Spec Me A £500 HTPC

I'm currently using a 'HP Proliant Microserver N40L' as a cheap HTPC and it's been flawless so far :). I installed a 1GB Radeon 6450 along with some extra RAM and an LG Blu-ray drive and it runs all HD media including 3D Blu-ray's just fine. The overall power consumption is very low too (it uses a 15W dual core CPU - AMD Turion II Neo N40L @ 1.5Ghz). A seperate sound card can be installed, but i just use HDMI audio through the Radeon 6450 :cool:.
 
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ok so with this case, being slimline, what psu should i get ? if the rest of order is good to go.
 
lol i think that gfx card confused you, it was prolly a suggestion for the i3 setup
the amd has a more powerful gpu built in

your sensible choices are, wait for more amd motherboards with hdmi out or go intel i think^^
...the amd chips are new out u see
 
Preorder prices are often cheaper, once in stock expect the prices to rise. The mobo you spec'd doesnt support sataIII so the speed of the SSD is being wasted.

With Llano you want the A75 chipset to allow HDMI and overclocking on the K edition APUs. Any overclocking of the APU increases both the CPU grunt and the integrated GPU together. You will also get sataIII to use the SSD properly on the 75 or 85 chipset.

Ivybridge has a better IGP over sandybridge and uses less power (77W vs 100W on the llano) so you might getaway without needing a dedicated GPU to start with. If you ever upgrade your other machine maybe the GPU in that could live inside the prodigy perhaps?

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i3-3220 3.30GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £99.95
1 x Gigabyte Z77N-WIFI Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Mini ITX Motherboard £98.99
1 x Seasonic G series 550w '80 Plus Gold' Modular Power Supply £76.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST2000DM001) £72.98
1 x BitFenix Prodigy 'Yin' Mini-ITX Cube Case - White/Black £64.99
1 x Crucial RealSSD M4 64GB 2.5 SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive (CT064M4SSD2) £59.99
1 x Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/8GX) £23.99
1 x Samsung SH-224BB/BEBE 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £14.99
Total : £512.87 (includes shipping : FREE).



Case might be too big to go under a unit but it looks nice and you aren't restricted to choice between PSUs and GPUs. No worse than trying to hide a subwoofer I suppose size wise. The mobo has integrated wifi, twin HDMI outputs and supports sataIII. Has a good uk based 3 year warranty. The i3 CPU supports quicksync which would speed up ripping movies to the internal storage. The crucial or the samsung SSDs are better, I doubt you would need 120GB for a HTPC.

If you have a smartphone there is a free official app to work as a remote for XBMC, you wouldn't need to buy the remote then ;)
 
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honosuseri said:
Preorder prices are often cheaper, once in stock expect the prices to rise. The mobo you spec'd doesnt support sataIII so the speed of the SSD is being wasted.

With Llano you want the A75 chipset to allow HDMI and overclocking on the K edition APUs. Any overclocking of the APU increases both the CPU grunt and the integrated GPU together. You will also get sataIII to use the SSD properly on the 75 or 85 chipset.

Ivybridge has a better IGP and uses less power (77W vs 100W on the llano) so you might getaway without needing a dedicated GPU to start with. If you ever upgrade your other machine maybe the GPU in that could live inside the prodigy perhaps?

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i3-3220 3.30GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £99.95
1 x Gigabyte Z77N-WIFI Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Mini ITX Motherboard £98.99
1 x Seasonic G series 550w '80 Plus Gold' Modular Power Supply £76.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST2000DM001) £72.98
1 x BitFenix Prodigy 'Yin' Mini-ITX Cube Case - White/Black £64.99
1 x Crucial RealSSD M4 64GB 2.5 SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive (CT064M4SSD2) £59.99
1 x Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/8GX) £23.99
1 x Samsung SH-224BB/BEBE 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £14.99
Total : £512.87 (includes shipping : FREE).



Case might be too big to go under a unit but it looks nice and you aren't restricted to choice between PSUs and GPUs. No worse than trying to hide a subwoofer I suppose size wise. The mobo has integrated wifi, twin HDMI outputs and supports sataIII. Has a good uk based 3 year warranty. The i3 CPU supports quicksync which would speed up ripping movies to the internal storage.

If you have a smartphone there is a free official app to work as a remote for XBMC, you wouldn't need to buy the remote then ;)
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Looks nice mate, just can`t see the OP squeezing the Prodigy under his unit.;)
 
The Deuce said:
complete and utter tosh it's a well known fact that the new Amd APU's are far superior to their Intel counterparts.
Click to expand...

I apologise I worded it badly. It has an improved IGP over sandybridge is what I meant to say. I'm not saying he shouldn't go Llano, just showing an alternative.

Idleman said:
Looks nice mate, just can`t see the OP squeezing the Prodigy under his unit.;)
Click to expand...

Thanks bud, I did realise that, I'm sure I said in my post it wouldnt fit under the unit so would have to be placed to the side.
 
mad_weegie said:
ok i replace the ssd, now will this htpc be quiet ?
Click to expand...

I could not say in all honesty as to how quiet this will be. All i can say is look for some reviews or videos for the La Scala. Also look at some other cases and reviews. Check out the Silverstone website.
The Grandia GD05 looks good for the same price and comes with 3x120mm fans. Although it only has one external bay.
 
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