[kortina]

Part1) This is written after a few hours of playing, connected to my old monitor in my office at 1024x768. I plan to update this thread when I get the setup on my 46" 1080p plasma, via HDMI.

I have been waiting for a while now to replace my xbox with a PC that is able to do 1080p.

I chose the following parts:

GeForce 9300-ITX WiFi
Celeron 440 (2ghz, 512 Cache, 35W)
4 Gig of Kingston RAM
Aywun MW-100 Case
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 LP CPU Cooler
80gig 2.5" sata

Build so far:

This is the first time I have seen itx parts in the flesh, and they are small!

First I thought I should connect the CPU cooler cause they are always a pain, I was right, after spending 45 minutes trying to fit the new mouting brackets for the Artic Cooling Freezer 7LP (low profile) I found that there is NO way you can mount this cooler without hitting componenets on the zotac board.

Then off to pull apart my main PC to poach the stock CPU cooler from my core2 3.0ghz. in about 10 minutes it was fitted and looking good... I found later that the cooler is to high, and I cant mount the CD-rom and HDD bracket, cant get the case closed

Does anyone know of a good itx cpu cooler?

Cant be bothered waiting for a CPU cooler that fits so I am running it with the stock cooler and the the top off the case.

XBMC Live: the install was a breeze, and 1080p works out of the box, the MCE remote also works too!

Power consumption:
Power brick (60w) that comes with the case, seems to use 7w when pluged into the wall. Thats right, no motherboard, nothing and still 7w. Bit dissapointing but what should I expect from a cheap itx case.

Power Brick + Zotac 9300 = 7W. No measureable extra consumption, probably due to the USB port power down

System at idle:
With XBMC Live loaded and at the menu, the system pulls 44w. Not to bad

System Playing Divx:
Strangely enough, when the video starts with the acceleration on, the power consumption drops! to 37w

System Playing 1080p mkv:
Just a bit more than Divx at 40w. Very happy.

Given that the power brick is responsible for 7w, the Zotac9300 and 35W Celeron must be consuming 33w, so far it seems like a good combo.


XBMC menus are smooth too.


Issues:
I would like to find some short sata cables, maybe 10-15cm. Any ideas?

I need to find a cpu cooler that will fit, does anyone know of a 1U 775 CPU cooler ?? (online that will ship to Australia)

[gerner]

Not sure how little height you need - I've just done a build with a zotac 9300 ix using a scythe shuriken cooler, it has a low profile fan so may be shorter than the arctic - worth checking out.

[kbrookes]

Kortina, how quiet is the system? And have you tried Aeon on it yet?

[kortina]

Getting my new CPU cooler tonight, and the HDMI cable so will update as soon as it hits prod (loungeroom)

There are no fans in the case, the power supply is a power brick so there is no fan. The ONLY noise is from the 2.5" HDD and the CPU fan.

This should be much quieter than my old xbox

I dont have anything to measure the sound level with...


I havent tried aeon, but its on my list of things to do.

[gerner]

out of interest, what fan did you got with?

[kortina]

OK got my parts home.

I purchased the Silverstone NT07 775 MoDT CPU Cooler, 37mm tall
This is EXACTLY the right size for the slim itx case.

I put it all together only to find that the PC would turn off after 5 minutes, and the case was warm.

Then I realised that I was a bit to excited and forgot to connect the power cable to the fan!


The setup is VERY quiet, much better than the old xbox.

I thought the xbox in 1080i looked good, but 1080p via HDMI is crystal clear and has much better colour.


Still havent installed extra skins.


I have changed the lircd.conf, so that the old xbox remote works with the MCE dongle, this way I didnt need to re-program my Yamaha remote.


Outstanding issues:
Audio out: I have connected via the optical out, but get no sound.
I played with the audio and set it to plug:hdmi now I cant remember what the default was.

boot up time... The setup is still a bit slower than the xbox, it would be nice to surpress some of the screens too, to make it feel a bit more like an appliance.

still getting my head around sftp, I have used ftp for years on the xbox and now everything is a bit different

webserver seems to want to run on 8080 and didnt work on the default port, this is an annoyance, web browsers do port 80 by default.

the MCE dongle has a red led on it, it seems to be going crazy in my lounge room, not sure if it is due to changing the lird.conf to the old xbox one or if it is something else. This is annoying as the dongle is under the middle of my tv.

[kbrookes]

Hey Kortina, thanks for the updates. As an Aussie looking at putting together a system with great bang for my buck, I really appreciate your posting this info.

Looking forward to seeing if you get the audio and MCE issues sorted and the performance of some of the more heavy-duty skins.

[kortina]

I got my Audio sorted! - for those of you who find this in the future, this help is for XBMCLive 9.04.1

After searching this forum for hours, I found some magic words.

no thanks to vdrfan who closed my thread.

I am using HDMI for the video, and SPDIF for the audio.

I have the SPDIF going straight into my Yamaha amp (RX-V559). With the amp set to "Straight" mode, it will switch to ensure that MP3s come out in stereo, Menu sounds in Stereo and any DVD or HDRip comes out in real 5.1 and even DTS.

Tips for SPDIF:
set these options in XBMC/Settings/System/Audio Hardware
Audio output device - iec958
Passthrough output device - iec958

The trick to getting the audio in the menu is to run this:

Code:

/usr/bin/iecset audio on

still dont know what is freaking out the MCE2 dongle

Will try and figure out how to load some more skins to test.

[kortina]

AEON:

get AEON from here: http://www.mediafire.com/?zmimm4ljm5m

unzip the AEON archive to c:\temp\AEON

get WinSCP from here: http://winscp.net/eng/index.php

WinSCP is a sFTP application that will let you connect to your XBMCLive install (whats wrong with normal FTP?)

Copy the unzipped files from C:\temp\AEON to /home/xbmc/.xbmc/skin

Results:
Well the skin looks good, it is *fairly* good with the 2ghz Celeron.

Most people would be happy with the result, but I am a bit fussy and found the interface a bit slow.


Also after many many years of using PM3 and PM3.HD in the lounge room, I dont think the wife is up for the change.