cheap htpc

hey i was looking to build a cheap htpc for the living room but i dont know how cheap i can go....

the way i see it i dont think i need to much processing power since most if not all of the encoding is done by the video card so i was thinking about getting a cheap 4650 or 4670 video card

and as for the cpu/mobo at first i was thinking about a atom build to go really cheap but apparently they dont have pci-e slots so what would you guys suggest?

how about a cheap 50 dollar asus board and a 2180 or something?? this pc is pretty much just going to play movies off media portal

have you considered an amd based setup? 45watt x2 cpu with 780/790 or nvidia 8200 setup, you wouldnt need to buy a vid card then unless you were planning on gaming on it as well.

I'm using a cheap 3650 AGP card, it works great, anything newer will be just fine.

never really thought about a amd system but now that you mention it...it makes sense since its a lot cheaper... i wouldnt want to go with out a dedicated video card though i think 1080 mkv files would be to much for the cpu/onboard video to handle

so then i really dont need something to power full huh...

never bought amd before.. would a 4050e be good enough??

definitely

xtkxhom3r said:

never really thought about a amd system but now that you mention it...it makes sense since its a lot cheaper... i wouldnt want to go with out a dedicated video card though i think 1080 mkv files would be to much for the cpu/onboard video to handle

so then i really dont need something to power full huh...

never bought amd before.. would a 4050e be good enough??

Click to expand...

780G or 790GX will be more than enough for 1080p

no need for a dedicated card. any ATI HD xxxx chipset/card will work. I made this build a few months ago. It plays Blu-Rays with 30% CPU usage and plays 1080p mkv's with 10%-20% cpu usage.

The trick is in the codecs. If your codecs are not setup properly, it will make the CPU do all the work instead of using your GPU and DxVA hardware accel.

ok so no dedicated card then so what cpu would you guys recommend

if you're going small form factor, I would get the AMD X2 5050e.

I wonder how much truth there is to the codec thing that mrjspeed mentioned? I have an Atom 330 board, it will play 720, but not 1080 HD videos.

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=608605

have a spare PSU, HDD and Dvd drive?

mxthunder said:

I wonder how much truth there is to the codec thing that mrjspeed mentioned? I have an Atom 330 board, it will play 720, but not 1080 HD videos.

Click to expand...

alot of people assume you need a nice graphics card for HD playback. The truth is the regular common codec packs (CCCP, K-Lite, etc...) use ffdshow, which is a software decoder. This makes your CPU do all of the work, and thus your GPU will sit there and not do very much.

On my Vista x86 HTPC, I installed CCCP but unchecked h.264 decoding. Then I registered the codec from MPC-HC. Since CCCP doesn't have a codec for x264/h.264 (since I unchecked it), Windows Media Player and Windows Media Center use the MPC-HC codec (MPCVideoDec.ax). This codec enables the use of DxVA (DirectX Video Acceleration) for movies, and puts your GPU to work. The only real requirement is that your videos be encoded in a profile of [email protected] or lower (most .mkv's you find now adays are). On 1080p my CPU is 100% usage in ffdshow, and 20% usage in MPC-HC.

Old graphics cards probably don't have DxVA capabilities, but the newer budget cards do, like any ATI HD xxxx card (HD 4350 can do 7.1 audio as well).


Best thing to do would be to download MPC-HC's standalone player, enable MKV/H264, and see if your CPU usage drops. The codec isn't the easiest or most intuitive thing to setup, it took me a bit of researching before I got it.

I personally use the AR-1600 Revo which has the nvidia ION chip for HD decoding with hardware acceleration. It was relatively cheap at only $200. I added a gig of ram and an IR receiver for another 40 bucks and all my hardware needs were taken care of. I use XBMC as my software / media center OS.

Check out my blog post on how to make a cheap XBMC htpc using the revo.