Please critically appraise my HTPC

jpod

jpod

jpod

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I think it's pro, stulid said it was junk, he is from weston-super-mare. What do you think?

Fractal Design Define R3 Midi Tower Case - Black Pearl £84.98
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-Bit - OEM (GFC-02050) £79.99
Samsung SpinPoint F4 320GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD322GJ) £69.98
Samsung SH-B123L/BSBP 12x BluRay ROM / 16x DVD±RW Lightscribe SATA-II Optical Drive - Black (OEM) £54.98

AMD Athlon II X2 Dual Core 250 3.00GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail £53.99
Corsair Vengeance Arctic White 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit £45.59
Gigabyte GA-M68MT-S2 (AM3+) Motherboard - Retail £33.98

Lepa W-Series 450W '80 Plus' Power Supply - with FREE LEPA Hard Drive Enclosure £43.99
BeQuiet Dark Rock Advanced CPU Cooler (Socket LGA 775 / 1155 / 1156 / 1366, AM2 / AM2+ / AM3 / 754 / 939 / 940) £41.99
MSI GeForce N210 1024MB GDDR3 "Low Profile" PCI-Express Graphics Card £24.98
AMD Green Baseball Cap x2 £3.98

Total : £559.87
 
I vote junk - HDD too small, no SSD, dont know anything about LEPA, get a seasonic/corsair PSU, and that graphics card is way out of date, no need for 8GB RAM - 4GB is more than enough for HTPC use, no need for such an expensive CPU cooler on such a low power CPU, lose the cap.

Hawker
 
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jpod said:
I think it's pro, stulid said it was junk, he is from weston-super-mare. What do you think.
Click to expand...

What relevance does Weston-super-mare have to do with your post.:rolleyes:, WSM does have some good bits... other than Stulid.

Some may disagree with Stulid's comments, but he usually spot on with his advice & build recommendations.

Fractal Design Define R3 case, overkill for a htpc build in my opinion.

Nothing wrong with Lepa W-Series 450W, or a BeQuiet Dark Rock Advanced, but that cooler in a htpc,:eek:, excessive, overkill, I'm using one with a 2500K o/c to 4.6ghz.

Also look at the BeQuiet psu, a bargain @ £40, http://overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-042-BQ
Finally. 4gb memory @ £25 is ample, & hard drive should be at least 1Tb or larger.
 
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Stulid is usually spot on in his speccing a machine abilities, go look through his 26k+ Posts

you might think your build is beast, but jeesh, even i can think of better ways to waste 560 quid on a simple HTPC build

also i agree with everything that Hawker stated.
 
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jpod said:
Fractal Design Define R3 Midi Tower Case - Black Pearl £84.98 Not really a HTPC case, if you want a standard midi case then get something much cheaper
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-Bit - OEM (GFC-02050) £79.99
Samsung SpinPoint F4 320GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD322GJ) £69.98 Nowhere near big enough for HTPC use. I'd recommend buying either a used drive or an external drive and rip the drive out of it.
Samsung SH-B123L/BSBP 12x BluRay ROM / 16x DVD±RW Lightscribe SATA-II Optical Drive - Black (OEM) £54.98

AMD Athlon II X2 Dual Core 250 3.00GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail £53.99
Corsair Vengeance Arctic White 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit £45.59 8GB is overkill in a HTPC, I have 2GB in mine and have no issues!
Gigabyte GA-M68MT-S2 (AM3+) Motherboard - Retail £33.98

Lepa W-Series 450W '80 Plus' Power Supply - with FREE LEPA Hard Drive Enclosure £43.99 There's a better and cheaper BeQuiet PSU on OcUK at the moment
BeQuiet Dark Rock Advanced CPU Cooler (Socket LGA 775 / 1155 / 1156 / 1366, AM2 / AM2+ / AM3 / 754 / 939 / 940) £41.99 Complete overkill for a HTPC
MSI GeForce N210 1024MB GDDR3 "Low Profile" PCI-Express Graphics Card £24.98
AMD Green Baseball Cap x2 £3.98

Total : £559.87
Click to expand...

Try this spec for size:
f5f4f541.jpg


Even with a 1TB drive it's coming out cheaper, and you'll still need a TV tuner of some sort to go with it.
 
I did a lot of research before buying my HTPC so I have a few questions and advice for you:

1) What software will you be using? Windows Media Center, MediaPortal, XMBC, NextPVR, etc.

2) Why are you going with AMD Athlon II X2? A Sandy Bridge Celeron paired with an H61 motherboard is cheaper (since it doesn't require a third party cooler), faster, cooler, quieter and gives you much better upgrade options for the future.

3) Is there any particular reason you're going with an AMD GPU? With a relatively weak CPU like you're choosing, you need hardware decoding. You can of course use DXVA with any GPU but this can somewhat restrictive. A more versatile way is to use the CUDA decoder (CUVID) included in LAV Filters, but this obviously only works with nVidia GPUs.

4) That's a rather small HDD, especially if you intend to record HDTV. You can get 1-1.5 TB ones for about the same price as that 320 GB one, although admittedly they're hard to find and need to be ripped out of externals. Currently the famous purple store is selling 2 TB for £80!

5) An SSD isn't strictly necessary but can be useful - it'll help your machine sleep and resume faster, which can be important for HTPCs. A 40-60 GB will be fine for such a machine.

