Soldato
- Joined
- 9 Oct 2009
- Posts
- 9,281
- Location
- United Kingdom
Just thought I'd post a few images of my new HTPC I've built for my Dad. At the moment its a pretty basic setup. Video running to a 40" Sony LCD via HDMI and analogue audio to two 2.0 200W speakers but soon it'll be connected upto the new AV receiver and 5.1 surround sound system for some DTS-MA and True HD goodness! 
Spec is;
AMD Athlon II X2 240
Foxconn Cinema II Deluxe 785G
4GB Corsair DDR3 Dual Channel RAM
64GB Crucial M4 SSD
LG Blu Ray ROM
2TB Western Digital Green
XFX Radeon HD 5450 512MB Passive
Low Profile Media Center Case w/ 250W PSU
D-Link DWA 556 Low Profile Wireless N PCI-e
Windows 7 64 bit and XBMC. Speedlink SL 6399 USB IR remote.
Thanks to the SSD, boots into XBMC in <15 seconds and use Windows 7 Media Center with Cyberlink Power DVD 10 Ultra for Blu Ray playback.
Most things arrived together thankfully, the 5450 and M4 SSD a bit later tho.
The case is from a well know competitor and has a branding sticker on the front. Thankfully this came off really easily (with very little glue and residue) to give the front of the case a nice look. Case is low profile and finished on the front and top/side with brush aluminium effect. Very scratch prone and is a finger print mangnet (hence the dusting cloth)
The case is pretty basic. Comes with a 250W PSU and a built in IR receiver and remote too. Haven't tried this one as the Speedlink SL 6399 works perfectly in XBMC (after a bit of tweaking in evenghost). Cooling is also pretty limited. There are no grill on the sides or top. There is space to install a 120mm fan (only with ITX boards) or 80mm fan towards the front of the case but that's all. Also if you do install an 80mm one in the "correct place" it actually blocked all of my SATA ports!
Luckily due to the larger grill I managed to shift it along a bit to free them up.
The drive bay adapter is removable, only allows you to install two drives, one 3.5" and one 5.25" drive.
The M4 is just attached with some double sided tape. The PSU doesn't get very hot all so I'm hoping it'll be fine there!
I took the Speedlink SL 6399 receiver apart and managed to do a bit of a mod so that it is all internal now, so no horrid external USB receiver! Just makes for a better finish. It doesn't power the system up but will shut down fine. Boots into XBMC in around 14-15 seconds from POST. Ran AS SSD Benchmark and getting around 250-260MB/s Read speed so quite happy with that on this board.
Using the latest build of XBMC, whatever version we're upto, and transparency for the skin. Plently of my own personalised backdrops to give it a nice media centre feel on the home page. Images change every few seconds too.
I prefer quite simple skins and themes so gone for fairly plain fanart backdrops for movies, where as for music videos and TV shows prefer thumbnails and banners.
The system idles a nice 30 deg C with the stock cooler and just a single 80mm intake fan. During blu-ray playback and 1080p video sits around 40 degrees which isn't too back. Blu Ray playback is very good at 23.976fps and very rarely get frame stuttering thanks to the Radeon HD5450. System is surprisingly quiet, not even audible from 3m even on very quiet scenes. Finally the best bit for me...total outlay £235! [exc Windows]
Spec is;
AMD Athlon II X2 240
Foxconn Cinema II Deluxe 785G
4GB Corsair DDR3 Dual Channel RAM
64GB Crucial M4 SSD
LG Blu Ray ROM
2TB Western Digital Green
XFX Radeon HD 5450 512MB Passive
Low Profile Media Center Case w/ 250W PSU
D-Link DWA 556 Low Profile Wireless N PCI-e
Windows 7 64 bit and XBMC. Speedlink SL 6399 USB IR remote.
Thanks to the SSD, boots into XBMC in <15 seconds and use Windows 7 Media Center with Cyberlink Power DVD 10 Ultra for Blu Ray playback.
Most things arrived together thankfully, the 5450 and M4 SSD a bit later tho.
The case is from a well know competitor and has a branding sticker on the front. Thankfully this came off really easily (with very little glue and residue) to give the front of the case a nice look. Case is low profile and finished on the front and top/side with brush aluminium effect. Very scratch prone and is a finger print mangnet (hence the dusting cloth)
The case is pretty basic. Comes with a 250W PSU and a built in IR receiver and remote too. Haven't tried this one as the Speedlink SL 6399 works perfectly in XBMC (after a bit of tweaking in evenghost). Cooling is also pretty limited. There are no grill on the sides or top. There is space to install a 120mm fan (only with ITX boards) or 80mm fan towards the front of the case but that's all. Also if you do install an 80mm one in the "correct place" it actually blocked all of my SATA ports!
Luckily due to the larger grill I managed to shift it along a bit to free them up.
The drive bay adapter is removable, only allows you to install two drives, one 3.5" and one 5.25" drive.
The M4 is just attached with some double sided tape. The PSU doesn't get very hot all so I'm hoping it'll be fine there!
I took the Speedlink SL 6399 receiver apart and managed to do a bit of a mod so that it is all internal now, so no horrid external USB receiver! Just makes for a better finish. It doesn't power the system up but will shut down fine. Boots into XBMC in around 14-15 seconds from POST. Ran AS SSD Benchmark and getting around 250-260MB/s Read speed so quite happy with that on this board.
Using the latest build of XBMC, whatever version we're upto, and transparency for the skin. Plently of my own personalised backdrops to give it a nice media centre feel on the home page. Images change every few seconds too.
I prefer quite simple skins and themes so gone for fairly plain fanart backdrops for movies, where as for music videos and TV shows prefer thumbnails and banners.
The system idles a nice 30 deg C with the stock cooler and just a single 80mm intake fan. During blu-ray playback and 1080p video sits around 40 degrees which isn't too back. Blu Ray playback is very good at 23.976fps and very rarely get frame stuttering thanks to the Radeon HD5450. System is surprisingly quiet, not even audible from 3m even on very quiet scenes. Finally the best bit for me...total outlay £235! [exc Windows]
