HTPC Build Specs help.

Ross L

Ross L

Ross L

Associate
Joined
17 May 2011
Posts
51
Hi,

I'm building a HTPC, but I am struggling to choose the spec. I was originally going the Llano route, but from what I've been reading the driver support has been rather lacklustre from AMD, so I have decided to go the intel route.

So far I am looking at the following:

Silverstone Milo ML03B Micro ATX - £51.58
Asus P8H67-M PRO Micro ATX - £82.40
XFX P1-450S-U2B9 Pro Series Core Edition 450W Modular - £42.54
Intel CPU i3 2120 Sandy Bridge - £95.28
Corsair Memory XMS3 Classic 4GB DDR3 1333 Mhz - £19.68

and that is currently sitting at £291.48 delivered

Is there any changes I could do to reduce the cost, without losing performance?

Thanks in advance.

Regards,

Ross
 
Hi there, if you are purely aiming at a HTPC box playing up to 2D 1080p video, then I would suggest having a look at AMD Fusion. For example you can get the passively cooled mini-ITX fusion board like the ASUS E35M1-I DELUXE (review here) for ~£130. This includes the motherboard, CPU, GPU, wifi-N and passive cooling for all these parts.

Once you have this board you just need a case, PSU, RAM, HDD/SSD, OS and Blu-ray drive. Since the motherboard is so small and draws so little power you have option to use very small mini-ITX cases.

I have one of these running a HTPC back home running windows 7 hooked up to a 1080p TV and it works great. It is mainly used for playing 1080p films and 720p TV shows via XBMC.
 
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As CinderzFTW says adding a basic 6450/5450 will improve the stuttering you often get when playing back Blu-Ray discs/rips at their natively stored 23.976 fps on a TV that refreshes itself at 24.000fps.

If the system is purely to be used as a media center (I presume so looking at your handsome rig in sig) the maybe consider a low powered CPU such as AMD Zacate or the i3 2100T. The i3 is (a lot) more powerful than a Zacate setup (whilst max TDP is only 35W) but does cost the same as a normal i3 2100/2120 roughly. The advantage of the Zacate (max TDP of only 18W IIRC) is that the APU will playback 23.976 fps video fine.
What's your plan wrt storage/streaming?

*edit*

beaten by cmdr andi!
 
I've decided to stick to the intel route, for future proof upgrades (looking to get a 3D TV next year).

If I managed to get an i5 750 for £75-£80, would it be ok with the above setup, or would I be better off sticking with the sandybridge i3?

Thanks in advance.

Ross
 
If purely want the TV for media then going for a full power 95W quad core isn't a great option. This is because it is way more powerful than required and requires a much larger/louder cooling system than lower powered options like a AMD Fusion, AMD LLano or Intel SB low power.

If you want a 3D Blu-ray capable box then you are better off going for any of the other options mentioned so far and also installing a passively cooled HD 6570 graphics card in the main PCIE slot. This card will handle all the heavy lifting required for 3D 1080p decoding.
 
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