budget htpc recommendations

[Pastullio]

I found some suggestions elsewhere that recommend this stuff so im starting from there.

CPU: AMD Athlon II X2 255 Socket AM3
-TDP 65W
MOBO: Gigabyte GA-MA785GMT-UD2H
-AMD 785G chipset
-ATI Radeon HD 4200 GPU
-HDMI
-SATA support
HD : gonna scour hot deals for a 2tb low power something
Memory DDR3: Same as above, would like 4 gig but maybe not needed?
Optical Drive: Pretty irrelevant can get later
Chassis/Power Supply Unit: Antec Black M FusionRemote 350 Micro ATX
Keyboard/Mouse: hot deals wireless can do later
OS: windows 7 most likely or Ubuntu if I wanna learn something, irrelevant

I have no brand preference. The mobo having nice onboard sound is pretty nice, I have a good home theater setup so I assume I need that. I also like that the tower has psu included. Aiming for quiet, low power, and cheap. But Im not afraid to spend a little money to make it exponentially better. Any advice is greatly appreciated. Sorry if this belongs in Audio/Video & Home Theater.

 

[Sp12]

Do you need blu-ray?
What's your budget?
Will you be playing back 1080p video from it?
Will it need any to cover any gaming needs on the big screen?

 

[mfenn]

HTPC posts are fine in this section. Overall the build looks pretty good as is, but I have a few suggestions.

• Go for something based on the 880G chipset. It's a little newer and has more oomph for any kind of output post-processing that you might want to do. The Gigabyte GA-880GB-USB3 is a good uATX board for that purpose. With regard to the onboard audio, since you have a good HT system, I'm assuming you'll be passing the audio out via HDMI or S/PDIF. In that case, it really doesn't matter what onboard sound you have, since it's all digital, and the major stumbling block of cheap onboard solutions are their poor-quality DACs.
• The Athlon II X2 is a nice, low-power chip that should be fine for normal HTPC uses, but if you're going to be doing any transcoding, you might want to step up to an Athlon II X4.
• For DDR3, this 4GB G.Skill kit is good and cheap.

 

[Pastullio]

I don't think I need to a blu-ray drive yet. Budget around $300 I guess, seems low but it looks like it covers it all, but I can spend more. I will probably try to do a little gaming, but I dont know how bad I would pay $ for trying to play some high end stuff on mini atx. 1080p a lot.

 

[Sp12]

• Go for something based on the 880G chipset. It's a little newer and has more oomph for any kind of output post-processing that you might want to do. The Gigabyte GA-880GB-USB3 is a good uATX board for that purpose.

Interesting combo deal with that board: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboD...086.20-231-253

Gets you a decent media center remote for ~15$.

Combo deal with the RAM and a quad for 10$ more than the dual and RAM separate.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.470086

 

[Pastullio]

oh wow thanks for that combo didnt see that, this is looking pretty nice. $366 without remote. board case/psu mobo ram cpu. 408 shipped. No hd yet, trying to find quiet low power with some size to it.

 

[Sp12]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822152202

Maybe? I'm not well-read on low-power hard drives.

 

[Pastullio]

Im not really too familiar with them either. Was hoping I could get a 2tb 7200 caviar green at a deal. Might have to lurk around a while to find it, buy something to hold me over for now.

 

[Homerboy]

what type of media center software are you going to be running?
Is this just for playback or for recording too?

 

[Sp12]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-513-_-Product

80 shipped on the Green's 1.5TB version. Quite a bit hotter from the price/GB standpoint.

 

[coolVariable]

Don't go with AMD with a HTPC.
You will end up spending countless $$$ to fix problems (media center stuttering!!!)
Their graphics chips are bad and until they have fixed their AHCI issues, I would also vote against them for your motherboard chipset.

Get a cheap intel CPU with a decent mainboard and a passively cooled nvidia GPU

 

[heyheybooboo]

Don't go with AMD with a HTPC.
You will end up spending countless $$$ to fix problems (media center stuttering!!!)
Their graphics chips are bad and until they have fixed their AHCI issues, I would also vote against them for your motherboard chipset.

Get a cheap intel CPU with a decent mainboard and a passively cooled nvidia GPU

Not sure where you are going with this ...

Playing and recording an OTA HD TP stream on a Gigabyte 785g-u2sh AM2+ with a Sempy 140 (under-volted -0.125) with C&Q. CPU utilization at 59% of 960MHz and 0.9v using Avivo to enable the IGP hardware acceleration through the ATI mpeg decoder/DxVA.

I also use the port multiplier (AHCI) on the eSATA for my 5-bay external enclosure to store my media library.

I use the Fusion TV tuner/player for live TV and TitanTV EPG/Fusion tray agent to schedule recording (simple single click) --- media access through the XBMC front end.

WMC 'ain't all that' --- there are much better options (and fewer headaches) elsewhere. My understanding is WMC finally fixed OTA 'sub-channels' in Win7 - LOL

As far as the OP --- check out the Regor 250 / Asus M4A785TD-M Evo combo for $130.

I think the sleep function (at 2w) is a little better (and more 'green') than the Gigabyte options.

