Help putting together htpc

Well I haven't built a computer for months and bored. Plus want something for the living room. Though I already have the 360 set up for streaming. Just not cool enough.

Looking for the cheapest setup possible right now. As I want to get one up and running. Tinker with it and build a better one in a few months. I get really bored and gives me something to do.

Not sure if any of this helps. But my water cooled rig is running 4 500gb sata drives. So probably pull on of those out. Have some ddr2-800 memory laying around. But I think the biggest stick I have is 512mb. I have a bunch of intel coolers, a e1200 laying collecting dust(overclocked to 2.8 on the stock cooler if memory serves me right).

Um I have a belkin wireless n usb dongle also. Probably some other odds and ends.

It needs to play blue ray, 1080p, have a keyboard/mouse combo, surf the net but doesn't need to be blazing fast. Then act as a dvr.

I've been checking out and not sure if I want to go the itx route and throw the e1200 in it. Not even sure if it will play 1080p that good. Go a atom board or what.

Also not sure on if any of the onboard graphics will handle hd or will need a card. Along with it would be nice to have a hdmi port. Since I have one open but isn't needed exactly I guess.

If you don't care about size and want something quiet with great cooling; I'd start off with the Antec NSK2480 case which comes with a 380w earthwatts PSU.
ASUS M4A88TD-M/USB3 and the Athlon II X2 260 are a nice combo, but you could throw in the sempron 140 and later switch to a quad or whatever, even stick in a pretty nice graphics card.

How much are you willing to spend? Budget is essential to picking out the right parts.

pwnmachine said:

How much are you willing to spend? Budget is essential to picking out the right parts.

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Sorry I want to stick intel. Amd is crap to me honestly. Everything I have used/worked on that was amd sucked balls in all honesty. The other concern is heat and amd's being power hungry. No disrespect to amd guys just saying. I should have mentioned that also.

Right now I have my water cooled rig hooked up. Using a gigabyte ud3r, e5200 and two gigs of ddr2-800. I have more memory for it but pulled it out when it screwed up awhile back. Which was vid card the whole time. So right now it is running this cheapy card. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121230 It's over clocked on the cpu and memory like 50mhz. It's doing 1080p resolution at the moment. Not sure how it would handle blue ray or hd though.

As for a budget not sure if it is realistic or not but $200-300. Cheaper if possible. As far as size I got plenty of room on the stand for what ever. Just not like mid tower size. Something like 360, ps3 maybe a little bigger in size will be fine. The price above doesn't need to include a case. As I might make something to suite my needs. Haven't decided. But can be thrown in on top of the price.

Edit: Forgot to mention this but I want to do some converting and burning. But it doesn't need to be blowing fast. Another thing is I have a q6600 for my other pc. Where I would then have a e5200 and the e1200 to play with. Be nice if the board could use one of the two so I have less stuff laying around. Though would have to run on the e1200 till I tear the other down. The atom cpu boards do look a little promising though.

Ok I like the idea of a micro atx setup. But honestly don't like the above case. To oldish/computerish looking. Plus I want a black case. I dig the looks of this one. But need something to lay down. Though I read ones review that it was able to lay down.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811280020
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811280016

Like those two above. I read a review on the top saying it was able to lay down or it was the bottom. Not sure now. Though I like how it hides everything. The price is good. Along with coming with a psu. The review I read said what brand it was but now not sure. So it may be a little on the iffy side.

Then something like this board http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813186185 The only thing is I don't know if the onboard will handle 1080p. Along with play sound over the hdmi port.

G41 has the X4500 which doesn't have 1080p acceleration.

On the intel side, you need a board with the H55/H57 chipset to have hardware acceleration.

Antec NSK2480 MINI-ITX mATX Desktop Case 2X5.25 2X3.5INT Front USB Audio with 380W PSU
Intel Celeron E3300 Dual Core Processor LGA775 2.5GHZ 1MB Cache 45NM 65W Retail Box
ASUS P5KPL-AM Epu LGA775 DDR2 G31 mATX PCI-E16 PCI-E1 2PCI VGA SATA2 GBLAN Motherboard
Sapphire Radeon HD 5450 650MHZ 512MB 800MHZ DDR2 PCI-E VGA DVI-I HDMI Low Profile Video Card

Throw in a hard drive and ram and this will have no problems with blu-ray, 1080p, also it supports BitStreaming for TrueHD and DTS-Master audio.

I wasn't pay much attention. But a board that will take a 775 cpu. As the above was the newer style.

Would I be better off to get a cheaper board. Then just throw a vid card in? As I tried a blu ray last night on the little cheapy card I listed above. In which it played it perfectly in my other rig. Vid card cpu stayed right around 35%

With the cpu around 20% if I remember right. With the e5200 overclocked to 3.33ghz

Ok since I already have mico board. That is still under warranty just have to send it in. This is the on I have http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128078

Then a card like this one http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125251 Not sure if it supports audio over the hdmi though.

Then slap a hard drive in it with 2gigs of ddr2-800.

I might get a different board though since the one I have is some what old and a new one would only cost a little more after shipping the other back.

I would then need a tuner card that I have no idea about.

Edit: What is the deal with the hardware acceleration you posted above? Along with will a e1200 overclocked a little handle hd and such? It should being the atom cpu's aren't that great. Then after looking I see the radeon hd4000 series supports sound over hdmi. What is the difference between that and a 5000 series?

an E1200 will handle HD content fine provided you have a video card that supports hardware acceleration ie ATI 4000+ or various nvidia cards.

the main difference between the 4000s and 5000s series is the support for Bitstreaming HD audio ie DTS Master and True-HD (you still need a receiver capable of decoding this)

your e1200 cpu will do just fine
grab any 8000 nvidia card or 4000 ati card for playback ( will handle 1080p and bluray rips at full bitrate)

you'll want at least 2gb 3 should be plenty

for tv tuners hauppauge 1212 or an hdhomerun ( which is ethernet based ie all you computers on the network can use it ) use win7's MCE

and just buy any mobo to use this with

the key things with htpcs are silence, efficiency, cool
choose components around this

buy passive coolers if possible, buy silent fans, buy 80+ rated power supplies i use a 130w brick, and 45w tdp cpu



more info on video cards
under windows video cards use DXVA to use hardware acceleration for video playback ie your cpu will be almost idle just feeding the gpu the data

for ati cards
3000+ support DXVA but not all codecs
4000+ full DXVA support LPCM over hdmi ie cpu will decode and send the audio except for 4200
5000+ bitstreaming audio over HDMI ie your reciever will be decoding the audio

nvidia
not sure but at the least 8000+ supports DXVA just unsure of how well
9000+ full DXVA support LPCM over hdmi ie cpu will decode and send the audio including the 9200 found on ION chipsets
only the gt460 supports bit streaming over hdmi

do research on the particular card and see if it does what you need/want