hardware check

paradisiac · 31 Mar 2010 at 11:13

hey, building a media pc. need it to output 1920x1080, play blu ray, and be ready for FreeviewHD, and able to run video files off the hard drive aswell as things like iplayer/skyplayer/4OD.....
think this is everything apart from the FreeviewHD card as i cant seem to find one at the moment.
any input welcome.

cheers.

stulid · 31 Mar 2010 at 11:16

This week special offer is updated in about 50mins.

Wait to see what's on it.

paradisiac · 31 Mar 2010 at 11:18

stulid said:
This week special offer is updated in about 50mins.

Wait to see what's on it.

not building it straight away, looking around to see whether its better to buy pre-build or buy components. spec wise would that do the job?

Freddie1980 · 31 Mar 2010 at 11:36

Now don't hold me to this but I don't think the GMA on the I5's/I3's is good enough to stream 1080p content smoothly, I would suggest for the sake of £40 getting a HD5450 512Mb to be safe.

paradisiac · 31 Mar 2010 at 11:38

Freddie1980 said:
Now don't hold me to this but I don't think the GMA on the I5's/I3's is good enough to stream 1080p content smoothly, I would suggest for the sake of £40 getting a HD5450 512Mb to be safe.

yeah that was my concern with O/B GFX

bJN · 31 Mar 2010 at 11:58

Freddie1980 said:
Now don't hold me to this but I don't think the GMA on the I5's/I3's is good enough to stream 1080p content smoothly, I would suggest for the sake of £40 getting a HD5450 512Mb to be safe.

As above. They're fairly capable with 720p movies but 1080p will start to stutter quite noticeably, so a cheap dedicated GPU will be a worthwhile investment

paradisiac · 31 Mar 2010 at 11:59

sorted then, is an i3 needed or is the 775 still good enough? or is there a cheaper AMD equivilant?

paradisiac · 31 Mar 2010 at 13:58

what about these itx/atom systems? are they suitable for this kind of job or will 1920x1080 be a bit of a push?

paradisiac · 1 Apr 2010 at 13:13

anyone?

cmndr_andi · 1 Apr 2010 at 13:25

Hi m8,

Looking at this review (that page and the next one) the IGP on the i3 will be more than enough to handle 1080p video files and Blu ray.

Your first spec look great to me. However, I would suggest this HDD as it is only £9 more expensive and 50% larger. I have two in my machine and one in a HTPC at home and they are great.

As for ION atom systems, I don't trust them. They have a GPU onboard that can easily handle Blu Ray/1080p files, however the CPU is really weak. If you ever try to run non-GPU accelerated streaming video on it (or anything CPU intensive at all) then it won't be able to keep up.

paradisiac · 17 Apr 2010 at 10:19

cmndr_andi said:
Hi m8,

Looking at this review (that page and the next one) the IGP on the i3 will be more than enough to handle 1080p video files and Blu ray.

Your first spec look great to me. However, I would suggest this HDD as it is only £9 more expensive and 50% larger. I have two in my machine and one in a HTPC at home and they are great.

As for ION atom systems, I don't trust them. They have a GPU onboard that can easily handle Blu Ray/1080p files, however the CPU is really weak. If you ever try to run non-GPU accelerated streaming video on it (or anything CPU intensive at all) then it won't be able to keep up.

cheers for that

would i get away with something like a 2.5GHz Dual Core 775 Celeron?

paradisiac · 17 Apr 2010 at 10:32

would this do?