The Regor 250 / Asus M4A88TD-M/USB3 is $30 more and may be worth the investment (though it offers no onboard eSATA). I think the 880/sb850 will be more likely to support BD Zambezi with a BIOS update.

And I would suggest using something other than a 'green' drive for the OS -- still hard to top the Spinpoint F3 HD502HJ -- and then add a 5400rpm drive for your storage.




--

 

[Pastullio]

No recording, not much actualy tv/cable/sat stuff planned. Now I know even less what to choose lol. Would that dual core be better than the quad? Going less green is ok, keeping heat and noise down would be nice but speed and the possibility of doing some gaming sounds nice. Def no Windows Media center.

 

[Sp12]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128445

Better mobo for 5$ more.

Still has combo deal with the MC remote: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...Size=10&Page=2

I think either CPU would be fine for now, but as time goes on I think the X4 will be more capable in terms of decoding 3D 1080p, recording while watching, and any potential gaming/rich apps you add in the future.

 

[mfenn]

Don't go with AMD with a HTPC.
You will end up spending countless $$$ to fix problems (media center stuttering!!!)
Their graphics chips are bad and until they have fixed their AHCI issues, I would also vote against them for your motherboard chipset.

Get a cheap intel CPU with a decent mainboard and a passively cooled nvidia GPU

WTF???? AMD, especially their GPU's, are widely regarded as the best HTPC solutions right now.

Oh, I see that booboo already took care of this.

 

[coolVariable]

WTF???? AMD, especially their GPU's, are widely regarded as the best HTPC solutions right now.

Let's see:
- 30%+ performance penalty when using AHCI with AMD/ATI drivers, resulting in ... stuttering live and recorded TV!
- Inability of AMD/ATI drivers to play nice with HDMI - welcome to the wonderful world of black screens when waking your HTPC! No EDID refresh with ATI GPUs.
- Stuttering SD live and recorded TV thanks to the 29/59 stutter bug (though this is primarily a MSFT bug, it is worse with ATI graphics)

OP, instead to listening to HTPC amateurs on AT (see the people disputing the issues with ATI/AMD chipsets and HTPC usage), I would recommend checking out a board like greenbutton, AVS forum or media center community.

 

[mfenn]

Never had a problem with my 785G on my Samsung TV. Maybe it's just certain combinations that are incompatible?

 

[coolVariable]

Never had a problem with my 785G on my Samsung TV. Maybe it's just certain combinations that are incompatible?

Then it must be the majority of combinations based on the complaints in media center related forums.

 

[darkewaffle]

I will agree that AMD's AHCI support is lacking, but really, why would you have AHCI enabled in a HTPC? The only real reason that almost anyone uses AHCI is to support a SSD, which has little-to-no place in a HTPC.

 

[coolVariable]

I will agree that AMD's AHCI support is lacking, but really, why would you have AHCI enabled in a HTPC? The only real reason that almost anyone uses AHCI is to support a SSD, which has little-to-no place in a HTPC.

A 30GB SSD for the OS drive and a 1.5TB media drive are the ideal combination for a HTPC.
Even if OP doesn't go with an SSD now, I would recommend leaving the option open ...

And: though I can't replicate it, there are also lots of people complaining that their TV stutters (live and recorded) without AHCI enabled. So if you are affected, you will not get around stuttering since AMD svcks with AHCI and without.

Last but not least ATI GPUs suffer big time from the 29/59 stutter bug in mediacenter - not everybody is affected but if you are ... you are fvcked with an ATI GPU.

 

[Miscthree]

Old thread I know, but I use an HP Proliant N36L microserver,

AMD Athlon Neo II 1.3 ghz dual core
8 gb ecc ram
zotac video card
4 cold swap bays
ODD bay , used for os drive(160gb)
3- 2TB drives, hitachi deskstars.

The base server was about $300. Each drive was about $80. Video card was about $30.
Displays 1080p like it's nothing. Also performs live streaming conversion of video files to my wife's and my iPhones over wifi and 3G with no problem.

Also running apache web server, Sftp server. Boinc and folding@home is also installed but it's never running as the Athlon CPU can't handle much of anything more than what it's already doing.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Have you tried Netflix HD? Silverlight doesn't support GPU acceleration yet so those 1.3 GHz cores probably can't handle it.

I was thinking of building or buying a prebuilt Brazos / E-350 PC until I read the benchmarks of it trying to decode Netflix -- you need Llano to do that well.

 

[Miscthree]

Never tried Netflix. Heard good things about it. The N36L wasn't meant to be used the way I'm using it, I'll probably get a faster machine later and use the n36L as a fileserver.

 

[BTA]

Damn necro threads.

 

[ponyo]

Have you tried Netflix HD? Silverlight doesn't support GPU acceleration yet so those 1.3 GHz cores probably can't handle it.

I was thinking of building or buying a prebuilt Brazos / E-350 PC until I read the benchmarks of it trying to decode Netflix -- you need Llano to do that well.

So something like Dell Zino 410 will have problem playing Netflix HD? I'm thinking about jumping on the $450 deal posted at SD but this would be a dealbreaker...