Thinking of building my first HTPC

nigelhooper

nigelhooper

nigelhooper

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26 Jan 2007
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I am thinking of building my first HTPC and would appreciate some pointers, I've got about £400 to play with. Here are some things I want and don't want:

Want:
The case must be DVD player sized
It must be reasonably quiet
It must have a remote control
It must have HDMI output
DVD drive
Reasonably low power consumption
Must be upgradable

Dont need:
An operating system (feel free to suggest one, but exclude from the build cost)
Blu ray drive
Video capture card
Fancy audio output (its only going to connect to the TV)

Given this, what would you buiild for around £400?
 
The Hiper HMC-1K53A Media Center Case is DVD player sized, it's a very tight fit though and it doesn't come with a riser card riser card. You would need a mobo with a HDMI port.
 
Gigabyte MA78GM-DS2H (plays Blu-ray & HD; HDMI/DVI & optical out; no need for graphics card)

Lian Li PC-36B (slightly deeper than the average DVD player, but a good case to work with and very cool)

AMD 4850e (dual core, 45W; can't complain!)
 
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I bought the Gigabyte GA-E7AUE-DS2H motherboard, based on the NVidia 9400 chipset, it and so has the NVidia 9400 GPU onboard. Asus do one using the 9300 GPU (slightly slower speeds for the GPU) than the Gigabyte offering... P5N7A-VM.

I got the above Gigabyte board as I already had a spare Intel 2180 CPU and so the cost of the excellent Gigabyte MA78GM-DS2H would have to have had the 4850e CPU priced into it.

I was going to go for the Gigabyte MA78GM-DS2H with the 780g chipset and it does seem to be quite popular with HTPC builders. Be aware that there are 3 revisions of this board, the 1.0, 1.1 and 2.x. You can see them, and the differences on Gigabytes website.

All of the above boards, except for the Asus, use the excellent Realtek 889a audio chip. The Asus uses the Realtek 1200.

I am glad that I had the spare Intel CPU as I never felt 'comforted' with the AMD choice of the ATI3200 GPU with the 780g chipset boards.

I gave up with the cost / size / cooling / expansion issues that I saw to a dedicated HTPC case and so I bought a mini tower, which is quite small, but it can take full sized cards without the need of riser cards etc. It also doesn't present a problem with cooling.

Power consumption wise of different motherboards...



I bought a wireless Keyboard (it looks just like a laptops keyboard) which I am using to navigate Media Portal until I decide if I need a remote.
 
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This is what I have come up with so far

Thanks for your suggestions so far. Here is what I have come up with:

Antec Fusion Remote HTPC Case - Black (No PSU)
Antec EarthWatts 380W PSU
Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H AMD 780G Micro-ATX
AMD Athlon 4850e or 5050e 45W
Corsair 4GB DDR2 XMS2 PC2-6400C5 TwinX (2x2GB)

Questions:
1) How quiet is the Antec Earth Watts? Would I be better of with some with a bigger fan? eg the OCZ StealthXStream 400w or the Seasonic Silverpower 400W PSU

2) Should I go with the Samsung SpinPoint F1 1TB or the Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB?

3) Is the Corsair ok? It looks a good deal

4) Can you recommend a quiet DVD drive?
 
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nigelhooper said:
Thanks for your suggestions so far. Here is what I have come up with:

Antec Fusion Remote HTPC Case - Black (No PSU)
Antec EarthWatts 380W PSU
Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-DS2H (Socket AM2) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
AMD Athlon 4850e or 5050e 45W
Corsair 4GB DDR2 XMS2 PC2-6400C5 TwinX (2x2GB)

Questions:
1) How quiet is the Antec Earth Watts? Would I be better of with some with a bigger fan? eg the OCZ StealthXStream 400w or the Seasonic Silverpower 400W PSU

2) Should I go with the Samsung SpinPoint F1 1TB or the Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB?

3) Is the Corsair ok? It looks a good deal

4) Can you recommend a quiet DVD drive?
Click to expand...

ditch the amd dual core and get an amd triple core 8650, gives u abit more headroom when playing back blur-ray
 
Baggins_451 said:
Small tip, remember to check whether your motherboard has an irda connector if you are going to need one.

I didn't and I do need one :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

For infra-red?

