Help with 300 ish quid htpc build

Dieseldes

Dieseldes

Dieseldes

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26 Feb 2014
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37
Ok so I have 2 htpcs at home both running Mediaportal which is great. The small bedroom unit is in a shuttle type case with an amd e350. It's fine for everything including full BluRay rips, at least until I try to copy files etc at the same time. My main living room htpc is an amd a10 6700 that I bought custom built from here in a big fancy Silverstone case that takes like 8 drives . Both machines have ssd boot drives. I have a hp microserver with Unraid for my movies etc.

Anyhow my father in law is big into his av stuff and has a room full of kit. When he saw what I can do with Mediaportal on my machines he is really surprised and is talking about buying one. I reckon it's best that I build him something but could do with some help from you guys.

So what I want is a pc with a case that will fit in with the usual av stuff eg amps etc. The case must be large enough to take an ssd boot drive and at least 2 3.5inch bays for his media hard drives. It must also have a 5.25 bay for a BluRay player. I'm thinking of yet another amd, apu maybe an a6 as this will be plenty for media and can be upgraded to an a10 if required in the future. Do these older cpu eg like my a10 6700 run in the new fm2+ boards? Would like to get a + board as it should be more upgradeable in the future. To start with 4gb ram should be OK. I have used 16gb vulcan team memory 2100mhz in my a10 and have had lots of problems with it. The first batch failed and wouldn't boot after 2 days with one of the cards installed at all. The replacement batch runs but the machine locks up and gives memory errors unless I down clock it to 1600mhz. So I might want to avoid it unless it's more reliable than it was 6 months ago.

Also a cheap 120gb ssd is a must. I can use a old 2tb green drive I have as his media drive. I also can give him the BluRay player out of my e350 as it's never used.

So I suppose all I need is.:
Case
Ssd
Psu low power 300watt?
Motherboard
Cpu
Ram
Oh a wireless usb mouse./keyboard combination, quite a big one as he will mostly be using a or remote I have lying around.

Anything I have missed? I can install windows 7 and he can pay for the key. What about cables and stuff? Does that all come with the case and motherboard? I'm thinking of building this as a present for him, hence why I'm kinda leaving it a bit tight but upgradeable by him once he becomes addicted!

Cheers des
 
Hi Des,

Put the following together that should cover all the requirements.


YOUR BASKET
1 x Silverstone Grandia GD05 Desktop HTPC Case - Black (SST-GD05B USB3.0) £79.99
1 x Kingston 120GB SSDNow V300 Drive SATA 6Gb/s 3 2.5" (7mm height) Solid State Hard Drive - (SV300S37A/120G) £59.99
1 x Gigabyte F2A88XM-HD3 AMD A88X (Socket FM2+) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £49.99
1 x AMD A6-6400K 3.90GHz (Socket FM2) APU Richland Dual Core Processor (AD640KOKHLBOX) £49.99
1 x Patriot Viper 3 "Venom Red" 4GB DDR3 PC3-17200C11 2133MHz Single Module (P34G211UR) £37.99
1 x BeQuiet Pure Power L8 400W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply - With 120mm Silent Wing Fan Built in £31.99
1 x OcUK Wireless Media Centre Keyboard - Black (9039ARF) £17.99
1 x BitFenix Alchemy Molex to 3pin x3 Fan adaptor 12V 20cm - Black £4.99
2 x Akasa AK-CBSA05-30BK Super slim SATA rev 3.0 data cable with securing latches - 30cm, Black £3.29 (£6.58)
Total : £353.60 (includes shipping : £11.75).



You'd need to check with OcUK to make sure the motherboard already brings two SATA cables with it, as you need four in total.

PSU only brings two molex so fan adapter cable added as well for the case's three fans, and it leaves the other molex free in case you ever fill the optional 2 x 80mm rear fan slots.

Not sure if something like that keyboard/mouse set is what you're after.

Have not added an aftermarket cooler as the stock one might be quiet enough if not gaming?

Mobo is a decent chipset for any APU upgrade in future, and has HDMI. USB 3.0 on the mid-board as well, for the case's front ports.
 
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Thanks Danny that looks a good setup. I wonder if 2 cards of memory would make the machine run faster by a noticeable amount? I suppose it leaves it easy to upgrade as is..
 
Thanks guys. I noticed the ram seems quite tall with the heat sink. Is that likely to be an issue in terms of getting everything to fit?

What would an Intel equivalent run me and would it be more or less upgradeable?
Cheers des
 
Dieseldes said:
Thanks guys. I noticed the ram seems quite tall with the heat sink. Is that likely to be an issue in terms of getting everything to fit?
Click to expand...

No problems at all with the stock cooler. I think it should fit under most aftermarket low-profile coolers but don't take my word for it. Went for that one because the spec contained the stock cooler, and for the speed which benefits APUs.


Dieseldes said:
What would an Intel equivalent run me and would it be more or less upgradeable?
Cheers des
Click to expand...

Coming up.
 
Went for a different case this time, as a cheaper alternative, although being ITX it makes the mobo slightly more expensive than Micro-ATX.


Ample storage – up to 1 ODD, 3 HDDs and 4 SSDs:
ODD x 1 + HDD x 2 + SSD x 1 or
HDD x 3 + SSD x 1 or
HDD x 2 + SSD x 3 or
HDD x 1 + SSD x 4

http://www.coolermaster-usa.com/product.php?product_id=10083
Click to expand...


YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i3-4130 3.40GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £83.99
1 x Asus H81I-Plus Intel H81 (Socket 1150) DDR3 Mini ITX Motherboard £59.99
1 x Kingston 120GB SSDNow V300 Drive SATA 6Gb/s 3 2.5" (7mm height) Solid State Hard Drive - (SV300S37A/120G) £59.99
1 x EVGA 600W 80 Plus Bronze Power Supply (100-B1-0600-KR) £49.99
1 x Cooler Master Elite 130 RC-130-KKN1 Mini ITX Case - Black £45.95
1 x GeIL Black Dragon 4GB (1x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Single Module (GD34GB1600C11SC) £31.99
1 x OcUK Wireless Media Centre Keyboard - Black (9039ARF) £17.99
2 x Akasa AK-CBSA05-30BK Super slim SATA rev 3.0 data cable with securing latches - 30cm, Black £3.29 (£6.58)
Total : £366.06 (includes shipping : £8.00).




Concerning upgrades:

The PSU will comfortably handle something like an i7 and a top-end card. If you're not going to upgrade that much, get a cheaper one, like the Be Quiet 500w on offer. Both the EVGA and Be Quiet are made by HEC.

H81 mobos will only run RAM @ 1600MHz and no CPU overclocking. You'd need a Z87 for that. One 4GB stick instead of two 2GB sticks, so you can add another identical stick in future, if required. So no Dual Channel for now (shouldn't make a huge difference for your needs at present).

i3 instead of a Pentium as it seemed a pity not to stretch budget for it a wee bit more. But it's your wallet. :D

Hope this helps.
 
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So many choices... Thanks again. I like that cooler master case as it can hold another drive and it's cheaper. Though the Silverstone does fit better with his availability kit. The amd stuff will fit in the cooler master case, right? Think I will sleep on it, but due to my experience I'm thinking amd may be the winner unless intel is better in some way I don't know?

Cheers des
 
Dieseldes said:
So many choices... Thanks again. I like that cooler master case as it can hold another drive and it's cheaper. Though the Silverstone does fit better with his availability kit. The amd stuff will fit in the cooler master case, right? Think I will sleep on it, but due to my experience I'm thinking amd may be the winner unless intel is better in some way I don't know?

Cheers des
Click to expand...

The AMD mobo is Micro-ATX. It will not fit in that CoolerMaster Mini-ITX case.

The Intel has the better processor, and is more upgradable, imo. The AMD will have better graphics, but if you're not going to game on it you won't see the difference.

If you drop the PSU to the same one in the AMD basket I specced, then the Intel basket would be even cheaper.
 
Well guys I ordered the amd kit in your first post. I stayed with 1 memory stick and this can be upgraded later. Thanks for the advice. How much speed would i/he gain with a second memory stick to go 2 channel? Cheers des
 
Dieseldes said:
Well guys I ordered the amd kit in your first post. I stayed with 1 memory stick and this can be upgraded later. Thanks for the advice. How much speed would i/he gain with a second memory stick to go 2 channel? Cheers des
Click to expand...

You're welcome.

You/he will really notice the difference with another stick depending on what's done with the computer, e.g. gaming, memory-intensive apps (Adobe Photoshop etc), or multi-tasking and having multiple apps open. Otherwise for basic tasks (playing a movie while browsing and chatting on skype) 4GB is enough.

Hope all goes well, and enjoy the build. A few pics showing how everything fits in the case would be nice. ;)
 
An update. My kit arrived today. Well sorta. This is the motherboard that came with my amd cpu.


http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-440-GI

So I need to talk to overclockers tomorrow. I plan on sending back the motherboard in the post tomorrow if I can get to the post office but will they send the correct motherboard on trust or will I pay for another one and then get a refund. I did order the correct board it is their fault so I hope they can help me. Who pays for post?

Cheers des.
 
Or should I buy an Intel i3 cpu? Will the ram and power supply I got from the amd list above fit and run this motherboard and cpu combo? Will it fit Ok? I haven't used an intel since 486 dx2 66 days. Would the Intel Core i3-4130 3.40GHz (Haswell) be good for htpc use with no problems with graphics and jumpy movies. He is a big av buff so I wouldn't want any problems such as the 23.9hz issue I hear some intels can't do.
I also don't want a separate video card. I could always sell the amd cpu....
 
Dieseldes said:
Or should I buy an Intel i3 cpu? Will the ram and power supply I got from the amd list above fit and run this motherboard and cpu combo? Will it fit Ok?
Click to expand...

RAM and PSU would run fine, and it would fit in the Grandia case.


Dieseldes said:
I haven't used an intel since 486 dx2 66 days. Would the Intel Core i3-4130 3.40GHz (Haswell) be good for htpc use with no problems with graphics and jumpy movies. He is a big av buff so I wouldn't want any problems such as the 23.9hz issue I hear some intels can't do.
I also don't want a separate video card. I could always sell the amd cpu....
Click to expand...

Don't think there'd be any problems. Was that issue with the Sandybridges?

I'd let OcUK know about the mistake first, though. And see what they say. It's on them to offer at least some form of redress for that mistake.

I know how you feel. You get a very decent Z87 mobo by mistake and it makes you want to change things around lol. You'd pay extra for the i3 though, but it would definitely be more upgradable.

P.S. Try opening a thread in the Customer Service section of the forum and tell them what's happened and link them to this thread. My experience of dealing with this kind of stuff (well just once really lol) with the staff there is very good. Better than phoning or emailing.
 
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In regards to the mobo, OCUK will send out the correct board via courier and collect the other board, so it wont cost you anything. Best to ring CS and get it sorted ASAP, that way you should get it tomorrow.
 
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