[Mercury]

Hi,

I'm considering building my very first HTPC. I've never made the jump because I wasn't satisfied with MCE, but now with the coming of XBMC that has changed. I currently use a PCH-C200 for my media playback needs, but I'm not satisfied with the stability as i have to do a hard boot several times a week when coming out of stand-by, and the menu with flash skins are very very slow... So i'm looking to "upgrade", but I'm pretty much done with embedded players... so HTPC it is. Some specific questions I had which i'm hoping more experienced users will be able to answer for me:

HTPC case: I don't see any reason to go above 100$ here, as i don't see how bent steel or aluminum featuring nothing else but a housing can ever be worth more than 100$. I don't need room for HD's as i have a NAS, and i don't really need a display personally. I was thinking about the Nmediapc 1000S, but unfortunately delivering one to europe costs more than the actual housing O.o. So scratch that!

SSD: I'm wondering whether there is any real benefit to getting a high speed SSD (400+mb/s). I would like the menu's to load really fast though, i hate a sluggish interface! So I'm wondering is a 250mb/s SSD will do or if I'm better off with going for one of the faster ones.

CPU/APU: Ditto to the SSD here. I'm thinking about getting an A6 or A8/A10 APU. I'm not sure if there is any benefit to using the A8 or A10 (4 core) over the A6 (dual core) though? Movie playback on my desktop hardly uses 30% of my cpu (a Q6600 in powersaving mode!) capacity for a really intense file (20mps average bitrate with a DTS audio stream). I would like it to be able to transcode AAC streams to AC3 on the fly however, so it must be able to handle that. Powerconsumption is also important for me, which is another reason I would prefer a 65w dual core over the quad cores. Bottom line is: will i need a higher power quad core for my needs or wont i?


GPU: thinking about simply using the iGPU as my GPU, or maybe coupling it to an onboard GPU in dual mode? Not sure if it works this way? Should i focus on HDMI or just a DVI? I'm planning on getting an HDMI switch because I don't use an AV receiver, I have a pretty powerful (but older) audio to power my home theatre so I'm sticking with that and only using HDMI to transmit video, not audio.

Memory: Not giving this too much thoughts really, the lowest NS, highest bandwidth memory i can find basically...

Motherboard: Not sure to get a µATX or a mini-ITX board. Not sure what the pros VS cons are here?

Controller: Remote control has to be compatible with a Logitech harmony 1000. Any recommends?

So that's kind of it. The main must haves are fast menu browsing, seamless video and audio streaming and seamless AAC transcoding. I don't plan to game or really do anything else on the HTPC so I don't (think) I need the really high end hardware here, but I would like to get that confirmed ofc. For hardware recommendations, location is important, I wont be ordering anything from newegg or any other US exlcusive stores because the shipping rates will break my bank!

Anyway, thanks in advance!

[PobjoySpecial]

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[Mercury]

Thanks for the suggestions!

Case: This is a personal preference. Personally, I'd choose a thin-itx motherboard and just hang the thing behind my TV, caseless.

Well. I do think I'd like something around the hardware... It looks a bit nicer, plus there's less chance of the kids breaking it ;-). All my gear is stuffed inside my TV cabinets though, so it doesn't have to be super pretty or anything.

SSD The important criteria is random read speeds. Anything halfway decent should be more than enough.

I'm thinking the Kingston SV300S3B7A/60G will do nicely with 80k iops random read.

CPU/APU Choose Intel if you use Linux. Choose AMD if you use Windows. Any mobile Celeron is a good minimum for Linux. The A6-3500 is a good minimum for Windows.

Bit of a bummer. I was shooting for ubuntu, but I'm partial to AMD because I feel it's a much better value compared to the i3, and the iGPU is considerably more powerful. I guess win7 will do though.

GPU Stick with the integrated GPU. HDMI for video, whatever your motherboard supports for audio (HDMI, toslink, analog, etc.).

Yah, i was partial to HDMI anyways.

Memory Whatever is cheapest and reputable. Performance makes little difference here.

What about total capacity? I'm thinking about 4gigs. Don't think there's much gain to be had by installing more?

Motherboard Mini-ITX is nice for the compact size. Micro-ATX can generally be found cheaper.

Also the cases for mini-ITX boards seem to be a lot cheaper/more feature rich compared to the µATX cases. I guess the bummer is no expansion slots though. I'm wondering if i really need any though? These days anything and everything seems to plug into USB.

Controller Any MCE receiver will work. Some motherboards support an interface called CIR, which will let you boot up your computer via the remote. FLIRC is a good, expensive option if you want to ensure a simple setup.

CIR sounds pretty interesting. The way i figure, a stripped down OS should boot in a few seconds on a fast SSD, so being able to completely power down the device by remote would be great!

If I was in your shoes, I'd wait until the ECS NM70-TI became available, buy an mSATA SSD + Ram + Power Brick + Inteset Receiver and hang the thing behind my TV.

If I was in Joe Schmoe's shoes, I'd buy an Realan E-i3 barebones from Dougie Fresh or an equivalent nettop, like the Zotac ID40.