You can always get a cheap remote control with usb/infra red dongle in your case :D (although in Op's case obviously your suggestion is best, but nothing to fret over if correct mobo for him doesnt have one)
 
nigelhooper said:
Thanks for your suggestions so far. Here is what I have come up with:

Antec Fusion Remote HTPC Case - Black (No PSU)
Antec EarthWatts 380W PSU
Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-DS2H (Socket AM2) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
AMD Athlon 4850e or 5050e 45W
Corsair 4GB DDR2 XMS2 PC2-6400C5 TwinX (2x2GB)

Questions:
1) How quiet is the Antec Earth Watts? Would I be better of with some with a bigger fan? eg the OCZ StealthXStream 400w or the Seasonic Silverpower 400W PSU

2) Should I go with the Samsung SpinPoint F1 1TB or the Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB?

3) Is the Corsair ok? It looks a good deal

4) Can you recommend a quiet DVD drive?
Click to expand...

You have got the wrong mobo there. You need this one to fit in your case:
Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H AMD 780G Micro-ATX

1) Dunno how quiet the Antec Earth Watts is, as mine is due to arrive today. Make sure you look where the fans are located on the PSU in relation to the case. No point in having a fan blowing/sucking against the side of your case.

2) I would recommend the Samsung SpinPoint F1 1TB ;)
 
I built a nice & very quiet HTPC using your case & suggested mobo back in May. I'm (almost) very happy with it.
Specs are:
Antec Fusion V2 Black/Silver Media Centre Desktop Case (came with 430W PSU) Case fans turned down to minimum speed
Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 3450 512MB GDDR2 DVI / HDTV (PCI-E)
Samsung SpinPoint HD753LJ F1 750GB 7200RPM SATA 3GB/s 32MB Cache
Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H AMD 780G (Socket AM2+) DDR2 PCI-E mATX Motherboard
AMD Phenom Quad 9550 2.2Ghz 4mb Cache (Socket AM2+)
Scythe Mini Ninja Heat sink (with no Fan installed)
2GB (2x1GB) Corsair TwinX DDR2 XMS2
An old Sony DVD ROM I've had for a couple of years turned down to 1x speed.
A cheap Wifi card

Vista Home Premium

I've got it hooked up to a non-HD 37in Phillips tv using SVideo cable and use a Logitech MX5000 laser Bluetooth keyboard and mouse (needed Bluetooth for the range from my sofa to the tv). Mainly use it for streaming tv & watching downloaded movies / US tv shows.

There are two things that cause me grief though:
1st the display scrambles every couple of days so I need to switch off the power at the back to reset it.
2nd sometimes when I touch the front of the case I imediately get the blue screen of death - only way to fix is by pressing reset button. It's not 100% of the time and I suspect it's when I'm statically charged or something - Simple work around is don't touch the case!

Anyone have any ideas why these two things might be happening & how to fix them. I've got the latest drivers etc already...
 
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Is anyone who has bought the Black Antec Fusion case (with remote) able to turn off the computer via the remote control and the power button on the front?

I have connected the red & black power switch cable from the LCD to the motherboard and left the other power switch cable that links to the button on the front unconnected. I can power on from the remote but not off. If I plug the other power switch cable in the button on the front works but I obviously lose the remote.

There is a diagram in the manual that seems to suggests I should plug the other cable into the back of the LCD, but the connectors on the back of my LCD look completely different.
 
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Don't have a remote & when I press the front power button it puts it into standby - moving the mouse will wake it (so have to dock the mouse before switching off!) and the display stays on default message. This is same behaviour when I shut down via windows start menu. Have to switch off at the back to properly stop using power.
 
nigelhooper said:
Is anyone who has bought the Black Antec Fusion case (with remote) able to turn off the computer via the remote control and the power button on the front?

I have connected the red & black power switch cable from the LCD to the motherboard and left the other power switch cable that links to the button on the front unconnected. I can power on from the remote but not off. If I plug the other power switch cable in the button on the front works but I obviously lose the remote.

There is a diagram in the manual that seems to suggests I should plug the other cable into the back of the LCD, but the connectors on the back of my LCD look completely different.
Click to expand...

Yeah you've got the case wired up incorrectly. The red/black cable goes to the mobo. The white/black goes to the LCD in the top corner (if you were standing behind the PC it would be the top right corner). The manual isn't very clear. I bought my HTPC from overclockers in one of these cases and they didn't get it wired up correctly either.

With this combo you can put the PC into standby using the remote and wake it up.
 
Oxy said:
ditch the amd dual core and get an amd triple core 8650, gives u abit more headroom when playing back blur-ray
Click to expand...

Errr the 780G chipset handles the Blu-Ray decoding using hardware acceleration.
You could stick a single core Sempron in there and high-def material would run smooth as silk.
The low power dual core is perfect unless the PC will be used for heavy encoding etc.
You can even game on that setup.... i can run Trackmania at 1080P perfectly with just the integrated graphics. I will be sticking a 4830/4850 in there soon for stuff like Burnout Paradise though :)
 
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