HTPC Spec help

Conanius

Conanius

Conanius

Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
12,896
Right,

I'm trying to sort out speccing out a Home Theater PC, and in honesty, I cant work out what I need... ideally I want to be able to put 2 dual tuner TV cards in the machine and therefore have the capability to record up to 3 channels and watch 1 other at the same time (Freeview) (and I don't know if this is technically possible, so please correct me )

Sound wise, I want to hook it up to an amp with a 5.1 setup (not yet bought, will post on the av section shortly!) so ideally an onboard soundcard that has optical out id imagine is what I need?

please spec it up that I need everything that goes in the case, including the case... I want it to be silent really.... ideally small, powerful enough to play back HD content when I get it, and probably 300 ish gig storage......

Budget wise, as cheap as possible really... willing to go AMD or Intel
 
Something like this, just add full size ATX non SLI motherboard, soundcard with coaxial or optical output and a ATX HTPC case. Might want to use a quiet DVD drive too.

Pioneer DVR-111BK 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter - (Black) OEM £18.99
(£22.31) £18.99
(£22.31)
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+ 2.00GHz (Socket AM2) - OEM £53.99
(£63.44) £53.99
(£63.44)
Microsoft Windows XP Media Centre 2005 Remote Controller £19.99
(£23.49) £19.99
(£23.49)
Corsair 1GB DDR2 Value Select PC5300 Dual Channel Kit (2x512MB) (VS1GBKIT667D2) ( £51.99
(£61.09) £51.99
(£61.09)
Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940/AM2) £13.99
(£16.44) £13.99
(£16.44)
Western Digital Caviar SE16 500GB 5000AAKS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM £79.99
(£93.99) £79.99
(£93.99)
Sub Total : £238.94
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £8.25
Vat : £43.26
Total : £290.45

Basic 7300GS passive will do for graphics. Can't help with TV tuner side though. Also need HTPC front end, Media Centre or Media Portal.
 
in terms of sound card a Soundblaster Live 5.1 or a motherboard with optical out would be fine and cheap.

Would recommend Silverstone cases for the chassis, really top notch build quality. Something like the LC17
http://silverstonetek.com/products-lc17.htm
takes full ATX OK.
or if you want to spend a bit more try the LC16M (with VFD)
http://silverstonetek.com/products-lc16m.htm

I would also recommend a more silent cooler than the Artic Freezer e,g,
Zalman CNPS8000 Ultra Quiet Low Profile CPU Cooler
and for the video card
Zalman VF700-CU Quiet "Copper" VGA Cooler + Memory Sinks for ATI/Nvidia

Tuner cards - either the Hauppauge dual tuner or Blackgold dual tuner.
 
if your not going to do any gaming, then I would deff. check out some of the none creative cards, ie X-Mystique,M-Audio,turtle beach ect... as there all good for music and movies. As for tv cards Ive only ever used the nebula single card which for me works great, I would checkout other makes though.
 
cheers for the replies guys...

can anyone suggest one of the intel MATX boards please?

Ideally I wanted one with 3 PCI and 1 PCI Express.. but I dont think MATX have that many ports :(
 
ok, think ive got what I need now !

Mobo - MSI 945GZM3-L mATX
CPU - Intel P4 630 3ghz
Ram - 2 Gig Corsair DDR 667mhz
HDD - WD 320gb
DVDRW - Liteon 16x
Case - Antec Fusion Media Center Case with 430wPSU
GFX - MSI 7600GS 256 MB (passive cooled)
TV Card - Hauppage Wintv Nova-T 500
OS - MS Vista Home Premium OEM 32bit
Extra's - MS Media Centre Remote

Comes to 606.88 inc postage ..... seem reasonable?
 
Do you really need Vista? Does that version of Vista come with HTPC front end? What's wrong with Media Centre or XP Home/Pro with Media Portal? If you stick to XP you don't need 2GB.

I wouldn't buy that Pentium, hot running and in fact HD will stutter with higher resolution HD 1080p. AFAIK even a A64 dual core will be faster? and is a good idea with H264 (although I use a single core 3700 in my HTPC) Videocard looks fine.
 
EvilGrin said:
Is Media Portal as good as Windows MCE? Is there much difference in terms of functionality and robustness?
Click to expand...

Media Portal is better. Functionality is better, it's more customizable, and it has a proper variable fast forward and rewind function. DVD player plugins where you wish to scale works, unlike MC (need My Movies 2)

Try installing it your desktop, it's free :)

I have Media Centre, but changed from that to XP + Media Portal.
 
squiffy said:
Media Portal is better. Functionality is better, it's more customizable, and it has a proper variable fast forward and rewind function. DVD player plugins where you wish to scale works, unlike MC (need My Movies 2)

Try installing it your desktop, it's free :)

I have Media Centre, but changed from that to XP + Media Portal.
Click to expand...

Excellent, thanks for that :) Does it work seamlessly with the MCE Remote and/or MCE Keyboards? I'm planning on picking up a silverstone case that comes with an iMon controller...

Edit: as an aside, has anyone had experience of the Genius LuxeMate 810 MCE keyboard vs. the Microsoft one?
 
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Excellent, thanks for that Does it work seamlessly with the MCE Remote and/or MCE Keyboards?.
Click to expand...

I can't say about the keyboard, can't see why it wouldn't work though- the MS remote works in Media Portal, and in Windows itself (also in winamp but you need to enable standard hotkeys or something) You need to do the toggle bit fix registry tweak if using another learning remote, as the MS remote uses toggle bit codes (press button twice and the IR code isn't the same) I think it works fine when using the bundled remote though.

You also need to run the Media Portal mptray.exe application- the RC Start button normally won't work as it's supposed to load MC. But if you have XP then it won't do a thing. It installs a TSR into memory so it fixes the problem.
 
I'd suggest for a uATX motherboard look at the Asus ASUS M2NPV-VM. This has onboard nForce gfx, s-video out and supports HD output too (with an adapter which I *think* is bundled?). Price is around £50-ish but you don't need a gfx card. It has two PCI slots and a PCI-E slot.

Then add an AM2 CPU of your choice and budget. 3800 X2's can be had for very little money now although you can get Semprons for less than £35 if on a very tight budget.

EDIT: The low end Sempron won't be that quick though :)
 
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If you want HD you're probably going to use DVI output (unless that board has HDMI out?) You won't use component due to analogue feed.

I wouldn't use a single core Sempron for a HTPC, a 2ghz A64 copes well enough or a 2ghz A64 dual core is recommended for the CPU intensive codecs.
 
squiffy said:
If you want HD you're probably going to use DVI output (unless that board has HDMI out?) You won't use component due to analogue feed.

I wouldn't use a single core Sempron for a HTPC, a 2ghz A64 copes well enough or a 2ghz A64 dual core is recommended for the CPU intensive codecs.
Click to expand...

Don't know if it has HDMI but the specs on Asus say:

AMD Live!™ Ready
- AMD Live!™ Ready
- NVIDIAR GeForce 6150 + nForce 430
- Dual-channel DDR2 800/667/533
- PCI Express architecture
- Integrated GeForce6 GPU
- Dual VGA Ouput: DVI-D & RGB
- HDTV out interface (HDTV/AV/S output module was bundled)
- 2 x 1394a Support
Click to expand...

Other sites say it has s-video too but that seems to be missing on the Asus page :confused:
 
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