HTPC advice

doodah

doodah

doodah

Caporegime
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
28,412
Location
London
I currently use an N54L for my HTPC duties, for a dual core/8GB of RAM - it doesn't do badly at all. However (partly depending on how my Steam Link works) I would like to upgrade and demote the N54L to server duties further down the line. I recently upgraded to Ryzen so have a spare 3570K and 4x4GB of Samsung Green RAM, so have two options:

  1. Build around my 3750K but can only use 8GB as I don't think mini-ITX boards exist with 4 RAM slots
  2. Build a new system, likely a Ryzen 5
Already got my heart set on the Louqe Ghost S1 MkII and unsure of what GPU yet. Obviously the benefit of option 1 is the money saved on a CPU and RAM but option 2 will be more future proof. I guess my first question is how good a stock 3570K and 8GB of RAM will be for 1080p gaming? Or are there mini-ITX boards that either have 4 RAM slots or allow overclocking?

What would you do?
 
No itx mobo (for nome use) has more than 2 ram slots. The IGP on the 3570 is fairly mediocre , will play older games on 720p but anything more is going outside its remit. Go for option 1 as its generally the GPU that is going to limit what you can do.
n54l is solid little machines , great as NAS/file server
 
Yeah she's a little beast but the dual core CPU does struggle at times.

I guess 8GB of RAM for an HTPC is fine enough and I won't be gaming above 1080p. I just need to find a sexy case that can take a full sized GPU and several 3.5" HDs and a second hand GPU that can handle 1080p gaming.
 
Silverstone has some neat cases .. bit expensive and they lack all bling, but very good and well designed . I actually want a GOLD q34 from lianli but sadly they are rarer than a brace of well cooled rx580's.
 
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