Isearch for advice and a new HTPC

@it

@it

@it

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Evening all, I would like to upgrade my ageing XPC SG33G5M

I currently use this connected using the onboard graphics connected to my 42" TV via HDMI to which I use W7Pro and WMC with a trusted Nova 500-T Dual TV Tuner providing a recording solution and watching FTA Channels, this will also be used to watch movies And the basics of internet browsing and occasional downloading, no gaming or editing of any sorts and in truth rarely use the DVDRW as everything is more or less accessible via USB storage.

I have narrowed down a few components and would like advice and or ideas.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-499-AS&groupid=701&catid=1903&subcat=1949

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-029-CP&groupid=701&catid=1915&subcat=

or

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-017-CP&groupid=701&catid=1915&subcat=
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-075-OC


Encased in a MiniITX case
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-001-IM&groupid=701&catid=7&subcat=2279 or similar however have seen a Steacom FC7C which looks rather nice.

Again running W7Pro with at least 4GB or 8GB memory with an SSD solely for the OS.

Many thanks in advance for any input and advice.

@it
 
Something like this?


YOUR BASKET
1 x Asus E45M1-I DELUXE AMD Hudson M1 DDR3 Mini ITX Motherboard £129.98
1 x Impactics C3LH-B Mini-ITX Case - Black £84.98
1 x Impactics 130W AC-DC Power Supply Adapter £59.99
1 x Samsung 64GB SSD 830 Desktop Series SATA 6Gb/s KIT with Norton Ghost - (MZ-7PC064D/EU) £53.99
1 x Compro VideoMate S800F PCIe Quad Mode DVB-S / DVB-T / Analogue TV / Radio Tuner and Remote £50.99
1 x GeIL Dragon 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C9 1333MHz Dual Channel Kit (GD38GB1333C9DC) £37.99
Total : £429.92 (includes shipping : £10.00).




I know nothing about TV cards but they both look simular apart from the software. Though i don't think you have to use the one provided, do you?

The Power supply peices are expensive.

Have you got a budget in mind? this is just a starting point.
 
Yes Doomedspeed like the above, yes the power supplies are eye watering, is the choice of case a possible overkill as the MB is passively cooled have even thought and looked at a SilverStone SG05, and or any thoughts on possibly a different MB with a off the shelf CPU thus giving the PC a future proofing upgrade ability for the years to come, TV card if I could I could reuse the Nova 500-T, however always open to options and ideas.

The options are a dilemma.

@it
 
YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i3-2120 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £99.95
1 x Silverstone Sugo SG05 USB 3.0 HTPC Case with 300W Power Supply - Black (SST-SG05B USB 3.0) £89.99
1 x Samsung 64GB SSD 830 Desktop Series SATA 6Gb/s KIT with Norton Ghost - (MZ-7PC064D/EU) £53.99
1 x Compro VideoMate S800F PCIe Quad Mode DVB-S / DVB-T / Analogue TV / Radio Tuner and Remote £50.99
1 x MSI H61I-E35 Intel H61 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £46.99
1 x GeIL Dragon 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C9 1333MHz Dual Channel Kit (GD38GB1333C9DC) £37.99
Total : £393.40 (includes shipping : £11.25).



This is another idea, using the SG05, as for the price, its a better case. Being H61, you can add a sandy bridge i5 or i7.

the only problem is this PC will never be able to gaming well, as the slot in the motherboard is a PCI-e x 1. This is perfect for the TV card, but not a GPU.

Can PCI-e x1 cards work in PCI-e x 16 slots? If so, you can go for this motherboard: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-482-AS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=2071
 
Again many thanks for the prompt reply and response, however and sorry for being a PITA I have just seen the MB's do not have a Optical output as this is directed into my trusted and probably long in the tooth LINN Movie Classic Di always wanted one and managed to pick one up at a steal of a price, however I know this will at a later date possibly in the future need replaced although it fits in the IKEA unit perfectly as does the XPC, hence sticking with the SFF build.

@it
 
Hi all again reading all the info above and an abundance of various forum posts and threads, I've yet not decided what to purchase however I think I have gone off the idea of the E350/E450 MB option due to the fact that it is limited in it's upgrade ability, so I am more inclined to go towards the option of either an AMD or an intel CPU 1155/1156 so upgrade possibilities aren't as limited.

However the option of AMD / Intel CPU's has stumped me which to go for as well as the MB, I have looked at a few options being an F1A75-I DELUXE or ASRock H61M-ITX or is the H67 option better.

Again trying to build a fairly money conscious build, where it'll be used for mainly for a TV FTA Tuner Recorder, light streaming, downloading, watching avi and the odd mkv, listening to MP3's, internet browsing, NO gaming or Editing of any sort will be done.

At the moment I'm using a XPC SG33G5M using the onboard graphics via HDMI, using 4Gb memory, 1TB HDD, intel 775 E6850 CPU.

Again thoughts ideas or opinions will be greatly appreciated.

@it
 
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Are you planning to watch HD material? Sandybridge graphics have a problem with playback of 24fps material. You might notice, you might not...In my main HTPC I ended up putting a dedicated graphics card in as it was noticeable to me...but adds to the costs.

AMD Llano's are good all rounders for what you want by the sound of it, and I've got an A6 3650 on a F1A75-I DELUXE in a second mini-ITX HTPC. AMD's drivers aren't the best though.
 
