HTPC Upgrade Spec

McDaniel

McDaniel

McDaniel

Soldato
Joined
15 Aug 2003
Posts
19,917
Location
Essex
Morning Folks,

Need some help to upgrade my HTPC as it's starting to struggle a little bith with 1080P content on some films (mostly one's with lots going on at once, action films etc).

I got this ~3.5 years a go...

Product Name Price Qty Line Total
Samsung SH-S203P/RSMN 20x DVD±RW SATA Dual Layer Lightscribe ReWriter (Beige/Black/Silver) - Retail £19.99 1 £19.99
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4800+ 2.50GHz (Socket AM2) - Retail £45.99 1 £45.99
Crucial 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 PC2-5300C5 Dual Channel (CT2KIT12864AA667) £23.99 1 £23.99
Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H AMD 780G Micro-ATX (Socket AM2) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £54.99 1 £54.99
Antec NSK 2480 Desktop Case - Black/Silver (380W Earth Watts PSU) £57.99 1 £57.99
Samsung SpinPoint F1 750GB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD753LJ) £74.99 1 £74.99
Logitech diNovo Edge - Retail (967685-0120) £99.99 1 £99.99

So i am only really looking for a Mobo/Ram/CPU/GPU upgrade - hopefully around £150 tops (not sure if that's realistic) - it might be i can keep the mobo but just upgrade the RAM/CPU and GPU (current one is built in)?

Cheers,
 
R088ieS86 said:
Do it cheaper than that: Asus ATI Radeon HD 6450 SILENT EDITION
CPU will offload all the video content to this. It has passive cooling so you won't hear it either.
Click to expand...

+1

A HD 6450 will be a very big step up from the HD 3200 that is built into the motherboard. From the numerous reviews, the HD 6450 is more than powerful enough to decode high bitrate 1080p and make it look very nice. It can also decode 3D Blu-rays - which is nice if you are into that sort of thing.

With a card like this installed then it will offload the vast majority of the deciding job, leaving your Athlon 64 X2 basically doing little more than idling (which is great as it should reduce your system heat/noise output).

With the rest of your budget you could consider adding more storage (the samsung F4 2TB drive is a great value option) or even add a small SSD for responsive and silent playback, especially if you stream video off the web a lot (since the mechanical HDD or optical drive isn't being called into use).

Also +1 to vanandjuanunited's suggestion if you do really want a new system. Not only is a great HTPC GPU integrated with the CPU, but the whole system is passively cooled.
 
Last edited:
cmndr_andi said:
+1

A HD 6450 will be a very big step up from the HD 3200 that is built into the motherboard. From the numerous reviews, the HD 6450 is more than powerful enough to decode high bitrate 1080p and make it look very nice. It can also decode 3D Blu-rays - which is nice if you are into that sort of thing.

With a card like this installed then it will offload the vast majority of the deciding job, leaving your Athlon 64 X2 basically doing little more than idling (which is great as it should reduce your system heat/noise output).

With the rest of your budget you could consider adding more storage (the samsung F4 2TB drive is a great value option) or even add a small SSD for responsive and silent playback, especially if you stream video off the web a lot (since the mechanical HDD or optical drive isn't being called into use).

Also +1 to vanandjuanunited's suggestion if you do really want a new system. Not only is a great HTPC GPU integrated with the CPU, but the whole system is passively cooled.
Click to expand...

Appreciate the responses guys - and thanks for the above andi.

I do actually have 5TB of storage on my main righ (i7/6GB DDR3/128GB SSD) the HTPC just streams the data across the LAN (gigabit) - at first i thought it was the LAN struggling or causing choppy playback, but i transferred the files straight the HTPC to play and same thing, multiple players and codecs (but works fine on main rig) - so definatelly sounds like the GPU is the bottleneck - ill grab that card and see what happens.

Wicked!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom