Noobie needing help with HTPC Spec

[visibleman]

Hi all,
I'm needing some help on choosing a spec for building a HTPC and i'm a little lost as i've been out of the building game for 4/5 years (last built a system using a Q6600, so a fair while ) so i'm well out of the loop especially with APU's etc.

The main requirements are -

• Playback of >1080p material, in a varienty of formats.
• PVR duties so a mixture of recording and watching, including live pausing, of Freeview and FreeSat - have already purchased a BlackGold BGT3600, so ideally a system that could handle recording HD from all four tuners (i know about the potential heat issue with the Freeview tuners), at worse record one watch one.
• Don't particularly want a system idling at 100w, nor using 500w whilst watching a film - so low (or certainly as low as possible) power usage is a must.
• Looking at mini-ITX or mATX for board size with the case being similar sized.
• Budget - nothing OTT but I’ll pay if components can be justified.

First, CPU/Motherboard.
Due to the low power usage, I’ve looked at the Atom/ION and Fusion based boards, specifically the Asus AT3IONT-I, E45M1-I and Zotac based boards. But all reviews I’ve read seem to have the same conclusion - "great for media playback/XBMC and light surfing but pretty gutless otherwise".

So I’ve also looked at using either a G620 or A6-3500, which are both apparently the best for performance vs power usage, coupled with either a GA-H61N-USB3/GA-A75N-USB3 or F1A75-I DELUXE/F1A75-M PRO. But obviously power usage increases; have read idle/load usage to be almost double that of an ION/Fusion system.

So, are the ION/Fusion based systems as gutless as the reviews say they are, especially for my PVR requirements?
If not, is it better to go Fusion (which apparently is a better graphics performer) or ION/Atom?
And are the boards I’ve listed worth going for/has anyone had any experience with the boards listed?

If they are gutless, am I better to go with Intel's offerings or AMD's (a lot of confusion over the upgrade path of the FM socket; apparently Intel would be a better choice in this case)?
And is the G620 or A6-3500 good shouts or should i look into using something else?
And again, has anyone had experience of the boards listed and are they any good (reviews I’ve read suggest they're ok)?

Just thinking ahead slightly, is it worth waiting for the G620 Ivy bridge equivalent (has anyone got an idea what it is or will be)?


Secondly, storage.
Most of my media is currently on a NAS box (Synology, has two mirrored WD Greens, 1Gbps connection), so was planning on using an SSD for the HTPC just for quick bootups etc. However with recording TV, a decent sized SSD is a fair amount of money.

Now i know it's possible on MCE7 with a bit of hacking and from what I gather MediaPortal to move the recording/playback directory; would it be a bad idea to shift this to the NAS box? I'm assuming recording would be a no-no, but if i scheduled to move the recorded media to the NAS box and then use it for playback only, would the HTPC experience suffer (ie: will it be laggy) at all?

Or would i be better off either using both a SSD (OS etc) and mechanical drive (recorded TV storage) or scrapping the SSD completely and just sticking to a decent sized mechanical drive?


And lastly, the case.
The system is to be hidden away in a rack and heat is my main worry, so although cases like the Streacom FC8/FC5 and Zeno's are great, i don't think they're suitable for this and i think this is somewhere i could save a little cash.

So can anyone recommend a decent, but not too expensive, case that is similar in size to the Wesena E5, the HEC 8K01 or the 'competitors' Vision Media Centre?

And similarly if I do opt for a G620 or A6-3500, can anyone recommend a decent low profile heat sink and fan combo?


Apologies for the long winded thread but much appreciated for any help

 

[Gav_881]

If your hiding it away then as i have said many a time to others i would and did go the N40L microserver route, it will run win 7 32bit with 2Gb ram or with 4gb you can run happy on 64bit.

They cost about £150 after you get your cashback cheque (about 2 months to come through), then add OS a bit of RAM and a 5450/6450 and PVR card of your choice.

They have 4 3.5" drive bays so you can get rid of the NAS if you like, i have one myself with a 5450 and it plays anything i throw at it and is even able to do some light gaming at a push.

Idle is 20-30W and loads not much higher, as for noise i run mine without the 120mm fan inside a TV cabinet whilst its probably not advisable if your using a PVR card too but it works fine and the only noise i get is from the mech drives.

As for the Ivy bridge I3 type chips they were supposed to launch a month or so ago but have been delayed for no specified reason so your guess is as good at mine.

As for SSD's if your leaving it on 24/7 I personnaly don't think your going to get benefit worthy of the extra expense.

 

[ChileanLlama]

I've an A6-3650 (100w) on an Asus F1A75-I Deluxe. 8GB RAM, 64GB SSD + 250GB HDD in an Antec ISK350 case. I don't have a tuner in this machine as it's using DVBLink from my main HTPC. Still using the standard cooler which is quiet most of the time.

Plays everything fine with WMC7 and TMT5. I wouldn't go for an Atom/ION (or perhaps the Fusion's though not used these but would expect them to be slightly better than Atom) as the CPU is guttless, with WMC7 this is pretty evident when navigating the menus. Similarly the SSD will help here too, and in particular with caching media libraries/episode guides.

WMC7 allocates a stupid amount of space for Recorded TV. You'll probably need a 128GB SSD minimum for a quad HD tuner. I opted for 64GB SSD boot and added a 250GB 2.5 hd for recordings.

I did consider a Sandybridge i3 or Pentium, but they have an issue with playback of 23.976hz material, which can lead to stutters - not everyone notices this - but I did on my 2500K HD4000 with BluRay ISOs - so went for a dedicated card. For a mini-ITX machine I didn't want to take this risk. However, this is meant to be fixed in Ivybridge, but the low end chips haven't arrived yet.

I wouldn't worry too much about upgrades if it is purely as a HTPC, I can't honestly see any need to upgrade in the near future, and I guess for me it won't be until I want a 4K display.

Finally I use WHS2011 to archive my recordings direct to a server as soon as they have completed. Playback is not an issue, but of course your network will be the limiting factor here. You could replicate this to your NAS by running a script to move the contents of Recorded TV every so often.

 

[visibleman]

Gav_881 - Having installed the N36 in SME environments, i'm not overly convinced it'll have the grunt needed especially trying to dump down four HD streams. Plus the case is a bit on the wrong size for the intended cabinet and i don't really need all the storage space (have the NAS box for that).

ChileanLlama - Thanks for that, certainly helpful. The more i've been reading around the more i'm edging towards using a A6/A8, especially as i've read of a handful of people having 20w idling A8's (3800/3820's).
Only issue is that the A8-3800/3820 appears to be rare as rocking horse **** and similarly i'm struggling to find anyone stocking the F1A75-I, which is a bit of a shame as it gets brilliant reviews and appears to be one of the best FM1 boards around. I'm assuming both are discontinued?

Still a little stuck with what do about storage; small SSD and a smallish mechanical drive for TV recordings (transfer them to the NAS every evening etc) is what i'm currently thinking as it's 'best of both worlds'. But then again i could save a little (cost and power usage) by just going with a mechanical only system; as it's likely the system will be in standby most of the time, i'm wondering if i'll really notice the performance of a SSD.

Cheers for the help though!