ChileanLlama said:
Are you planning to watch HD material? Sandybridge graphics have a problem with playback of 24fps material. You might notice, you might not...In my main HTPC I ended up putting a dedicated graphics card in as it was noticeable to me...but adds to the costs.

AMD Llano's are good all rounders for what you want by the sound of it, and I've got an A6 3650 on a F1A75-I DELUXE in a second mini-ITX HTPC. AMD's drivers aren't the best though.
Click to expand...

Not HD as such possibly the occasional YouTube HD content, however mainly as a Media Centre using Win7Pro, 1 x PCI-e Dual Tuners, WMC Recorded TV Programs, AVI file of around 700MB - 1.4GB in size again using Media Player or WMC and may dabble in XBMC, apart from that nothing to labour intensive.

So what is better longevity wise also, would you suggest the intel route or the AMD path.

PS - When you say AMD Drivers aren't the best why is that may I ask and regard to 24FPS I don't think the AVI files are of 24FPS although I could be wrong.

Cheers again for the info and input.

@it
 
When I'm talking about 24FPS, the most common place you'd come across it is if you were watching BluRay content. Intel look to have fixed this in Ivybridge but you'd be looking at an i5 (no Pentium's or i3's on IB yet) which is probably overkill for your needs.

Longevity wise I don't think it's much of a problem for your needs. Either Intel or AMD should run for many years without needing an upgrade, unless your use changes, or you migrate to 4K resolution.

You could hang on for IB i3s or Pentiums or AMD Trinity. But you don't really need any extra horsepower. If I was looking at re-using/re-tasking the machine in the future I'd probably say go for Intel as it's CPU is typically stronger, whereas the AMD has better graphics. If it wasn't for the 24FPS thing I'd personally go Intel.

I need to run AMD's 11.4 or 11.8 drivers (from last year) as the later versions have blocky playback on Sky HD channels either live or recorded from another HTPC. Most notably C4 HD and AMD haven't got round to fixing it yet.

FWIW I used to have an Intel E5200 on nVidia 9400 mobo and that did everything you wanted to do. In fact it would still be a good machine for that now, but I moved to quad S2 tuners, and it didn't have enough grunt for the software and the number of HD feeds.
 
again many thanks for the above info ChileanLlama, well I don't have a BluRay player per say as I feel everything can be gotten online via streaming although not a lot on HD content, so I know that is not needed,

Longevity wise I mean is the upgradeability of CPU's without the need of a new MB every year or so, I would still be using my XPC however there now seems to be Horizontal lines and choppy sound happening and it's beginning to be a PITA, I believe this could be a internal graphics card issue, although as I don't use or haven't used the DVDRW in so many months I could write that off for any use.

I would love to build a system and utilise some of the parts, be it the NOVA 500-T TV Tuner, however would love the option of possibly going HD for the FTA Channels, (does look any different to SD to warrant the upgrade) quad tuners would be good to have, CPU being a C2D E6850 and HDD's, with the option of an SSD solely for the OS the RAM well it's inexpensive to purchase nowadays so I would be happy to run 8GB, although I guess the 4GB is probably plenty.

Again many thanks for the help and the above makes sense.

@it
 
Longevity wise, I don't think anything you buy today would be a problem for a good few years. I can't see any reason to change my machines in the future, until I need to and that will probably be 4K resolution stuff. At the point I'd expect it to be a whole new machine, rather than just upgrade a CPU - so if I were you I just wouldn't bother thinking about upgradeability of the CPU - I doubt you'll need it, or by the time you do the rest of your kit will be obsolete!

Was testing a Llano with 7xHD streams, (4 recordings, 1 live TV and 2 DLNA streams) and the software we use was hitting about 70-80% CPU load at most - so plenty of capacity. I don't have similar figures for an i3.

Overall I think if you're planning on adding more tuners at a later date, and maybe going HD, then your bigger problem will be the choice of form factor. I.e. mini-ITX will be a challenge to add all this into. I don't think you'll have any problems with the CPU power for your plans.

If form factor wasn't an issue, I'm sure your existing set up could be reused as a good HTPC. The E6850 should be strong enough, so like you say it's maybe the graphics card that's letting the side down? What are you running there - a cheap nVidia 430/440/520 would fit the bill for a dedicated HTPC card.
 
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The XPC gave up last night and now displaying an energy saving Black screen, so I guess that it needs replaced.

OK so, intel or AMD. (the which is better/option war)

I have spotted an option of 3 MB's that I think may fit the bill, again feel free to point me towards a better or commonsavvy option.

ASUS M4A88T-I Deluxe (AM3), AsRock H61M-ITX (1155) or an ASUS F1A75-I Deluxe (FM1)

With a CPU of around £60 - £100 to fit either of the above, what out of the above would I be better getting again all MB's priced around the similar price range?

I think I may strip the good parts from the XPC and sell to offset some of the cost, better this way than having part laying about gathering dust.

The HD way with running 7xHD Streams sounds immense, I think for the time being the Record 1 Channel, Watch another is ok for the time being (until the next best idea or upgrade).

I have also looked at the M-ATX however intruth I would like this as it does open up a few more options as you have noted above, although I guess size and trying to be minimalistic is my route, unless there is a case where the option is found.

PS - Seems a shame I have to strip the XPC as it has served me well for a number of years, however things move on.

Thank you again for your time in reading and replies.

@it
 
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