My Girlfriends Htpc

Davedree

Davedree

Davedree

Soldato
Joined
27 Mar 2010
Posts
3,069
Hello there,
After lots of thinking about whether to use an am3 mini itx, Sb, or Zacate,
I decided on this little bad boy.

I'm waiting for my case and then i'll give you some feedback on how it performs once it's all running.

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The case has arrived and I've got a few more pics.
The case isn't the greatest looking but it was cheap and came with a psu and has room for a slimline dvd/bluray drive.
I'm well impressed with the speed of the little thing despite the low clock speed and single channel memory etc and an old sata hdd. When opening programs its feels very responsive and suprisingly snappy.

Running it on windows 7 ult with 4 gig of 1333.,
It handles 1080p blu-ray and 1080p youtube superbly using powerdvd 11 or mp4 etc on wpc, (Cpu load hovers between 20-50 % with no slowdowns.

But as peeps may know it cannot play hd streams on bbc iplayer. The flash software needs updating.

Future plans involve either a samsung f3 1tb or an ssd, I'd make more use out of a hdd than an ssd at the moment due to the storage space.
The next thing i plan to buy is a slim-line internal dvd drive, or blu-ray drive,
but as my main pc has a blu-ray drive I may jusy get the dvd.

Overall it does everything that its intended to be used for.
Blu-ray playback to a 42 inch tv in the front room with the ability to browse the internet whilst being small and quiet with acceptable thermal levels.

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Looks really good.

Thats a bummer about not being able to play BBC iPlayer HD. Was going to get an E-350 for HTPC/Media streaming but now I'm thinking an i3-2100T might be the better choice for me.
 
thanks for the comment,
I looked into this for quite a while and I wanted to go mini-itx as opposed to m-atx.
The sandybridge option looked great but I know theres a bug for 24p playback that can't be fixed. For the price the e350 can't be beat but with Llano not too far away It may have been wiser for me to have waited. I'd like to think that bbc iplayer will improve as i sometimes experience dropouts even when using my 6950.

I can honestly say you wouldn't be dissapointed by zacate, but if you can afford to wait get Llano, or If you want more cpu power then get a mini itx 1155.
 
Oh yeah forgot about that 24p problem. Looks like I should wait and see what Llano brings.
If its just the iPlayer HD streams perhaps it is flash rather than the hardware? Have you set the avaliable cache size to unlimited and turned off hardware acceleration? How is your internet speed?
 
Its just been the Iplayer Hd streams so far. i've tried the hardware accleration options and it made no difference. To me it seems that the flash software is poorly optimised and the cpu cores cannot cope with the workload due to this.

For my dropouts on my 6950 I think thats due to my broadband being capped at peak times.
 
i have just purchased the same mobo and will be fitting it in to an antec isk 300-150 case complete with slimline dvd drive, 4 gigs of ram and a 60 gb ssd. The i player issue is not a problem for me as i just want mine to play films from hard disk, show my pics and store my tunes. Great to know i now have someone i can compare with! role on tomorrow when the last bits arrive!
How loud is the mobo fan?
 
zooankski said:
i have just purchased the same mobo and will be fitting it in to an antec isk 300-150 case complete with slimline dvd drive, 4 gigs of ram and a 60 gb ssd. The i player issue is not a problem for me as i just want mine to play films from hard disk, show my pics and store my tunes. Great to know i now have someone i can compare with! role on tomorrow when the last bits arrive!
How loud is the mobo fan?
Click to expand...

Hello there, Yeah nice to see you bought one too. The fan on the motherboard is almost inaudible but has no speed control and is fixed at arund 3000rpm. I have had to strip down the case due to temperature problems, When first installed it idled at 41 and load was 53 ish. It then idled at 53 and load hit 68 c.

After playing about the culprit is the psu supplied only has a fan to cool the transformer/switching heatsinks and it sucks in the air within the case.
As I didn't have any airflow through the case or exhaust(thinking it didnt need it)

The apu heatsink was suffering form heatsoak due to the psu.

I'm now idling at 38 with a load off 55 c on prime cool & quiet enabled.
With two silent 60mm fans and an old 80mm aimed over the cooler.

You might experience temperature problems with that case you've chosen and these chips don't undervolt very well, I've just fitted a slimline dvd drive but need a slim line sata power cable !! doh
let me know how you get on fella
 
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What are you using to read temps? just so we have a standard comparison :). Got it built yesterday and fired it up. It is very, very quiet so i am happy!. It was bit of a squeeze getting the slot load dvd,ssd and 320 Gb 2.5" HDD in but got there in the end.
The thing i noticed with the ISK 300-150 case is that it has ventilation holes both sides so hope PSU will not effect it too much.
Seems to run a treat so all i need to do now is master XBMC.
 
I drilled a series of holes on the side panel and rotated my psu 180 degrees so that the fan can extract the psu heat out the case. Seems to have helped with temps a bit.
I've still got temp problems. Bios reads 41-43 with a vcore of 1.280v.

aida64, core temp and hwmonitor all show the same idle temps but these seem to be 10c higher than the temp displayed in et6 or bios.

I'm just about the download xbmc and have a play thats the main reason i wanted a htpc for that program. Get some pics of yours and create a thread mate.
 
zooanski, thats awesome mate only last night I was looking at the same case and cpu myself. Any reason why you went with that particular motherboard and not the asus fanless one?
Although thinking of going with a different case as really want a 3.5inch hdd


Also how are you planning on using it, win 7 + XBMC? or running XBMC install direct?
 
Bry said:
zooanski, thats awesome mate only last night I was looking at the same case and cpu myself. Any reason why you went with that particular motherboard and not the asus fanless one?
Although thinking of going with a different case as really want a 3.5inch hdd


Also how are you planning on using it, win 7 + XBMC? or running XBMC install direct?
Click to expand...

I simply prefer Gigabyte motherboards over ASUS ones-no other reason.(had more problems with ASUS boards than Gigabyte over the years!)
The fan is inaudible from less that a foot away on the slow setting and mine seems to be hovering at about 38 idle.
I picked that case due to its size and the fact that i knew the board would not be obstructed by anything for cooling airflow.
I have it loaded with windows 7 premium and XBMC although as this is my first XBMC outing, once i have it sussed then i will install that direct i think because windows has no real use to me on this machine.
Very impressed so far and the playback and audio quality over HDMI seems top notch.
My next jobs are to tidy up the cabling and i hope to find some shorter SATA cables!, then maybe fit a slimline blueray drive (if i ever get and blueray disks lol).
 
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thats a really nice case, can see the exhaust fans are right next to the heatsink for the apu etc.
I've managed to get mine to idle at around 41 now, max load sees 55-58.
How well does it work with the ssd? as i'm still using a 6 year old sata lol.
 
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