HTPC upgrade

[oli collett]

Hi,

I'm planning to upgrade my current, rather dated HTPC with a new motherboard, ram, cpu, gfx and hopefully an HD-DVD drive and/or Blu-Ray drive.

At the moment I have a PC for general use/gaming and the HTPC is in the lounge connected to a denon 3802 amp and a plasma TV. I use the HTPC to stream music, upscale DVDs and watch the odd Tv show.

The PC that i use for general stuff/gaming is fairly up to date with a C2D e6600, 2gig PC6400 memory and an ASUS P5N32-E Plus. The only thing its missing at the moment is a decent graphics card; It's currently a 7600GT with passive cooling.

The plan was to buy the new components and either stick them in the HTPC or in this PC to give a little bit of an upgrade before i go and buy a new gfx card, so i'm wondering what kind of power i really need in the HTPC and whether to get a Q6600 in there or put the Q6600 in the general use PC etc. I don't really play games very often but if there's no point in sticking a Q6600 in an HTPC i won't get one.

So the current upgrade plan is:

Asus P5E-VM HDMI Intel G35 £105.74 inc VAT
Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 £152.74 inc VAT
Toshiba SD-H802A 2.4x HD-DVD ROM £88.11 inc VAT
Crucial Ballistix 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 PC2-8500C5 1066MHz £76.36 inc VAT
Thermalright SI-128 CPU Cooler £29.36 inc VAT

I'll probably swap the memory out into the general use PC for the 2gb Geil PC6400 because i don't think memory is too crucial in an HTPC. Eventually i'll also put in a 7600GT but for now i'll probably have to leave it, I wanted to wait for the next gen gfx cards.

Any thoughts? If there's a better low profile cooler than the SI-128 please let me know - most of the tower heatsinks are going to struggle to fit in my silverstone case, although it's reasonably big. Also, I'm guessing i'm going to have to go with Vista to avoid issues with HDCP?

 

[oli collett]

You deffo wont need a quad in a HTPC, and you wont need anything more than PC2 6400 Ram even in your current PC. Personally I would buy yourself a new PC for general use and put all your old stuff in the HTPC

I was considering that, but then i've got issues around things like RAID arrays...

 

[oli collett]

I didn't have any trouble going from my old mobo to my new one, however thats probably because they both have an intel raid controller (ICH5 and ICH9), shame you dont have Intel :/

Yup, thats the problem. I'm looking at buying some kind of NAS that would help in future for storing most of my stuff but for now i'm stuck.

I think i'll get a Q6600 to stick in this PC, and get that ASUS mobo for the HTPC. It's a good enough compromise for me.. this mobo is pretty up to date, supports 1333Mhz processors etc. so it's not a big deal.