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Hello,
i did test XBMC and now i want to build a HTPC.
I have some ideas and i want to know if the hardware is good enough for playing HD (especially VC1 and ACS - MakeMKV). This should be possible without stuttering. The Sound should be transmitted to the a/v receiver (Denon) via HDMI.
This are my ideas right now:
CPU: Athlon II X2 240 (2 x 2,8 GHz)
Cooler: Scythe Shuriken Rev. B
Mainboard: Gigabyte GA-870A-UD3
Power: 350W Cougar A350/R 80 Plus
Memory: 4 GB DDR3 1600
HDD: 1 TB WD10EADS
Case: Any HTPC Case with ATX support
GPU: Zotac GT430 (Zone Edition)
The OS should be Windows XP Professional and XBMC 10.0.
Hopefully you could help me with my HTPC! Thanks a lot in advance.
P.S.: Sorry for my not so good English!
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Ok. Thanks a lot to now.
Can you please give me a little help which mobo would be great? It should be a micro ATX board?
When i use Windows 7 and the Zotac it will use the hardware acceleration? With Windows 7 which version must it be (Home Premium?).
Then i will go for micro ATX (with AM3) and same processor (?)?
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2010-12-19, 15:53
(This post was last modified: 2010-12-19, 15:57 by Schumi.)
Home Premium enought for HW. I'm not sure but i think all Win7 editions (include starter edition) can use all DirectX functions and HW accelerator. But Starter is crap. Home Premium is fine.
And CPU. When you using NVIDIA cpu in your system cpu doesnt matter. You can use Sempron but if you wanna more power also you can use Athlon II x2 240 with out no problem. But ı prefer lower TDP cpu for no cooling problems and quiet system.
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2010-12-19, 18:05
(This post was last modified: 2010-12-19, 18:11 by htpc guy.)
I think that 4gb of ram is going to be a bit overkill and a waste of money. If you run Linux then you will most likely want the 32 bit flavor which is only going to recognize 3GB anyway. Get 2 or 3 GB and put the extra cash towards a case. Silverstone has a great case thats about the same size as an A/V receiver for 90 bucks.
Also, you could save a bit of cash by going with the mobo in my sig. Its a great board that I highly recommend. Its light on power consumption, will play 1080p with your selected processor and you can even do some light gaming with emulators (even N64 and PS1 emulators if that's your thing).
How to use Git
| AMD Athlon II X3 Triple Core Processor 2.9 GHz |GIGABYTE GA-MA785GM-US2H Mobo 2GB DDR2 Ram | MSI N430GT |
| Logitec Harmony Smart Control Remote| 52" Sharp Aquos LED TV | Denon AVR-X1000 |
| Freenas Server with 18TB ASRock Intel Avoton C2750 |
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Another question: My motherboard has an HD4200 graphics card on board. For my first tries with XBMC and Linux would this be enough for hardware acceleration and MKV (VC-1 and ACS) playback without stuttering?
Then i will buy the 460 only if i change to Windows 7.
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i would take wind7 anyway, because everything will run out of the box and you dont need to reinstall everything if you want to switch.
the cpu is powerfull enough to encode every movie so i woulndt bother about that ati gpu. its pretty the same setup as i have as xbmc and gaming station. i would recommend the Palit Nvidia GeForce GTX460, small and fast. that will be my next one afther i got rid of that hughe noisy 275gtx XD
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2010-12-20, 05:14
(This post was last modified: 2010-12-20, 06:19 by ichihollow.)
umm, sorry to ask, but you don't seem to be the master programer, so forgive me for asking but without an ODD(optical disk drive) of some type how are you planning on bringing in media or playing it. While some people have no problems sharing files between linux and winNT+/OSX platforms, first timers tend to bite off more then they can chew. So do you have a blu-ray drive that you just didn't include in your hardware list or what were you planing on doing for media.
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