Hp proliant underpowered for a htpc at 1080p?

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Soldato
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Looking to build a htpc to live under my tv and the hp is a bit of a bargain

But I'm concerned it won't be beefy enough for 1080p


Does anyone have any experience of using one for htpc that could comment on how it handles 1080p?

My plan is to fill it with a br drive and a pair of 2tb hds full of mkvs

Would I need to look at adding a discrete gpu if so any recommendations?
 
Proliant?! That's HP's range of servers. What model is it? I can't think of anything less suitable for an HTPC tbh.. It'll be noisy as balls and draw electricity far in excess of what it needs to.
 
I'm using it right now (check this months Items bought thread). It's brilliant. No problems with running 1080p however i have put a Radeon HD5450 so that i can have an HDMI out.

But at less than £30 for the card it's a bargain.

Oh also it's completely silent.
 
Howard said:
Proliant?! That's HP's range of servers. What model is it? I can't think of anything less suitable for an HTPC tbh.. It'll be noisy as balls and draw electricity far in excess of what it needs to.
Click to expand...

Actually they are very quite and have a low power draw, have a read through this thread http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18216324 quite a few have turned theirs into htpc's by adding gfx cards with hdmi out, should be more options in that thread.
 
P1010273.jpg


Heres mine. It now has a Blu-Ray drive aswell, and added a 2tb HDD.
 
I have an N40L just running as a normal server but set one up for my brother as a HTPC.

As others have said add GFX card (5450 is more than enough) for HDMI and job done. Not upgraded from the standard 2GB ram either.

I did add an SSD to his build as he is using XBMC and I find it helps with thumbnail generation etc. if you have a lot of media.

You should have no problems with 1080p. A lot of the media I have is uncompressed bluray so I often see 35mbps bitrates play without a hitch, also this new 10bit format the anime people are using plays fine.

Power wise, it should idle around 30-40 watts so not to expensive to run.
 
I have one too in my lounge, it's great, as above I got a 6450 or something, put a SSD in for boot, 8GB RAM and Windows 7/XBMC/sabnzbd/sickbeard.

Works brilliantly, played the untouched TS of the opening ceremony with DTS HD (70gb) with no probs.
 
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