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Anyone else gone this route?
Both of my HTPCs are old HPs (DC7800) that I found on eBay for less than $100.
Specs (off the top of my head. I'm a work):
2.6 ghz Core2Duo
2 gb memory
160 gb HDD
ATI Radeon HD 3650 with displayport
I already had a couple of TV tuners. I ended up upgrading my video card in my livingroom for true HDMI. And of course I added a few terabytes of storage.
All in all, they run XBMC great and both play 1080p flawlessly.
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nchall
Senior Member
Posts: 165
Yes. Just have to keep an eye on rising cost with additions compared to Ion or prebuilt systems. Works great in combination with HDhomerun Prime.
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LOL, this is great. I just had someone give me a couple of old Core 2 Duo HP business machines. I've not even picked them up from his house yet.
Right now I'm running a nice little AMD E350 system with a Radeon 6450 to bitstream but it's pretty slow navigating around and I'm stuck with using the stock skin. I was just thinking I would take my Crucial M4 SSD and the Radeon 6450 out of my HTPC and using one of the HP machines as my new XBMC.
It won't look near as nice but it will smoke the E350 in performance.
XBMC specs: MINIX U9-H LibreELEC 4K all day
Home Theater - Samsung 65KS8000 - Denon 3200- Ascend Acoustics speakers - Maelstrom 18in sealed sub 7cu ft - Behringer EP2500
UNraid Server – Pentium G3258 – MSI - H81M-P33 – Antec HCG-400M PS - 8Gb RAM
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I'm on board with off-lease SFF PCs from Dell, HP, etc being an excellent value for XBMC builds, especially on secondary displays where higher-end features like Hi-Bitrate files, 3D playback, etc are less important. Right now my third and fourth screens are being served by a Dell 4700c and Dell 8400, both with upgraded graphics. The Dell 4700c is particularly great as an XBMC box because it is small, has PCI-Express x16 graphics slot, and an optical TOSLINK output for connecting to non-HDMI AVRs. I picked mine up on Craigs List for $30 with a P4 3.2 HT, 2gb DDR2, 250gb SATA, and DVD-RW. I upgraded the graphics for $9 to a GeForce GT100 for HDMI video output and hardware decoding... if I had needed audio on HDMI as well I would have gone with a GT210 for $15-$20, but I was connecting it to an older Yamaha 5.1 AVR so the TOSLINK output was the perfect solution. The Dell 8400 I got for free from a friend and threw in a Radeon 5650 I already had on-hand... overkill for sure, but free and spare parts beats spending money any day of the week. Only downside is it's a full ATX tower, but it hides behind a 37" LCD in a hutch in the bedroom.
The main thing to look for is P4, Pentium D, and C2D with a PCI-Express graphics slot. I've put together a spreadsheet which identifies many of the models with PCI-E graphics as well as which ones require low-profile cards... anyone can PM me if they're interested. Also, certain models (mainly Dell GX260/270/280 but some others) are known for leaking capacitors which can quickly make a system run unstable, crash, and eventually die. The GX280 in SFF and Desktop versions is a popular model but highly prone to leaking caps.
