New build: low wattage (<20w) idle, totally passive, gaming HTPC

Really want :) Your +12v is a little low but its still within spec afaik, I'm trying to find the tiniest mains psu that isn't made by some chinese restaurant.
 
Absolutely fab, I've been waiting to see a nice build with that case!

If it was £100 cheaper I'd be all over it! But what else do I want, the moon on a stick???
 
That's the exact setup I had been looking at going to but I hadn't been able to find any idle power usage info, so this thread is perfect for me! Unfortunately I won't be going for a passive case but instead I will go for a high end cpu cooler in a larger case (thinking Lian Li PC-Q07) as I want to be able to fit enough hard drives inside my htpc. Also amazingly you have got the identical picopsu to me, it really couldn't be any closer to the setup I was looking at getting.

How good is the remote with the Asus board? I am trying to weigh up whether it's worth going to over the AS Rock mini-itx board available for £75.

I don't suppose you have tried any 10 bit mkv's? They can't use the onboard gpu to play with so was wondering how the cpu stood up to it.
 
saitrix said:
That's the exact setup I had been looking at going to but I hadn't been able to find any idle power usage info, so this thread is perfect for me! Unfortunately I won't be going for a passive case but instead I will go for a high end cpu cooler in a larger case (thinking Lian Li PC-Q07) as I want to be able to fit enough hard drives inside my htpc. Also amazingly you have got the identical picopsu to me, it really couldn't be any closer to the setup I was looking at getting.

How good is the remote with the Asus board? I am trying to weigh up whether it's worth going to over the AS Rock mini-itx board available for £75.

I don't suppose you have tried any 10 bit mkv's? They can't use the onboard gpu to play with so was wondering how the cpu stood up to it.
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What makes you say its not hardware accelerated? Got to admit I'm not really one for super HD rips etc so don't have any mkv files but I tried to test this for you using Elephants dream video from here: http://www.divx.com/en/electronics/solutions/high-definition/divx-plus-hd/video (1080p H.264 MKV, AAC 5.1, and seems to be about 8 > 9k kb/s according to vlc)

While it was playing in XBMC eden (full screen 1080p) cpu usage hovered around 4%, the peaks (10%'ish) at the end were where I opened menus to stop it + alt tab etc... This is exalty the same cpu usage as my main machine (i7 core at 4ghz and 6870) so as you can see it is most definitely hardware accelerated on the llano gpu! I think this cpu could handle pretty much any media you care to throw at it.

mkvtest.jpg


EDIT: the asus remote aint bad actually, you can use a mouse curser with it etc so can navigate windows if you find yourself dumped out of xbmc. It can be tricky switching from side to side and you sometimes have to use a Fn button on one side in combination with a button on the other, but its rare.
 
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How do you find the remote for XBMC navigation as that would be my main use?

If you aren't that up with your mkv's then I guess you won't know about them. Normal mkv's (like you showed in your screenshot) are 8bit. Anime has started being encoded as 10bit which breaks the gpu offloading for playing the video. As I know the cpu side isn't the strongest I just haven't seen anyone say 100% whether it works with 10bit. To be honest they are a pain and I kind of wish they hadn't moved to 10 bit so quickly. Thanks for doing that though!
 
It's fine for xbmc navigation, although I do use logitech harmony anyway.

Give us a link (torrent, whatever) to a reasonably sized 10bit mkv (under 1gb if you can) and I'll be happy to test, email is in trust if you don't want to post it up here.
 
I just found a small 10bit mkv here: http://www.mediafire.com/?w429656vqm89ez7

Cpu usage jumped between 11% > 21% using klite codec pack + classic media player.

Same file and player combo uses between 10% > 14 % on my main machine (i7 core at 4ghz), so the llano is more than fine with this.

Bare in mind mine is overclocked to 3.5ghz+, and still I am running undervolted by 0.15v now as well, 100% stable (loads of linx and furmark) its a great processor for the money.
 
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Excellent, thanks so much for doing that! I won't be overclocking but I will undervolt as much as possible. So should roughly use 33% with stock clocks. I am plenty happy enough with that. :) Sounds like I will go for both the Asus with the A6-3500 then!
 
Your not wrong, google shows me that its pretty identical to the Wesena Mini ITX7-2, bar the massive lump of metal on the side.

Still that case seems to be £100, so I make £130 pretty good considering the extra metal + heatpipes gone into make this one.
 
would this be suitable to run as a workstation computer for browsing the net, word processing, playing music.

I do multitask a lot have photoshop, dreamweaverr, word, excel, 3-4 different browsers with countless web pages open on dual screen.

I'd like a silent machine because sometimes the ambient noise of my tower PC annoys me when I'm trying to concentrate at night.

Also, is there an AMD mobo possible fopr this machine? I'm thinking that an AMD cpu will be slightly better as it runs a lot cooler.
 
looks great, one question. why is the cpu heat sink soo small with just two pipes, there seems to be potential for more :confused:

also idle power is very impressive. I am in the process of looking into a lower power system as when im not gaming and just browsing / music i think mine is using a lot more power than needed! (oc`d 5850, oc`d 1055t, corsair 850hx)
the new trinity when its out is good at energy saving if its got zerocore for 2.4w idle like the 79xx series then you could would get the system even lower than you have now?
im not too bothered about a minor db fan whoosh and with a 79xx, corsair ax and idle amd cpu most the system fans will actually be off for anything other than gaming!


btw where you get the backlit wattage meter from?
 
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TigerUK said:
would this be suitable to run as a workstation computer for browsing the net, word processing, playing music.

I do multitask a lot have photoshop, dreamweaverr, word, excel, 3-4 different browsers with countless web pages open on dual screen.

I'd like a silent machine because sometimes the ambient noise of my tower PC annoys me when I'm trying to concentrate at night.

Also, is there an AMD mobo possible fopr this machine? I'm thinking that an AMD cpu will be slightly better as it runs a lot cooler.
Click to expand...

Of course, it's quite a quick little PC more than capable of running those things.

And it is an AMD ?!
 
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