HP Microserver as HTPC

marcus2704

marcus2704

marcus2704

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7 Aug 2005
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358
I own two HP Microservers which are currently used for serving media around my house.

I would like to know if the Microserver is capable of being used as a dedicated HTPC with XBMC installed? I worry about the CPU power as most of my media is 1080P x264. However its quiet, small form factor and if it works as a HTPC could save me a packet on replacing my broken existing HTPC.

I would need a graphics card for it capable of carrying sound - would this be sufficient - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-116-HT&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1711
 
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If you get a graphics card, it will do most of the work when playing your movies if you have the right software setup.

I use mpc-hc for playback.
 
N40L
8GB RAM
6450

Runin Server 2k8 with Aero enabled, does all my DL's and stuff, gets general use as a PC.
didnt quite have the oomf to run BR's when I tried tho.

Use MPCHC here
 
I used to run my N40L as an XBMC machine and it did a reasonable job... i wouldn't say flawless - but nearly.

From stock i added a passive single slot HD5450 so I could run an HDMI cable for the video and audio.

It had a slight issue that cropped up over time of needing to be restarted to stop playback from being somewhat choppy but I have a feeling that was being caused by flexRAID (which I was using to create a storage pool) I didn't notice it happening before I installed that.

Ended up replacing it with stuff completely overkill for XMBC as I wanted to do some "steambox" style gaming and use the microserver as a dedicated NAS.
 
Have you thought about just using the server as the file store and running Plex on it? Couple that to a Chromecast device and you have a great media centre.
 
I used a N40L with a 6450 card and 8GB RAM and it played everything at 1080p on XBMC with no issues, only thing it could not handle was MVC 3D movies using external players like Stereoscopic player.

Not sure how much slower the N36L is though.
 
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