New here and just new to the whole XBMC world and I must say this is all so amazing. Thank you everyone for all the time and effort you all put into sharing and helping build such an amazing experience!
I found XBMC because I have a 4TB drive, with about 500 dvd rips on it, that I've wanted to plug into my 55" Sharp LCD and use, which replaced my 400 disc Sony DVD player. I searched for Blu-Ray drives, mini Android machines and even bought an Incredisonic player (that for the money is a nice little, but slow, machine). Then I found this forum and all the skins available and it just blew my mind and not I am in the planning phase of building my first HTPC. I have a few questions, which I'll post below, but here is my projected setup.
My setup is looking like this:
Case: nMEDIAPC 6000B
CPU: AMD A8-5600K Trinity, AMD A8-6600K Richland or AMD A10-6800K Richland
Motherboard: ASUS F2A85-M/CSM or ASUS F2A55-M/CSM
Power supply: Rosewill Stallion Series RD450-2-SB 450W
Hard Drive: 256GB SSD (Brand price dependent)
System RAM: 2 X Crucial Ballistix Sport XT 8GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 for 16GB total
Optical Drive: LG GGW-H20L Blu-Ray Burner/HD-DVD player BEING PULLED FROM AN OLD TOWER
OS: Windows 7 (Home, Prem or Ultimate depending on price) with XBMC
CPU Cooler/Heat-sink: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO
Storage: 2 X Seagate 4TB USB 3.0 drives
Any thought or comments would be helpful on deciding what to get. I'm going to start buying the pieces mid-January and build it as they come. So nothing is set in stone quite yet.
My 1st question is: Would I see a huge different if I went with an i3 or i5 over the AMD chips? This will 80% of the time be an XBMC machine, maybe some Live HD TV via a tuner but I'm not a first person shooter guy, but wouldn't mind throwing an older version of Command & Conquor and the current SimCity on the machine. But I don't want to turn this into a $1000 rig.
2nd: Will the Radeon HD on the CPU be enough for full 1080P support for the videos I'd be watching with the machine? Or should I plan on getting a dedicated slim profile video card? and what should I expect if I only go with the on-board Radeon on the chip?
Thanks in advance!
I found XBMC because I have a 4TB drive, with about 500 dvd rips on it, that I've wanted to plug into my 55" Sharp LCD and use, which replaced my 400 disc Sony DVD player. I searched for Blu-Ray drives, mini Android machines and even bought an Incredisonic player (that for the money is a nice little, but slow, machine). Then I found this forum and all the skins available and it just blew my mind and not I am in the planning phase of building my first HTPC. I have a few questions, which I'll post below, but here is my projected setup.
My setup is looking like this:
Case: nMEDIAPC 6000B
CPU: AMD A8-5600K Trinity, AMD A8-6600K Richland or AMD A10-6800K Richland
Motherboard: ASUS F2A85-M/CSM or ASUS F2A55-M/CSM
Power supply: Rosewill Stallion Series RD450-2-SB 450W
Hard Drive: 256GB SSD (Brand price dependent)
System RAM: 2 X Crucial Ballistix Sport XT 8GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 for 16GB total
Optical Drive: LG GGW-H20L Blu-Ray Burner/HD-DVD player BEING PULLED FROM AN OLD TOWER
OS: Windows 7 (Home, Prem or Ultimate depending on price) with XBMC
CPU Cooler/Heat-sink: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO
Storage: 2 X Seagate 4TB USB 3.0 drives
Any thought or comments would be helpful on deciding what to get. I'm going to start buying the pieces mid-January and build it as they come. So nothing is set in stone quite yet.
My 1st question is: Would I see a huge different if I went with an i3 or i5 over the AMD chips? This will 80% of the time be an XBMC machine, maybe some Live HD TV via a tuner but I'm not a first person shooter guy, but wouldn't mind throwing an older version of Command & Conquor and the current SimCity on the machine. But I don't want to turn this into a $1000 rig.
2nd: Will the Radeon HD on the CPU be enough for full 1080P support for the videos I'd be watching with the machine? Or should I plan on getting a dedicated slim profile video card? and what should I expect if I only go with the on-board Radeon on the chip?
Thanks in advance!
