Spec me a PC to run HD

Soldato
Joined
27 Mar 2004
Posts
3,589
Location
England
Hi guys,

I have recently upgraded my TV so now I want to be able to watch movies from my PC on it (use it as a monitor).

720p would be ok but 1080p would be better in terms of what I want watch.

What kind of rig would I need for this?

I have an age old 32bit AMD Barton so it's nowhere near upto the task.

Thanks.
 
I want to utillise what ever I can from the old rig which i'm guessing is only the ATX tower.

I'm not really fussed about Blu ray at this present time.

I'm only looking at spending £250, would this cover it?
 
Hey hey,

It depends on what you intend to watch. x264 encoded content can be played back on a CUDA enabled GPU.

I have a HTPC which is only a 1.6ghz intel atom with onbaord nvidia gpu. The gpu will handle any 1080p x264 as well as blu-ray disc play back.

WMV-HD though wont' play back in 1080p as it is being decoded on the cpu. The package I have is the zotac ion board, which doesn't cost too muchf or what it does.

If you're looking to play back a range of things I'd look at a core2duo, but I can't say which model would support 1080p.
 
£50 over budget and overpowered, but hey this is a enthusiast forum! Would do the job easily.

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Product Name Qty Price Line Total
Asus M4A785TD-M Evo AMD 785G (Socket AM3) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard £67.99(£59.12) £67.99(£59.12)
G.Skill Ripjaw 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (F3-12800CL9D-4GBRL) £66.99(£58.25) £66.99(£58.25)
Samsung SpinPoint F1 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103UJ) £59.98(£52.16) £59.98(£52.16)
AMD Athlon II X2 Dual Core 240 2.80GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail £45.99(£39.99) £45.99(£39.99)
OCZ StealthXStream 400w Silent Power Supply £36.00(£31.30) £36.00(£31.30)
Samsung SH-S223B/BEBE 22x DVD±RW SATA Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM £16.99(£14.77) £16.99(£14.77)
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Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:DPD Next Day Parcel(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £10.00
VAT is being charged at 15% VAT : £39.84
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Hmm Good spec but I'd reccommend a nvidia card with CoreAVC and gpu decoding. That will easily handle decoding of x264 files which seem to be the most popular.
 
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