Multimedia PC - What spec?

[Devilfish]

Hi folks,

I'm thinking about getting an HTPC for the living room but I'm unsure what spec to get?

Will be wanting to play HD movies, etc., probably use it as a normal PC too as well as recording to hdd.

Also, been having a look through ebay but not convinced...does anyone know any websites to browse?

Cheers

[Erazor786]

Don't know much about building HTPC personally, but u could have a look here and see if that helps.

Click Me

[Devilfish]

Cheers m8, avforums is always a good place to start.

Here's what I've come up with so far...

Antec Fusion | Cases | Reviews | Custom PC
Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H AMD 780G Micro-ATX (Socket AM2) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 5200+ 2.70GHz (Socket AM2) - Retail
LG GGC-H20L Blu-Ray Reader HD-DVD ROM Serial ATA Drive - OEM
Samsung SpinPoint F1 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD502IJ))
Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2 Dominator PC2-8500C5 TwinX (2x1GB))

I've not added it up yet ...to scared to!

Just gotta convice the wife it's a good thing now!

[Erazor786]

That looks pretty good to me, but then again i don't know much about PC's.

find it hard to keep up with all the latest trends.

Lol convincing the missus should be easy, ur still a newlywed

[beady]

I liked the look of the Antec Fusion as well, but I flat out refused to spend ?120+ on a case, especially one I was just going to stick under the TV. Hence I found this, which was cheaper when I got it (I think it was less than ?50 about a year ago).

It's the same case as the fusion, but doesn't have the display or volume control thingy (and a slightly lower spec PSU, but that won't matter for a media centre). I decided the volume control would be useless anyway, and if I wanted a VFD, I'd just buy a better one (not bothered yet).

The case is really quiet, and keeps things fairly cool. I did swap out the case fans for alternatives, but that's only because the ones that come with the case connect straight into a 5V supply, with only 3 speed settings (off, slow and fast), the changing of which requires opening up the case. They're pretty quiet, and I've found I could get away with just one fan running at slow speed (and that's with a passively cooled CPU). Still, it's nice to be able to control the fan speed in response to temperature, hence the fan change.

There's a reasonable amount of space in the case, and you should be able to get a decent size GPU into it (I had a 7900gtx in it for a test), but for a media PC that's probably not an issue as you'll most likely use onboard VGA.

A possible problem, although not in my experience, is that the HD bays are well separated from the rest of the components. It means that they don't get hot from the rest of the system, but it also means they get zero cooling themselves. I've not had it happen myself, but I imagine it could get pretty hot in the hard drive enclosure if the drives get thrashed a lot. That said, the drive mounts 'suspend' the drives on rubber mounts, so there's zero resonance noise.

Further plus points is that there's plenty of space for expansion boards on the back interface, and the PSU is excellent for the price. I might get round to changing it one day, but it's quiet enough for me at the moment. I've read a howto somewhere about changing the fan to make it even quieter, but I don't really want to go taking the PSU apart.

The CPU you selected should be okay, but if you want quiet, you might look for a slightly lower spec energy efficient one like this. I think mine is a 3800 ee, and it'll run at only 40 degrees on full load under passive cooling.
For me, HD playback is a little iffy (no x264 acceleration in linux yet , and haven't got around to sorting out coreavc, so the cpu sometimes struggles with software decoding at 1080p. As I haven't got a HDTV it isn't a problem though, just what I observed in some tests). On windows though you should be fine, since the gpu will handle decoding.

The spinpoints are the quietest drives I've found, so that's a good choice.

I assume you'll be putting windows on it, so the MB should be fine. If you wanted to play with linux, you'd have a nightare with the ATI graphics. Definitely go for nvidia if you want mythtv or similar.

As for memory, 2gb seems like overkill for a media pc, but thenagain it's so cheap these days you may as well.

Hope this helps.

[Devilfish]

As always, thanks Beady for the extensive reply.

Most of your assumptions are correct...

I already have a spinpoint in my main PC so I know how quiet they are.
Yes, Windows for the OS.
The motherboard has onboard VGA/DVI/HDMI so no additional graphics.
Good point about the CPU, I'll probably go with the 5000+ now that you mention it, and it is a tenner cheaper .

Now we come to the case, I know it's a little expensive but I like the silver finish at the from and I don't a cheap and nasty looking case staring back at me every day.

Thanks again for your reply, it's made me much more confident in my choices.

[westkill]

im quite intrested in a project like this never built on my self
been following this thread myself

heres some more cases to browse through
HTPC Cases - After Hours Computers

[The Strangler]

Media Centre

This is the setup I have. It does everything I want it to and the case is
31 x 20 x 18.5 cm (LWH), it also has HDMI built in as well as a monitor port.

Case - Shuttle SN68PTG5 (Glamor Series)
CPU - AMD AM2 Athlon 64 6000+ AM2 , Windsor Core, Dual Core 3.0GHz
HDD - 750 GB Western Digital
Memory - 4GB (2x2GB) Corsair TwinX XMS2, DDR2 PC2-6400 (800)
TV Card - Hauppauge WinTV-HVR1100 PCI Analog+Digital TV Tuner Card
Bluray - Pioneer BDC-202BK 5x Blu-Ray Reader Combo

[Devilfish]

Nice spec Stranger...I think it's abot overkill for a media PC but components are dirt sheap just now so why not . That's more like a gaming PC you got there.

@westkill - just do it! I'll hold yer hand!

[The Strangler]

Its al things to all men. Its my main pc as well as media centre got it hooked up to a 38" plasma so i have a nice big monitor. Dont do much gaming on it as i've got a 360, went overboard on the memory but it was only ?13 dearer for 4gb than 2gb.

[Devilfish]

Hehe...exactly...why not?

[westkill]

Nice spec Stranger...I think it's abot overkill for a media PC but components are dirt sheap just now so why not That's more like a gaming PC you got there.

@westkill - just do it! I'll hold yer hand!

hold my hand
and i thought you had just got married
wait till mrs devilfish finds out

[riptoff]

Have just built HTPC using very similar components.
Everything is fine but hte stock HSF is noisy would suggest you use zalman etc
playback on X264 using the ATI3200 is a little ropey.
I added ATI3450 card for 30 quid now getting far better results

[Devilfish]

Thanks riptoff, I'll look into that!

[Raven]

My PC isn't the latest or greatest in terms of gaming, but my setup is brilliant for HD multimedia.

Let's see I have 2gb of Kingston RAM. I have a 3ghz AMD 6000 dual core cpu....I also have a 256 mb Nvidia Geforce 8600GT - as I say not the latest or greatest, but that graphics card and memory are quite cheap now.....to tell you the truth my PC always played 720p perfectly fine but always struggled with 1080p quite badly in that seeking took a fair amount of time and the audio was almost always out of sync.....this was until I did two things....I got PowerDVD Ultra the latest one which not only plays blu ray rips but also plays HD content through the graphics card but it doesn't support MKV files unfortunately....but CoreAVC does....I got CoreAVC on my PC too and now I can play any 1080p file be in blu ray, wmv or mkv and it all plays what you would consider normally. Now as far as I know CoreAVC is just a fast decoder so I think it still uses the CPU with that but it's just optimising the playback so it's probably about 200% faster and playing at a normal rate and not struggling at all.

Need a good CPU and a decent graphics card though to play HD stuff on the PC, I fell short in trying to build a gaming rig but as it turns out I have a great rig for playing HD content, need another hard drive now though .