mainly just going to want to run XBMC, what benefit would a custom built windows based HTPC bring me over the Android box?
 
The WDTV has been great, had it for a good few years now, but the interface is a bit clunky and doesn't have the polish or functionality of something like XBMC, so I fancy an upgrade :)

Also, it's been playing up a little lately, has frozen a couple of times on playback and it has a weird issue when sometimes I copy a show/film over the network on to the external drives plugged into it, it seems to 'lose' them.

It's really odd because you can go down and watch the programme, come back a day later and it's gone, nowhere to be seen on the HD :confused:
 
Freakbro said:
That's not a bad spec Andy, the main saving seems to be going to AMD, I'm a bit out of the loop with their processors having gone with intel for the last decade.

But that minix x8-h also looks a good all in one solution and not bad for £120.

Since I'm mainly just going to want to run XBMC, what benefit would a custom built windows based HTPC bring me over the Android box?
Click to expand...

AMD are great in the lower end of the market. I run an AMD A4-5300 (I think!) in my HTPC and it handles everything very nicely. It's a substantial saving over an i3 which is overkill really, plus the integrated GPUs in the AMDs are pretty good.

I've never really liked the Android boxes, I've always preferred the functionality of a Windows PC, and the speed of it, there's zero lag with an SSD too.
 
Freakbro said:
That's not a bad spec Andy, the main saving seems to be going to AMD, I'm a bit out of the loop with their processors having gone with intel for the last decade.

But that minix x8-h also looks a good all in one solution and not bad for £120.

Since I'm mainly just going to want to run XBMC, what benefit would a custom built windows based HTPC bring me over the Android box?
Click to expand...

If you mainly use XBMC then I wouldn't hesitate to go for an android box. I have several systems to run media from all PC based and they all tend to be overkill as you can get something like the Minix x8-h that will play what you want and do a lot more! As its based on android there are thousands of apps on the google play store. While in a lot of respects its not as configurable as a pc based system it really doesn't need to be. This on top of the power saving alone would be a great reason to go for this solution. I will be buying one soon for playback on my home cinema system from my server along with Snes/megadrive and arcade emulation with a Bluetooth controller.
 
andy_mk3 said:
AMD are great in the lower end of the market. I run an AMD A4-5300 (I think!) in my HTPC and it handles everything very nicely. It's a substantial saving over an i3 which is overkill really, plus the integrated GPUs in the AMDs are pretty good.

I've never really liked the Android boxes, I've always preferred the functionality of a Windows PC, and the speed of it, there's zero lag with an SSD too.
Click to expand...

I never liked android boxes either. Have you seen the influx of low power cheap windows boxes that are coming in now.
They run baytrail CPUs which are "fast enough" e.g will easily play 1080p and run some emulators. Comes with benefits of full windows for full file compatibility and driver support. Also zero noise as no moving parts and small form factors.
http://www.geekbuying.com/item/PIPO...l-3736F-1-8GHz-Quad-Core---Silver-339668.html
 
LOL I know those USB keys will support Windows 8.1, Android and Linux. From what I can tell though the sound chips on these are not great meaning if you have it plugged into an amp you may experience a lot of probs with things like DTS HD etc. The Minix X8-H has a dedicated chip for this.

Each to their own though. I would rather have a bit of silence, plenty of apps etc and low power. I also have never had any problems with file compatibility running xbmc and I have a proper pc if I need to use anything more.
 
I suppose for £120 I could buy the all in one box and see if it does what I want, then upgrade to a HTPC at a later point if needed.


What I am a little confused with, so bear with me :p

My setup is HP Microserver with Unraid -> Media Box -> TV

So I would install the software I need (eg XBMC) on the media box and it retrieves the info from the server and does any transcoding necessary, just like my WDTV does now?

So why do people run something like Plex on the server itself, does this mean you don't need the media box at all? I assume my HP Microserver (the N36L) isn't man enough to transcode HD stuff, hence I am looking for the media box of whatever flavour.
 
If you are using XBMC you just install that on the standalone player and then point it at the server (HP Microserver) and then it will do all the work on the player. It has the codecs for all the latest formats built into XBMC and you can get the scrapers set so that it will find and integrate all the artwork, posters, trailers, information into the interface.

Plex does more of the DLNA stuff so for TVs, amps, consoles that use dlna you can use it pretty much anywhere and it transcodes a little like PS3 Media server (I think).
 
For an XBMC box you won't be doing any transcoding, you just stream the video files and render them. The transcoding features of PLEX are more useful for watching on mobile devices over Wifi and devices with limitations on what they can play (like the Sky Now box I use in my bedroom).
 
It's a shame the little all-in-one boards with Celerons and AMDs E350 died off, they make for awesome little HTPCs but they were released and disappeared in no time at all, maybe they're obsolete but I still have a Gigabyte E350 board here waiting to use in something, when I used it as my main PC the onboard graphics could even cope with mild gaming!

In fact thinking about it I may just build one from the spare parts bin for the hell of it!
 
Build your own, if your like the rest of us you should have spare parts around from upgrades you can use.

My HTPC is currently a I7 [email protected], 6GB DDR3 1600, HD 7850, a 128GB SSD drive and two 2TB HDD's off a 500W PSU with some Silverstone case I bought around 5 years ago, it's basically been getting the main systems hand me downs.

Or at least the ones that fit, HTPC cases tend to be a tight fit.
 
My HTPC is now complete overkill now as it's only really used as a Plex media player, and occasionally used for streaming music on Google Play. But I don't really feel it's worth replacing. Only issue I have is I can't put it to sleep as it causes all sorts of issues with the HDMI-CEC and Plex itself, so it's just on 24/7.

20140813_154233.jpg
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom