Spec me an HTPC

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Spec me a Mini-ITX HTPC system :

I plan on building a Bit Fenix Prodigy and turning it into a media box to plug into my AVR/TV.

I don’t really have a strict budget, but obviously I don’t want to over spec it and spend more than I have to, at the moment I have the following in my head but would appreciate any feedback on the components chosen :

• Case - Bit Fenix Prodigy
• CPU – Intel Pentium G640 2.80GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor – What’s the best one to go for? Bang/Buck, Cooling an issue?
• Motherboard – Gigabyte Z77N-WIFI Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Mini ITX - Unsure what’s best, onboard video required (or graphics card?) 5.1 sound required (or soundcard?) not interested in overclocking, wifi not required.
• Memory – Patriot Intel Extreme Masters 8GB DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz
• Aftermarket Cooler – Will this be required?

The motherboard is my biggest query as I’ve never used onboard sound/video so unsure what performance they give? 1080p playback is a must.

Already have:

• Crucial M4 60GB SSD & 500GB WD 3.5"
• Blu-Ray Drive
• Power Supply

Any help appreciated, thanks!
 
Hi,
are you sure you want to go intel for HTPC ? AMD A6-5400K seems to be the sweetspot for very light gaming and HTPC use as it will do everything except 10bit full HD and 4K video I believe (havn't tested this myself) (cheaper than the i3 3225 with HD4000, although there are only 2 FM2 itx mobos currently). Mobos for those are around 70 pounds. The ASrock one has the advantage of having 2 internal usb2 headers and a CIR port (which is awesome for the remote controlling and waking your computer from power off with the rc)

OCUK currently have a bundle on this http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=BU-144-OE
also if its a box thats going to stay next to a tv, and you have a nas or something else on your network to store movies, and you don't mind buying a slim dvd drive, I would not go for a smaller case (the smallest streacom one looks awesome).

On the other hand, if you want to keep your psu and your bluray, and don't have a nas, then go bitfenix as its the only case i know of which does all these things. After a 2-4 years you can convert it as a nice nas and get a smaller htpc :)
 
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Thanks for the feedback!
Honestly I didn't know enough about the lower range AMD models but if they'll do the job then I'd have no problem going for that, surprisingly cheap too! If for any reason I don't think it's up to the task, I can always add in a graphics card for another 30-40 quid?

Don't currently have a good NAS/Server yet, that'll be my next project :)
 
YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI A75IA-E53 AMD A75 Chipset (Socket FM2) DDR3 Mini ITX Motherboard £71.99
1 x BitFenix Prodigy Mini-ITX Cube Case - Midnight Black £64.99
1 x AMD A6-5400K Black Edition 3.60GHz (Socket FM2) APU Trinity Dual Core Processor (AD540KOKHJBOX) £49.99
1 x Kingston HyperX Beast 8GB (2x4GB) PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX16C9T3K2/8X) £44.99
1 x Xigmatek Loki SD963 CPU Cooler (Socket LGA775/1155/1156/1366/AM2/AM2+/AM3/FM1) £14.99
Total : £260.45 (includes shipping : £11.25).



that is what chluz speced and i must say, really really cheap for a prodigy and i love the look of the prodigy my self, gonna put my i7 in there when i get some money
 
YOUR BASKET
1 x AMD A8-5600K Black Edition 3.60GHz (Socket FM2) APU Trinity Quad Core Processor (AD560KWOHJBOX) £79.99
1 x MSI A75IA-E53 AMD A75 Chipset (Socket FM2) DDR3 Mini ITX Motherboard £71.99
1 x BitFenix Prodigy 'Yin' Mini-ITX Cube Case - White/Black £64.99
1 x TeamGroup Xtreem LV 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-17000C11 2133MHz Dual Channel Kit (TXD38G2133HC11DC01) £35.99
Total : £252.96 (includes shipping : FREE).



You could get away with the A6 for sure. You wont need an aftermarket heatsink and this RAM kit is faster than 1600mhz to "feed" the IGP. It would actually be gaming capable to a degree
 
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Leprechaun312 said:
YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI A75IA-E53 AMD A75 Chipset (Socket FM2) DDR3 Mini ITX Motherboard £71.99
1 x BitFenix Prodigy Mini-ITX Cube Case - Midnight Black £64.99
1 x AMD A6-5400K Black Edition 3.60GHz (Socket FM2) APU Trinity Dual Core Processor (AD540KOKHJBOX) £49.99
1 x Kingston HyperX Beast 8GB (2x4GB) PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX16C9T3K2/8X) £44.99
1 x Xigmatek Loki SD963 CPU Cooler (Socket LGA775/1155/1156/1366/AM2/AM2+/AM3/FM1) £14.99
Total : £260.45 (includes shipping : £11.25).



that is what chluz speced and i must say, really really cheap for a prodigy and i love the look of the prodigy my self, gonna put my i7 in there when i get some money
Click to expand...

That does come out really cheap indeed, I'm actually suprised myself :) (thats not the bundle though. You will need to decide whether you want the asrock with cir or the msi. )
If you're planning on a NAS build next (say 1-2 years), then definitly get the bitfenix prodigy, I think it will do a great nas case to recycle for your future build, with 5 + 1 5.25"= 6 drives (more if you mod, but you're already gonna have issues finding a mobo with 6 ports in itx format)

In any case, the A6-5400K will accept crossfire with a second graphics card HD6670 (A4 will not), so yeah, upgradability is there.

I must say there are 2 schools of thought here, the HD4000 people, who like the quick sync encoding capabilities which allow to reduce video encode time dramatically, and the amd A6 etc people, who say that for htpc, its better to have a balanced more powerfull gpu and a less powerfull cpu. Are you going to do encoding on your machine ?
 
Out of interest, have you looked at a Raspberry Pi with Raspbmc?

It's meant to be a low-powered, super cheap educational build for schools. But for the rest of us, it's a £35 media centre the size of a wallet.

Also, have you checked your PSU fits in a Bitfenix Prodigy? Most do, but some of the bigger ones (155mm+ depending on how well the cables bend) don't. Chances are you'll be okay, but it's worth checking.
 
honosuseri said:
YOUR BASKET
1 x AMD A8-5600K Black Edition 3.60GHz (Socket FM2) APU Trinity Quad Core Processor (AD560KWOHJBOX) £79.99
1 x MSI A75IA-E53 AMD A75 Chipset (Socket FM2) DDR3 Mini ITX Motherboard £71.99
1 x BitFenix Prodigy 'Yin' Mini-ITX Cube Case - White/Black £64.99
1 x TeamGroup Xtreem LV 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-17000C11 2133MHz Dual Channel Kit (TXD38G2133HC11DC01) £35.99
Total : £252.96 (includes shipping : FREE).



You could get away with the A6 for sure. You wont need an aftermarket heatsink and this RAM kit is faster than 1600mhz to "feed" the IGP. It would actually be gaming capable to a degree
Click to expand...

+1 cheaper and faster lol i just took the parts out of my basket apart from ram and heatsink probably should have priced checked, this is the better choice
 
Leprechaun312 said:
+1 cheaper and faster lol i just took the parts out of my basket apart from ram and heatsink probably should have priced checked, this is the better choice
Click to expand...

I used the free P&P so it would have worked out the same if I hadn't. I just put the cash from ommiting the heatsink and using the cheaper faster RAM back into the APU ;)
 
honosuseri said:
I used the free P&P so it would have worked out the same if I hadn't. I just put the cash from ommiting the heatsink and using the cheaper faster RAM back into the APU ;)
Click to expand...

aye quick question how do you get free p+p i have over 250 post and joined last june nearly a year ago but i still dont get free p and pmy forum account is linked to my oc account
 
deffo go amd they are better but you don't need a gpu even with intel.

Next question you AV receiver how new is it and does it up HDMI or optical to pass sound through it?
 
YOUR BASKET
1 x BitFenix Prodigy Mini-ITX Cube Case - Midnight Black £64.99
1 x Intel Pentium G630 2.70GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £43.99
1 x MSI H61I-E35 Intel H61 (Socket 1155) DDR3 ITX Motherboard £41.99
1 x TeamGroup Elite 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TED34096M1600HC11DC) £23.99
Total : £188.46 (includes shipping : £11.25).



That is higher speced than mine and mine plays 1080p fine and sound though sony amp.

A raspberry pi will play 1080p perfectly fine as well I have 1 in my sons room streaming from the HTPPC in my lounge
 
Thanks for all the feedback gents, appreciated.

AV receiver was bought this year - http://www.richersounds.com/product/av-receivers/yamaha/rxv473/yama-rxv473-blk, shouldn't have a problem with anything thrown at it.

I do have a raspberry pi, and had it running xbmc, I guess what I'm making is just a more expensive version of that, it's good, but I fancy a more permanent fixture with windows etc etc.

Looks like it'll be an AMD then!
 
passey89 said:
YOUR BASKET
1 x BitFenix Prodigy Mini-ITX Cube Case - Midnight Black £64.99
1 x Intel Pentium G630 2.70GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £43.99
1 x MSI H61I-E35 Intel H61 (Socket 1155) DDR3 ITX Motherboard £41.99
1 x TeamGroup Elite 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TED34096M1600HC11DC) £23.99
Total : £188.46 (includes shipping : £11.25).



That is higher speced than mine and mine plays 1080p fine and sound though sony amp.

A raspberry pi will play 1080p perfectly fine as well I have 1 in my sons room streaming from the HTPPC in my lounge
Click to expand...

Intel would get my vote, it's very similar to what I built before Christmas (I went i3, it was Christmas after all). It replaced an Acer Revo 3610 which was great but struggled with HD content that wasn't VDAPU compliant, the atom just couldn't cut it when GPU assist wasn't an option. I experimented with a pi and while it was good it had issues with UI lag and FF/RW wasn't as smooth as even the Revo, it also had the odd crash/lockup. In fairness if it were overclocked i'm guessing the UI would have been more responsive and the issues were likely to be due to the very early stage OpenElec and XBMC for pi were at the time vs a relatively mature/stable build for the Revo.

In contrast the i3 has been faultless with everything i've thrown at it HD or otherwise, it'll bit-stream HD audio to an AVR if that's important to you and just worked pretty much out of the box. The stock cooler is quiet and the whole system's power requirements are lower than the Revo but it has enough grunt to comfortably deal with poorly encoded media and do other tasks such as downloads/media encoding in the background as I move the last of my physical media over to my server.

One of the things that hasn't been discussed is how you'll be controlling it? I tried various phone/tablet apps which were OK but not family friendly so I went with a Flirc ($20). Now we use the Sky remote to control the TV, Sky box and HTPC. The big advantage is no keyboard/mouse required, no extra remote and Flirc emulates a keyboard so you can bind custom keys to random buttons if you need. The only issue I have is I haven't been able to get it to power up the box from a fully off state.
 
First time I've heard of Flirc, looks like a good idea, especially people using the htpc that maybe aren't quite as technically minded. Might be worth a go once I get it all set up, thanks! How do you switch between 'unit' on the Sky remote? I know there's a 'TV' and 'SKY' button, but how does it control the third device separately?

I've been using Plex at the moment and controlling it (gaming PC) via my phone or Nexus 7, and that seems to work quite well. This was my plan....
 
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