If I was in my shoes, I'd buy a Raspberry Pi and re-encode my DTS audio tracks as needed.

Sounds like a lot of celerons. It's my understanding they don't do things like dolby-HD or 3D 1080p without adding a discrete GPU into the mix. Since I'm trying to keep powerconsumption down, I'm not keen on adding a GPU.

Also not too keen on re-encoding any of my files. I have a LOT of files... really really a lot. Any major re-encoding jobs would take me weeks, if not months. I'll do some homework on the RasPi though.

[KraziJoe]

Why SSD? Power and heat...Less draw, less moving parts, less heat.

[PobjoySpecial]

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[Mercury]

Not sure about the case, just a basic square box with an optical drive spare out will do. Alternatively i might just build my own case because i might want to use the HTPC as an internet radio and mp3 player, and i'd like the TV to be off when doing this, so I'll need some kind of small LCD display in it. Needless to say I don't plan on spending quite as much money as manufacturers with LCD's in them charge.

openELEC sounds interesting, I'll have to do some homework on it. But I might also want to run some emulators on the HTPC (so gaming after all!)... nothing more than some N64 roms though, so it shouldn't really matter since even my old Athlon XP still runs those.

I'm definitely going to go with a Llano, I'm just not sure which one yet. I wasn't sure if the decoding was done purely on the CPU, thanks for confirming, it makes my choices a lot simpler.

I wont be using a tuner. The Tv companies here are the monopoly running types, and they force their customers to use their own brand of tuning boxes, so HTPC tuners wont work at all. The only reason i can figure i'd ever want an expansion slot is for plugging in a wifi card, but then i'm already wired with cat6 so I don't need it.

I was already looking at Asrock boards, I'll check for the CIR feature and see what i can come up with.

As far as !/$ is concerned... considering i spent 300+ on my popcornhour (280 base + BDrom + HDD) which did only ONE thing i wanted (and a bunch of thing i didn't want, like crash a lot), which is to play almost every file i have; I have no problem spending the same again on an HTPC which will do EVERYTHING i want seamlessly. Plus afford me the opportunity to upgrade the HTPC in a modular way, as opposed to having to simply toss the whole thing out as I now have to do with my popcornhour.

I'm very interested in the RasPi as a cheap way to build mediaboxes for my kids though. I don't have to worry about DTS issues because all the animation movies i have are iso files. I'm also interested in using it to operate various systems on my fishtank ;-)

Keeping things simple is something I've had to learn, painstakingly, myself so... don't expect miracles ;-). I think I have a pretty modest list of desires though, XBMC fulfills most of them out of the box.

[PobjoySpecial]

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[Mercury]

Hi,

Just wanted to drop in and say I've been busy setting up Frodo on my desktop and I'm very impressed with it. Essentially I've managed to set everything up ranging from movies to our foto albums, series, our music collection. Everything basically. Even more amazing is that 99% of all the customization options I wanted were actually possible on XBMC! Save for a minor inconvenience that i couldn't get my documentaries to mix series and movies, I'm pretty darn happy with what I've got so far. It's the media center I always wanted but couldn't manage with the PCH, basically.

Since everything's gone so well, I've been giving the idea of turning the HTPC into my main gaming center a lot of thought. I was always going to have it run my NES, SNES and mega drive games, since me and the missus love bashing bad guys in Double Dragon and zipping around the screen with Mario and Luigi, and we decided we wanted to make some extra room in the TV area and pack up all the old consoles for safe keeping. But now I'm thinking; "Why don't i just go the extra mile and get rid of the PS3 as well?". I never ever play on it, my wife only plays on it for the type of games that almost always get ported to Windows. So if i just add a little extra spunk to the HTPC, I can get rid of the PS3 as well, since that wont be doing anything the HTPC can't.

In that light, the build I've got mapped out so far includes:

CPU: Core i5 3450/160€
MOBO: ASRock H77 PRO4-M/71€
MEM: Kingston hyperX PC3-12800/30€
HDD: 60GB Kingston SSDNow V300/55€
PSU: 430W Pure Power Be Quiet!/49€
BOX: MS-Tech MC380/64€
GPU: GTX 660 or HD7870/+-250€

And a set of Logitech F710 ;-)

I decided to get off the AMD APU bandwagon since I figure that if i'm going to be installing a GPU anyway, there's not much point in sticking with the AMD APU as they are simply not as strong in the CPU field, and a modest i5 barely costs 35€ more than a powerful Llano/Trinity does for a lot more performance.

Not sure if the i5 isn't overkill though? Modern games seem to be a lot more GPU dependent than CPU dependent. For the media decoding bit I don't need all that much spunk to begin with, and it' snot like 20 year old SNES games are going to make the CPU break out sweat either. Maybe an i3 would suffice? I don't know...

I'll probably be planting a 320GB HDD alongside the SSD to store my modern games on, since that 60GB will be filling up right quick.

The MS-tech case has an IR controlled power on/off function and comes with it's own remote, so that solves the powering up on remote issue!

Not sure about the GPU yet. I'm leaning towards the 660 because of physX, but the 7870 is slightly better value. I'll have to give it some more thought...