HTPC Guidance.

[adam55443]

Hi there I have a bit of a need for a htpc I am currently using a WD tv live with 2 1TB external USB Hard drives the problem is that I need more storage and I'm fed up of all the wires.

I alreadys have a 500Gb 3.5 drive in a draw which I could use for a boot drive and a keyboard and mouse and windows 7.

The main use of this pc will be to play 1080p films straigt into my tv via XBMC and that's all maybe a bit of surfing at the minimum.

If someone could spec me something that will be ok at doing this for a cheap price I could go up to £500 if needed but if I can save money, BONUS

Thankyou.

 

[Reaper 392]

wow, very surprised no one has replied by now.

i'll give this a bash, but im really not good with specing HTPCs.

YOUR BASKET
1 x Antec Micro Fusion 350 HTPC Case with Remote - Black/Silver (350W PSU Included) £153.98
1 x Asus M4A88T-M AMD 880G (Socket AM3) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard £59.99
1 x AMD Athlon II X3 Tri Core 450 3.20GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail £59.99
1 x Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB SATA-II 64MB Cache - OEM (WD20EARS) £58.98
1 x Samsung SH-B123L/BSBP 12x BluRay ROM DVDRW DL & RAM Lightscribe SATAII Optical Drive - OEM Black £55.99
1 x Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMX4GX3M2A1600C9) £35.99
1 x Scythe Shuriken BIG Quiet Low Profile CPU Cooler (Scoket 754/939/940/AM2/AM2+/AM3/LGA775/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA1366) £30.98
Total : £470.00 (includes shipping : £11.75).


the one thing im really not sure about is the PSU thats bundled with the case. it'll be plenty powerful enough, and may even cope with a very small graphics card, but i dont know if its a good quality one (bad quality PSU's are a HUGE no-no)

*edit*
i chose this motherboard over the gigabyte one thats on offer because it has two PCIe X1 slots, which is what most TV cards use

 

[cmndr_andi]

Hi there,

May I ask a few questions before speccing up a system?

- would you be against using a silent midi-tower case - to allow for plenty of hard disk room, quieter cooling and generally cheaper component prices?

- Do you want the system to be able to play Blu-rays or 3D Blu-rays?

 

[adam55443]

Thanks for the input, tbh I was thinking a small htpc case as it is in show in the living room and would have to be approved by the wife so I thought something about the size of a sky box maybe a bit bigger if needed but I would deffinately consider it an option as long as it is quite small and could be hidden well.

On the 3d support I don't really require it at the moment no 3d telly just a Sony 40" 1080p and also blu ray support is not needed as I can rip from pc and transfer over.

My only worry with a htpc is the storage as mentioned as I have filled 2tb worth of data in about 18 months (love movies).

Thankyou again.

 

[JonJ678]

Hi there I have a bit of a need for a htpc I am currently using a WD tv live with 2 1TB external USB Hard drives the problem is that I need more storage and I'm fed up of all the wires. .

I believe you want Network Attached Storage, not a HTPC. Keep the WD tv live and just put a load of hard drives in a cupboard somewhere.

You'll have a video cable joining the WD box to the TV, and an ethernet cable. With some effort you can probably mount the WD box to the vesa mounts on the back of the TV. There's a definite appeal to being able to put the hard drives anywhere, as it'll stop you hearing them. It'll be cheaper as well.

That would be pretty much what I'm doing, though I went for the WD my book live instead of a multiple drive box.

 

[cmndr_andi]

Ah, that makes sense.

In that case, this is what I suggest (though please read the caveats below):

Please ignore the X58 motherboard, it is just a placeholder for the Asus E35M1-I Deluxe board, which costs about the same but isn't available on OCUk yet. This board uses a Fusion APU, which combines CPU and GPU into a lovely package and only uses a maximum of 18W of power. This means the whole thing is passively cooled - so no noise from the board at all. It is also powerful enough to smoothly decode any 2D 1080p video file or Blu-ray and the CPU is powerful enough to smoothly play flash video in 720p/1080p like youtube and IplayerHD.

The case is a HTPC favourite, with enough room to accomodate two 3.5in HDDs (your 500GB drive + the 2TB drive in the spec should last you a little while at least). The sharkoon case fans replace the tricool fans for some decent airflow and low noise.

I also put a small SSD in there too. This is purely to install the OS on and the key applications. By using an SSD everything is extremely quick and there is no noise during general use - only when reading from the mechanical hard disks.

I only included 2GB of RAM, but tbh this should be plenty for this system.

The PSU is a decent one and quiet, however I would have a look at the BeQuiet 350W BN134 it's even more efficient and due to the power rating it should be even better at providing power to a rather low-power draw system.

 

[adam55443]

Thankyou again for your help i think im going to go for the amd route as i need this setting up quickly as i filling up all my space on my laptop and pc at the min and need to off load it

thanks again for your help