HTPC - Spec check please

hail-hail

hail-hail

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Hi there, I am building my second PC. It will be stored in my loft and used to feed my 50" Plasma. I have put in a fake chimney and have the telly sunk into that. I can route all cabling from the loft into the fake chimney breast.

This PC will store all my media, Music / video / DVD etc. I will also use it for internet browsing. I do not need to game on it.

I have chosen an External BluRay as I want to mount it in the fake chimney. This will allow me to burn, rip and play BluRay and HD-DVD directly without going up the loft.
I want a HDMI out from my PC which will connect directly to my Home Theater AMP, also stored in the loft. This will then feed the picture to my telly (I already have SKY HD connected in this way)

I will also need a wireless keyboard and mouse which I have not thought about yet.
I also want to switch on my PC without having to go up the loft, something else I have not yet though about. Any suggestions welcome.

Here's the spec, please feel free to tell me I am an idiot and help me get it right :D

Asus P5N-E SLi nForce 650 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £51.99 (£61.09)
Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (ST31000340AS) £79.99 (£93.99)
OCZ 4GB (2x2GB) PC2-5400C5 Dual Channel Vista Upgrade Gold Series DDR2 £44.99 (£52.86)
Intel Core 2 Duo E4600 "LGA775 Allendale" 2.40GHz (800FSB) - Retail £64.99 (£76.36)
HIS ATI Radeon HD 3650 512MB DDR2 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail (H365F512NP) £40.99 (£48.16)
Antec Sonata III Piano Black Quiet Case - EarthWatts 500W PSU £69.99 (£82.24)
LG BE06 Blu-Ray ReWriter & HD-DVD ROM External Drive - Retail £174.99 (£205.61)
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 32-Bit - OEM (66I-02059) £52.99 (£62.26)

Sub Total : £580.92
 
I'd say it's over the top. Lose the graphics card altogether, and buy this:

A Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H (AMD 780G chipset), AMD 4850e CPU, 2GB of cheap DDR2 RAM. Keep the rest the same.

It will still be more than capable of playing HD-DVD and Blu-ray at the full 1080p resolution, without costing you the earth in electricity. Spend the money saved on more HDD space.

As for the Keyboard and power on. Buy the Keysonic laptop style keyboard link. It works so much better than you'd think. The range isn't the best, so you'll have to run a USB cable to the living room (I assume you're doing this for the blu-ray drive anyway) and plug the receiver in there. Then set the bios to power on by Keyboard. You can have it use any key, or set set a 5 character password to turn it on.
 
nah the graphics is worth it, real noticeable difference from onboard to a 3650, much nicer quality and options to configure lots of settings.

what kind of speakers, just the TV speakers or do you have a 5.1 system? if you do id recommend Xonar DX rocks for films!
 
Bigpops said:
I'd say it's over the top. Lose the graphics card altogether, and buy this:

A Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H (AMD 780G chipset), AMD 4850e CPU, 2GB of cheap DDR2 RAM. Keep the rest the same.

It will still be more than capable of playing HD-DVD and Blu-ray at the full 1080p resolution, without costing you the earth in electricity. Spend the money saved on more HDD space.
Click to expand...
I totally agree. If you do not plan on gaming then there is only one choice for a silent running HTPC and that is the AMD 780G integrated chipset.
Silent and the UVD2 chipset almost fully offloads H.264/MPEG4 etc. from the processor. You would be fine running a 3800+ in that thing and still get silky smooth high def playback.



AndyOcUK said:
Looks spot on to me.

The only thing I'd be concerned about is the GFX card. I know you're not gaming on it but bear in mind it'll be feeding a 50" screen with Bluray. Might be worth pushing the budget up to accommodate one of these:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showp... GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail
Click to expand...
Erm why? The size of the screen has nothing to do with the required graphics card power. Even AMDs integrated chipsets have enough power to run a 1080P screen.
 
Ok, thansk for all the input so far.

I will drop the graphics card for now, can always add one later if needed.

A Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H (AMD 780G chipset) £51.99 (£61.09)
OCZ 4GB (2x2GB) PC2-5400C5 Dual Channel Vista Upgrade Gold Series DDR2 £44.99 (£52.86
Retail Boxed AMD X2 Dual Core AM2 Athlon 64 4850e 2.5GHz 1MB L2 Cache Energy Efficient Socket AM2 - Retail (£54 inc vat)
Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (ST31000340AS) £79.99 (£93.99)
Antec Sonata III Piano Black Quiet Case - EarthWatts 500W PSU £69.99 (£82.24)
LG BE06 Blu-Ray ReWriter & HD-DVD ROM External Drive - Retail £174.99 (£205.61)
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 32-Bit - OEM (66I-02059) £52.99 (£62.26)

For the keyboard I fancy one of these:

Logitech diNovo Edge (967685-0120) £99.99 (£117.49)

For remote power up of PC, I was thinking of running a hard wired switch from the Motherboard down into the fake chimney.

I have a Sony Home Theatre AMP so running everything through it to give surround sound.

Any furhter thoughts?
I will post a few pics up later to let you see my install so far.
 
4gb memory is not essential for a media centre pc and vista 32 bit will not use the alst 1gb anyway.

You really need a media centre remote and sensor, keyboards less important unless you use it a lot.

You need to sort out waht kind of sound suppport you want. Most of its easy except when it comes to HD/blu ray movies. Advanced sound formats over HDMI should have a protected path so the mobo or graphics card have pass them thorugh but not all formats are supported.
 
Bigpops said:
As for the Keyboard and power on. Buy the Keysonic laptop style keyboard link. It works so much better than you'd think. The range isn't the best, so you'll have to run a USB cable to the living room (I assume you're doing this for the blu-ray drive anyway) and plug the receiver in there. Then set the bios to power on by Keyboard. You can have it use any key, or set set a 5 character password to turn it on.
Click to expand...

Quoting myself here because i think this is important. I just tried this myself, and it doesn't work. I only thought of it while replying, so had never tried it.
 
So Far I have my Sky HD and Xbox 360 running HDMI cables into my Sony HT-DDWG800 Home Theater AMP. A single HDMI runs to the telly. Everything works fine, surround sound through the amp for sky and XBOX, HD pictures throught the telly. I just change the input mode to switch between sources.

For the PC connection I intended to do the same. HDMI from PC to AMP.
I don't really undersdtand this
You need to sort out waht kind of sound suppport you want. Most of its easy except when it comes to HD/blu ray movies. Advanced sound formats over HDMI should have a protected path so the mobo or graphics card have pass them thorugh but not all formats are supported.
Click to expand...

Will my setup allow HD/BluRay playback?

I have a Logitech Harmony 895 remote to control all my devices, I need the keyboard as I want to suft the net also.

The only thing that I am missing is the ability to remote power up my PC. What I intend to do now, is use the internal switch power cable that connects to the MB. I will extend the wire to be 3m in length and then just run it down to a hidden location in the fake chimney. I can then just switch the PC by simply pressing the normal power on switch.
 
FYI your sub total in #1 does not include vat!

I would agree that you probably wont need 4gb, but for the sake of only saving £20 I would keep it tbh.

With this rig being in the loft, I would ensure that there is a decent filter on the pc for dust from insulation etc etc, which imo would be more of an issue...

Also, for the loft do you really need an £80 case?

Any cheap case would do, just ensure a decent psu.
 
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