HTPC Spec - any comments?

aspirins

aspirins

aspirins

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Hi guys,

A friend is looking into getting a relatively cheap HTPC set-up to run media center for the lounge. He was looking at the Dell Zino HD - any good? I suggested a similar/better pc could be built for a similar price. Price mark is around £300..

I'm not a fan of the ion's ive tried in the past so i just scanned the small motherboard/cases on the website and have the below.. i know ive not added memory yet. Any good? Assume this will play HD stuff fine. If you can come up with cheaper, thats good for me! Storage will be elsewhere so only added small hdd.

Zotac H55-ITX WiFi Intel H55 (Socket 1156) DDR3 Mini-ITX Motherboard £108.99

Intel Core i3 530 2.93GHz (Clarkdale) (Socket LGA1156) - Retail £82.24

In-Win BM639 Mini-ITX Case - Black (120W PSU) £50.98

Western Digital Caviar Blue 320GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (WD3200AAKS) £38.99

OcUK 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £12.98

Thanks
 
what was your problem with ions then ?

they are usually very good for media centers, low power, small, and quiet, and can handle 1080p fine. They usually come with all the required connections you might need like hdmi and audio outs.

would also be cheaper, as u can get an ion for a simlar price to the motherboard u have speced, except it comes with the cpu as well
 
depends what ur using it for really.

they arn't the fastest processors around, and as a normal desktop, they dont compare to a proper cpu.

but for a media center that will just be playing videos and such, they work perfectly well.

althou it would also depend on what OS ur running the media center, perhaps try one of the linux based media centers that usually work very well with ions
 
I have a Zotac Mag Box which uses the Atom/ION combo and its a beaut.
It runs Linux and XBMC, which was made with the ION in consideration. It is the dual core Atom though, I'm not sure if your experience was with the single core.

if you search google for mini-itx and go to the 1st result you'll find some good ideas there.
 
For an all in one system the Western Digital HD TV Live looks like a good buy. I have the original Western Digital HD media player and the only thing it lacked was DVD menu support, the next version added TV and now the newest version (see Anandtech for a a full review) can finally support DVD menus.

With the custom setup your looking at I would looked to add in a Blu-Ray player for another £40 on top. The Intel H55 chipset supports full HD audio and can bit stream it over HDMI so bear this in mind.
 
Personally I found XBMC with Aeon much too slow on an Atom ION system. I guess basic skins might be OK but in that case why have an HTPC at all?

You also need to know what software you will use before you buy the hardware. At the moment GPU video acceleration is a bit hit-and-miss. ASFAIK XBMC Linux only supports acceleration on nVidia hardware, and on Windows it doesn't support any at all. MediaPortal uses DXVA on Windows (so all vendors) but is windows only.

I'd either go with your first spec or an Athlon 240/245/250e processor and a mobo with integrated GPU which would be £30-£40 cheaper. Performance would be comparable, CPU would be slightly slower but the GPU would (I think) be a little faster.
 
Last edited:
aspirins said:
He was looking at the Dell Zino HD - any good? I suggested a similar/better pc could be built for a similar price. Price mark is around £300..

Zotac H55-ITX WiFi Intel H55 (Socket 1156) DDR3 Mini-ITX Motherboard £108.99

Intel Core i3 530 2.93GHz (Clarkdale) (Socket LGA1156) - Retail £82.24

In-Win BM639 Mini-ITX Case - Black (120W PSU) £50.98

Western Digital Caviar Blue 320GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (WD3200AAKS) £38.99

OcUK 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £12.98
Click to expand...

I think the Dell Zino HD looks pretty good. Your spec doesn't include RAM or operating system? The Dell's sure to work out cheaper.
 
There is no way the Dell will work out cheaper. I just specced one for £700 (inc. 20" monitor, so some for that) that had a worse processor and IGP than you could get for a £350 complete system.
 
The Zino's £499.00 inc 20" monitor and WLAN, where are you seeing £700? I don't see how you could build a system for much less, certainly not £350.
 
The atom motherboards, do they play flash?

This needs to be able to play iplayer, youtube, itvplayer etc. The OS will be Windows 7, he already has this so doesnt come into the cost.
 
flash is software, and doesn't depend on hardware, there is no reason y an atom wouldn't be able to play flash like any other hardware
 
Ok, so whats the thoughts on this? Comes in at around £250

Zotac IONITX-F-E, NVIDIA ION, Intel Atom N330, DDR2 667/800

Inwin BP655, Mini-ITX Case, Black, with 200W PSU

2GB Corsair XMS2, DDR2 PC2-6400 (800), 240 Pins, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 5-5-5-18

500GB Samsung Spinpoint F3

Thanks for your help.
 
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