Here's what I am thinking about my HTPC placement.

[DesiPower]

So I have thinking about building a new HPTC but the looks of it is important as its gonna go in my the living room right under the TV. I have been debating the case for a while and haven't really found anything that would look good and be reasonably priced. I didn't want to spend more on case+PSU than the CPU itself.

So here's what I am thinking, I have fugly case with broken front cover/door and a noisy PSU, makes an annoying high pitch noise but works fine. I am planning to build a i3 HTPC using these and put it in the other room. The adjacent room, right behind the TV is my study. I can put the HTPC there and then two options, I can either drill holes through the wall or run cables to the TV or I prefer a 20 - 25 ft DHMI cable and a similar length USB cable with active repeater. I will plugin the Lenovo mini keyboard's receiver and USB drive/card readers to the USB right next to the TV. I rarely watch DVDs/Blu-Ray on it so it will not be a big deal to walk to it once in a while to but the disk in.

So what do you think? will it work? anyone has any similar experience? any pitfalls? I am thinking about getting a mobo that I can wake from the USB keyboard. Does anyone know if all mobos these days can do it?

 

[mfenn]

Yes it will work. Most any mobo will be able to resume from S3 sleep via a USB keyboard. They only catch is whether or not the receiver stays powered up on standby power alone.

EDIT: You could easily spend the cost of a new case and PSU on fancy cables though.

 

[DesiPower]

Yes it will work. Most any mobo will be able to resume from S3 sleep via a USB keyboard. They only catch is whether or not the receiver stays powered up on standby power alone.

EDIT: You could easily spend the cost of a new case and PSU on fancy cables though.

No, not exactly, the cases I like are all 100+ (case+PSU). a 25ft HDMI + USB cable on ebay or amazon is like $25 total. But you are correct about the receiver, need to do research...

 

[mfenn]

No, not exactly, the cases I like are all 100+ (case+PSU). a 25ft HDMI + USB cable on ebay or amazon is like $25 total. But you are correct about the receiver, need to do research...

Yeah, you are correct. I should have said "cables and receiver".

 

[Zap]

I am planning to build a i3 HTPC using these and put it in the other room. The adjacent room, right behind the TV is my study. I can put the HTPC there and then two options, I can either drill holes through the wall or run cables to the TV or I prefer a 20 - 25 ft DHMI cable and a similar length USB cable with active repeater.

See if there's a wall plate of any kind in the area. Sometimes there will be power or cable outlets and you can see if you can use those to tap through the wall. Much easier to cut/drill holes in a wall plate.

Most any mobo will be able to resume from S3 sleep via a USB keyboard. They only catch is whether or not the receiver stays powered up on standby power alone.

I have an IOGear wireless media keyboard with trackball that can wake my HTPC (a Core i3 550) from S3 sleep. It wakes up as soon as I power on the keyboard. If I manually put it to sleep, I basically go through the start menu > shut down > sleep, then power off the keyboard (using switch on bottom of it) as soon as I click "sleep" and before the machine actually shuts down into sleep. Works for me!

 

[mfenn]

I have an IOGear wireless media keyboard with trackball that can wake my HTPC (a Core i3 550) from S3 sleep. It wakes up as soon as I power on the keyboard. If I manually put it to sleep, I basically go through the start menu > shut down > sleep, then power off the keyboard (using switch on bottom of it) as soon as I click "sleep" and before the machine actually shuts down into sleep. Works for me!

:thumbsup: Good to know!