HTPC spec

lolwtfbbq · 27 May 2006 at 09:06

Asus A8N-VM CSM Micro ATX (Socket 939) PCI Express Motherboard (MB-119-AS) £64.57

AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego 90nm (Socket 939) - OEM (CP-150-AM) £140.94

Arctic Cooling Alpine 64 CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940) (HS-020-AR) £6.99

Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound (3.5g) (AC-000-AC) £6.46

Antec NSK2400 Desktop Case - 380W SmartPower PSU (CA-053-AN) £55.17

Soundgraph iMON VFD - Silver (BB-001-SG) £69.27

Seasonic S12 430W Silent ATX2.0 Power Supply (CA-000-SS) £52.82

Akasa PCI Express 6 Pin to 4 Pin Power cable adaptor for PCI-E Graphics Cards (CB-018-AK) £3.47

Corsair 1GB DDR Value Select PC3200 CAS2.5 Kit (2x512MB) (VS1GBKIT400) (MY-041-CS) £64.57

HIS Excalibur ATI Radeon X550 256MB DDR TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (RX550-256) (GX-041-HT) £46.94

Samsung SpinPoint P HD160JJ 160GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-024-SA) £45.77

Western Digital Caviar SE16 320GB 3200KS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD-070-WD) £86.89

Terratec Cinergy 2400i DT DVB-T TV Tuner (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-000-TT) £93.94

NEC ND4570 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM (CD-030-NE) £29.32

Microsoft Windows XP Media Centre 2005 Edition - OEM (SW-008-MS) £78.67

Microsoft Windows XP Media Centre 2005 Remote Controller (SW-009-MS) £23.44

Microsoft Remote Keyboard for Windows XP Media Center Edition - Retail (KB-053-MS) £64.57

I have the 160gb hdd for windows and programs and the 320gb one for tv rec

Deathwish · 27 May 2006 at 09:56

You might want to swap the ATi graphics for nVIDIA, if you get one that supports PureVideo and you use the nVIDIA DVD Decoder you will use less cpu.

lolwtfbbq · 27 May 2006 at 10:44

Deathwish said:
You might want to swap the ATi graphics for nVIDIA, if you get one that supports PureVideo and you use the nVIDIA DVD Decoder you will use less cpu.

Which one? :confused:

squiffy · 27 May 2006 at 11:19

Nice spec HTPC, very similar to mine. That motherboard has onboard graphics card. I would use onboard GFX card for now, can always upgrade later. Don't need molex to PCI-E although useful to pick one up anyway. Wouldn't bother with that CPU cooler, stock is fine...unless you look at a silent ie Zalman 7000 CU.

MrWhippy · 27 May 2006 at 11:30

i'm no htpc expert, so these are just uninformed questions, but...

isn't the 3700 chip a bit of overkill? i know a couple of people who have htpc setups. one of them gets by fine with a sempron 3000 skt 754. the other does have a 3700 chip, but he also has a 7900GT graphic card and uses it as a games machine too. just wondering what use you have that needs that much processor power but doesn't need uber graphics.

secondly, do you need two hd drives? how much space does XP and the few programs you'll want on a htpc take, 2GB, more? bet it will be less than 5GB. and i can't imagine there'll be much performance advantage to having a two drive setup (real world noticeable).

just asking really if you'd be better dropping the cpu spec and the smaller hdd and useing the money to finance a bigger single hdd?

dunno though, like i said, i'm no expert at these. curious though, i might make one myself sometime so would be good to hear opinions.

lolwtfbbq · 27 May 2006 at 11:41

I changed the cpu cooler because is tight on the antec case and i don't want to buy a cpu cooler and find out it does'nt fit in the case

squiffy · 27 May 2006 at 11:52

MrWhippy said:
i'm no htpc expert, so these are just uninformed questions, but...

isn't the 3700 chip a bit of overkill? i know a couple of people who have htpc setups. one of them gets by fine with a sempron 3000 skt 754. the other does have a 3700 chip, but he also has a 7900GT graphic card and uses it as a games machine too. just wondering what use you have that needs that much processor power but doesn't need uber graphics.

secondly, do you need two hd drives? how much space does XP and the few programs you'll want on a htpc take, 2GB, more? bet it will be less than 5GB. and i can't imagine there'll be much performance advantage to having a two drive setup (real world noticeable).

just asking really if you'd be better dropping the cpu spec and the smaller hdd and useing the money to finance a bigger single hdd?

dunno though, like i said, i'm no expert at these. curious though, i might make one myself sometime so would be good to hear opinions.

Basic HTPC is around 1GHZ suitable for music playback, but for filters/pre-processing you will need more. I have seen my 3700+ CPU overhead go upto 85% for video playback scaled to 1680x1050. And if you have NR/sharpness filtering CPU % will be even higher. In fact I can get it to slow down if I set a couple of pre-processing options. So don't skimp on CPU if you're going to be using to it scale to HD resolutions (LCD screen, projector etc)

HD space- depending if you have TV series, and recording. 4GB for Windows , but you can easily fill a 250GB...music, TV series, recorded, DV camcorder (4GB a minute??) etc.

If possible have one big drive-less heat, less noise. Although cost of 500GB or 700GB drives is pretty high. I would just have a 250GB or 320GB for now, then add another if you need the space/won't delete stuff from the drive.

The 7000CU (should) fit, check dimensions. Might as well stick to stock and set to 1600rpm if you're just going to get a stock-looking HSF.