6) What TV card are you going to get? Personally I wanted a BlackGold BGT3600 (2x DVB-S2 tuners for Freesat HD, 2x DVB-T2 tuners for Freeview HD) but they're out of stock until at least the new year, so I went for a BlackGold BGT3630 (1x DVB-S2 tuner, 1x DVB-T2 tuner). There are cheaper options if you only want Freeview HD or Freesat HD (rather than both).

For reference, my final HTPC build was this:

- SilverStone Grandia GD04B
- MSI H67MA-E35 (B3)
- Intel Celeron G530
- 4 GB of 1333 MHz RAM
- nVidia GT 430 (ASUS ENGT430 DC SL/DI/1GD3, fanless)
- BlackGold BGT3630
- Intel 320 Series 40 GB SSD
- WD Green 1.5 TB (WD15EARS)
- Samsung BD-ROM (SH-B123L/BLSP)
- Antec EarthWatts EA 380D PSU
- Hama MCE Remote
- MediaPortal

The case was more expensive than I'd have liked - I was going to go with a GD02B for half the price but courier problems meant I had to get something else with next day delivery and this was the best I could find. Very nice case though! The whole thing is very quiet since I only have one case fan attached, the PSU fan is essentially silent and the CPU fan is quiet too. I've set the case fan to 50% and the CPU fan to 50% (unless the CPU reaches 55 °C and so far, it never has).
 
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That first spec is just crazy for the money

Here is a list that is better for less money.

Silverstone Sugo SG01B-F Evolution Aluminium Micro-ATX Case - Black £66.98
BeQuiet Pure Power L8 430W '80 Plus Bronze' Modular Power Supply - With 120mm Silent Wing Fan Built in £47.99
Gigabyte GA-A75M-UD2H AMD A75 (Socket FM1) DDR3 Motherboard £69.38
AMD Llano A6-3500 2.40GHz (Socket FM1) APU Processor £64.99
Corsair Vengeance Blue 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMZ4GX3M2A1600C9B) £23.99
Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 32MB Cache - OEM (ST31000524AS) £109.99
Samsung SH-B123L/BSBP 12x BluRay ROM / 16x DVD±RW Lightscribe SATA-II Optical Drive - Black (OEM) £54.98

Comes to £440 and you could reduce that down to near £400 if you buy some off the bits from other places.

If you don't like that style case choose one of the other matx ones and you will want some silent fans.

I didn't include Win 7 but it can be had very cheap from curtain places around £50 mark.
 
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Interesting reading and thanks to every one who has posted so far. Especially those that posted the specs and advice (DagonQ).

So far there are 2 AMD specs and I had not considered the lano (edgfactor), 1 intel spec posted here. No one has suggested a i5 rig and 650W PSU, those expensive heavy weights were recommended elsewhere, in my opinion that is overboard and why I was defending my build elsewhere - for fun I might add.

The HTPC is to play movies, rather than record TV, hence no tuner, it's a small hard drive until the prices reduce - but the advice here includes a few ways around that - cool.

Modern motherboards can resume real fast anyway without a SSD and for a home theater it is unnecessary in my view.

The LEpa PSU is Enermax designed, and in the original post elsewhere I agreed 4gb is fine - some builders recommend maxing the memory for the motherboard so I did at 8gb (Scott Mueller). Memory is relatively cheap at the moment.

The cooler is quiet, I have not used a stock one for a long time, it would fit in that case and would be useful if in the future an upgrade to i5 was made. No one suggested an alternative to stock here.

The Fractal case is quiet and a quality case. The 2 Silverstone's here are a similar price, personally I prefer to invest in a case I can use whether it is a HTPC or a gaming rig, one that can be used for years so I don't have to shell out another £60 - £80 in the future. I am not worried about the aesthetic and it is ATX.

Many thanks that is very helpful indeed because I plan to build one for my lounge, cheers pod
 
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i5 and even i3 are overpowered for the purpose. Llano is a good choice, roughly equal to Celeron + GT 430, although the latter allows custom refresh rate timings, which comes in handy for 23.976p material (i.e. all films and most US TV shows). Either are far better than an Athlon II X2.

By the way, if you're only watching movies then you don't need to worry about interlaced content (which is the most demanding on an HTPC), which is even more reason not to go i3/i5.
 
i would +1 on edGfaCTor Llano spec, no need for a graphics card as the cpu will process that , freeing up more money for the hdd/ssd. also memory its a double edged sword, dont need it but its cheap enough to justify it.

the case it comes to personal preference my htpc is ont in view so im using my V1000 case so i got more space for HDD's :)
 
Hey thanks fellas, that helps.

It's for google, music, office, tinternet tv and movies so a bit more than just movies.

My last foray into HTPC was socket 775 and AMD 550 so all posts here help bring me up to speed. I like low power, quiet and bang for buck rigs.

Many thanks
 
I just built an HTPC using a Llano and I'm hugely impressed. Got it running movies from my Nas wonderfully!

Spent ages setting up Hyperspin as well so that's pretty awesome.
 
Ah Anewbe4u Hyperspin, yep I have a MAME machine and a 2-up arcade controller - bliss tkaes me back to the hours I spent in the arcades on holiday in N.Wales!

http://mamedev.org/

Nice one
 
he might as well get 8gb ram as its so cheap atm ... its not going to to get much cheaper.....and in fact good bet it will rise in price .. so its a sound investment should he waznt to upgrade his pc at some point
 
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