Budget HTPC mobo/proc choice for Blu-Ray

Spivonious

Junior Member
Sep 19, 2006
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I got a sizeable bonus at work and would like to put it towards assembling an HTPC for the living room. I've got most of the components picked out, but I can't seem to find any good source for what I need to play Blu-Ray discs.

Right now I have chosen the cheapest of the cheap (I would like to stay Intel for the CPU).

Celeron E1200 running on a G41-based board. Is the onboard 4500 powerful enough to decode Blu-Ray discs? Do I need a faster proc? Should I forget about onboard video altogether and just get an HD4XXX card? The tuner card I chose has hardware MPEG2 but not h.264.

I would love to keep the system under $600 total. I already have hard drives, but everything else would be purchased new.

Thanks in advance for any advice you can give.

My goal with this system is to play Blu-Rays/DVDs, watch/record TV(NTSC/ATSC/Clear QAM), and output an optical audio signal to my receiver.
 

imported_Scoop

Senior member
Dec 10, 2007
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http://www.silentpcreview.com/article889-page5.html

I'm not sure how your G41 compares to G45 but your Celeron is not as fast as a E7200 clock per clock (not to mention it's a single core vs dual core) but take a look at that.

E7200 underclocked to 1.2Ghz with the Asus P5Q-EM G45 mATX board. "Despite the extremely low clock speed (none of Intel's desktop dual core processors are less than 1.6Ghz), our entire video test suite played smoothly without any problems."

What you definitely don't need is a discreet GPU for blu-ray.

I would though suggest a Geforce 9300 based board, like the Asus P5N7A-VM for better efficiency -> lower power consumption.
 

Spivonious

Junior Member
Sep 19, 2006
23
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The E1200 is dual-core actually. At least Newegg claims it to be (http://www.newegg.com/Product/...?Item=N82E16819116064). The only difference between it and the downclocked E7200 should be bus speed (800 vs 1066) and fab size (65nm vs 45nm). Normally I'd stay away from Celerons, but for only $50 it's pretty tempting. I may just play it safe and go with the E5200.

Interesting read on SPCR. As far as I know the video piece of the chipset is the same between the G41, G43, and G45 so that should be more than adequate for blu-ray playback. I'm surprised they even needed a CPU fan with such an underclock/undervolt.