Lounge HTPC build. Circa £800 to play with.

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Rated-R

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Hey. First post here.

Would love some opinion on speccing up a HTPC build. It has literally been YEARS since I've bought PC hardware so I'm not that confident in what I'm looking at any more in terms of CPU, RAM and video. Please help me spend my money!!

In a nutshell, I'm after something to go in the lounge and plug into my LCD screen. It has to be a good looking case (no towers, they won't fit), and it has to be quiet.

Beyond that, storage of at least 1TB - I was considering a SSD for my Windows 7 partition too, is it worth the expense for the supposed speed benefits? Or would I be better budgeting that cash elsewhere?

Top end gaming is not a concern, I just use the 360. Playing HD content from mkv and other formats, plus playing music would be the major uses for the box. But the last thing I want is to underpower and end up with juddery playback for films etc.

If there's room in the budget, a new speaker system would be pretty sweet as well. I bought my last one from OCUK back in maybe 2003, and it's starting to show it's age.
 
If you just want a good media playback system to plug directly into a HDTV (as opposed to via an AV Amp) then you don't need to much CPU to play 1080p content.

AMD 890GX AM3 Motherboard
Any dual or quad core Phenon II (x4 810 is likely to be coolest)
Quiet CPU cooler e.g. Zalman 8700
2 GB of DDR3
1 small SDD for OS (for silence rather than speed)
2*500GB 2.5"
Blu-ray reader
Twin DVB-T PCi-E card (if required)
Fanless, or semi fanless PSU.

For a case I would go for the new Zalman (HD503) for a under TV case - if you had another £800 go for the OrigenAE. However, I switched to a Antec 300 case to the side of the TV for my HTPC as the blu ray drive is easier to get at and the ventilation is better (I have a passive HD4850 which can get toasty).

I use Win XP MCE with nvidia purevideo Mpeg 2 decoder as a PVR (as its very reliable and very few drop outs) and Win 7 for anything more exotic.
 
How does this look?

htpc804.png


The graphics are onboard the i3 chip and are ideal for full 1080p decoding (just connect your TV HDMI to the motherboard). I included a sound card and speakers - I use the same exact sound components in a HTPC at home and it sounds great.

I also included a Blu Ray drive, so you can play HD Movies that way too.

I included a large HDD but no SSD. My reasoning is that an SSD would speed up boot and application load times - but would do little to loading video times as these would have to be stored on the SSD. However, if you really value music loading times or mainly plan to use streaming content then an SSD would make sense as you should be able to fit a good chunk of music on an SSD - all the while being much faster than a HDD and silent.

Quick Question: Why do you use Win XP MCE when you can use the Windows Media Centre included in Windows 7? Surely with shark007 codecs it can play anything.
 
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cmndr_andi said:
How does this look?

htpc804.png



Quick Question: Why do you use Win XP MCE when you can use the Windows Media Centre included in Windows 7? Surely with shark007 codecs it can play anything.
Click to expand...

I use Win XP MCE for reliability - Win 7 MC (and Vista) does not seem to be reliable enough waking up and recording programs. Also the drop outs on TV recorded with Win 7 MC are much greater (this may be due to the W7 drivers and are much worse with the 64 bit ones, this is with Terratec, Compro and Blackgold cards). Finally SD TV up-scaled via XP/purevideo looks much better that via Win7 on my 1080p set.

Unless there is a need for HD 7.1 via HDMI I would go for the onboard AMD HDMI output as you don't need the extra soundcard. Your spec would also be too noisy for me but then it's a particular bugbear with me.
 
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This is what I just built for my new HTPC.

The onboard NVIDIA ION GFX takes care of the HD decoding flawlessly.

Installed Windows 7 and Boxee media centre (which has built in Hardware Video decoding).

Compucase Mini ITX Case - With 120W PSU

ASUS AT3N7A-I NVIDIA ION with Intel Atom N330 Dual Core Processor HDMI VGA Out 8 Channel Audio Mini ITX Motherboard

Crucial 4GB Kit (2x2GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400

Samsung SN-T083C Slot Loading Notebook 8x DVD??RW DL & RAM SATA Black Bare Drive - OEM

Total - £270.50

Already had a 3.5" 500gb HD spare.

I changed the fan on the mobo for a quieter one but I'm still looking for a passive soulution for this mobo if anyone has any ideas?
 
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