Building a Media Centre help

Meridiusuk

Meridiusuk

Meridiusuk

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Joined
9 May 2009
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1,072
Hi, nice to meet you all

I hope you can help me as i am going to build 2 pcs one for my normal home use and the other for a media centre, I have bought windows 7 Pro for my home pc and windows 7 hime for my media centre.

Now the thing is i dont know where to start on i have looked around and thought these would be a good start.

Antec Fusion Remote HTPC Case
Intel Pentium Dual-Core E5300 "LGA775 Core 2" 2.60GHz (800FSB)
Corsair XMS2 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 PC2-6400C5 TwinX Dual Channel
LG GGC-H20L Blu-Ray Reader & HD-DVD ROM Serial ATA Drive

the things i dont know is what

PSU
Graphics card
Sound card if i need one ?
Harddrive

to use as i am after a system that will play everything even high quality 1080p MKV files that are the most power hungry videos to play.

the hard drive i was thinking of getting

Western Digital Scorpio Blue 500GB 5400RPM SATA-II 8MB Cache

as these drives are very low in noise levels but i dont know how good they will be for booting up windows 7 and transfering to the drive using the network.

the other thing is graphics cards what do i need to play the most demanding movies types as i am not interested in games at all and want the most silent gfx card you can get but at teh same time handle windiows 7 and playing the most demanding mkv files or higher.

do gfx cards output all audio formats using the hdmi port of the gfx card or do i need to buy a sound card as well as i have a pioneer 5090 tv i want to get the best into this tv.

does the case above come with a remote also ? and can i use any type of meida centre program on the pc.

its all doing my head in abit and was hoping you can give me some help on this subject as my xbox xbmc is just to old and slow now for hd.

i hope you can help and give me some advice on the subject

thanks again
 
there's some really good guides on the avforums. i read that a motherboard with the geforce 9300/9400 chipset and a core 2 duo cpu is a good start and you wouldn't need dedicated graphics then.
 
I built my dad a media centre running AMD 4850e and an Asus mobo with the 780g chipset and it handles 1080p fine with the on board graphics using the HDMI out.

A reasonable dual core with decent on board graphics is all you need if you don't want to play games.
 
Something like an Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H with any multi core AMD CPU will be fine. A quad wouldnt necessary, even 4GB wouldnt necessary either for a media centre if your only playing HD movies.
My Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H, onboard ATI HD Radeon 3200 with Athlon 64 X2 4800 and 2GB of ram plays eventhing fine with no problems. Even better now I put Win7 RC on it along with Powerdvd 9 for playing blu-ray films.
 
i have a old pc that i was going to use as my media centre but was toled it could not handle 1080p mkv which i have tried and i seem to get about 80% there.

I have

3.6mhz prescott single core
2 gig ddr2 ram
ati x700 GFX card
asus motherboard

do you think if i upgraded the GFX card i could get 1080p mkv files to run ? i can run 720p versions but not 1080p or is there no chance of me doing this without upgrading the cpu and motherboard well the whole pc ?
 
it is a pci graphics card i wanted to know if it would help me run 1080p mkv files by upgrading the gfx card to a more powerfull card or are 1080p mkv still cpu hunggy would a better gfx card run them better
 
what i have been reading is for

nvidia get the Geforce 8400 GS as it uses a newer version of PureVideo technology than the 9300 GS which is faster.

8400GS VP3
9300GS VP2

and ati i can use

RV740 Radeon HD 4700 Series UVD2.2

dont know which to try out, which is a better card for media centre and videos ATi or nvidia or just the same ?
 
I always recommend the ATi Radeon HD series when it comes to media centres, as most(if not all)have integrated HD audio controllers so can send digital sound using HDMI instead of using a separate cable.
Also they can take most of the load off the CPU and dump it onto the GPU when playing HD content.
 
It all depends what you want to do with the HTPC. are you just going to be watching blu-rays on it.
Or are you going to be ripping or watch compressed MKV files.

So what exactly are you doing with it and what are you connecting it to. Just a TV or a separate AV reciever.
 
i want to use it for

music
pictures
divx
xvid
quicktime
mkv 720p
mkv 1080p
720p avi
1080p avi
wmv
wma

my pc in its current state can play all but 1080p mkv this is why i am hoping i can get a gfx card that will be able to handle it.

i did not know the nvidias do not do sound using hdmi if they dont how do you get the digital sound into your tv ?

so do all atis have hdmi audio ?

also the nvidias have CUDA support in CoreAVC, this should allow the video card GPU to offload almost all the work while decoding H.264

the ati`s dont seem to do this
 
ok i think i know what to use would this be ok to play all and i mean every single movie format out there with no problems even 1080p that uses gfx cards cpu and that dont use them .


Gigabyte GA-E7AUM-DS2H

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Motherboard/Products_Overview.aspx?ProductID=2946

Intel Pentium Dual-Core E5200 "LGA775 Core 2" 2.50GHz

2 gig ddr 2 memory

psu i dont know which one to get



would this be ok and would there be anything i should watch out for ?

is the Intel Pentium Dual-Core E5200 "LGA775 Core 2" 2.50GHz the collest runing chip as i want to keep the system as low temp as poss
 
You don't need huge amounts of power to play 1080p MKVs. My HTPC is based around an E6300 @ 3.0ghz, and an ATI HD3450, which is a £25 passively cooled graphics card. My CPU usage hovers between 25% and 40% when watching 1080p material.
 
does the ATI HD3450 do full 7.1 HD audio over HDMI ?

so the cpu i have choised to use above is to slow ?

the xpu is the cheapest there is i have picked and i will need a new motherboard as mine dos not support dual cores

so what would you all recomend to build then ? to play the lot and be future prof for newer video codecs ?
 
It only does 5.1 over the HDMI port unfortunately, this doesn't bother me as I use S/PDIF.

The CPU will be fine, the E5200 is plenty quick enough.
 
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