HTPC build

rbel · 9 May 2013 at 12:46

I am planning a (non gaming) HTPC build and as the result of a fair amount of browsing I have come up with the following components as hopefully being of reasonable quality as a starter to test the viability of the tuner:
TBS 6280 Dual Freeview HD Low-profile PCIe TV Tuner Card DVB-T2
Asus P8Z77-M mini-ATX board
i3 3225 processor
4 GB DDR3 RAM
WD Red WD10EFRX SATA 6Gb/s 1TB

The tuner allegedly comes with a remote. I have a spare 'quiet' case and a good very quiet Seasonic power supply and some Noctua and Scythe fans available if required. I appreciate that an SSD for the OS, a BLU-ray player, an additional larger HDD and an HTPC case will probably be useful in due course. I plan to start off with WMC on Win 7 64 bit.

Am I on the right track so far?

rbel · 12 May 2013 at 11:07

Apologies if I have posted this query in the wrong forum - should it be in General Hardware?

lurkio · 12 May 2013 at 11:26

It is a bit overspecced for just HTPC use

I have two TBS cards and they are very good

I built a decent HTPC using a A4-3400 APU and a decent MSI motherboard + tuners using media portal

rbel · 12 May 2013 at 21:46

Many thanks for the response. It is good to know that the TBS cards perform well. I currently use a 5 year old panasonic hdd box and I am hoping to get similar quality performance from the HTPC.

I have been using Intel/Asus for my pc builds for many years so for this venture into the comparative unknown I thought that I would stick with what I am used to.

I decided that I should go for a processor with a decent gpu and a mb with 2 PCIe slots to allow for a second tuner - a satellite unit, depending on the results with the Freeview card.

Martynt74 · 13 May 2013 at 09:20

I've got the same cpu with a P8H77 board in my HTPC. I agree its a little overspecced but iot was what i went for (along with an SSD).

I only use mine for some basic browsing and XBMC, although I’m fairly happy in the knowledge that it should last me a couple years before needing to be touched.

I also went for the 100% silent approach as during quiet bits in films I thought I’d get annoyed with fan noise. I’m fortunate to have my media on a server elsewhere though.