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HTPC build...do you guys see any issues?

M

mitchie

Member
I'm about to put together an living room HTPC to stream 1080p content and perhaps play some blu-ray media. Since I've traditionally used Intel parts for my builds, I'm not entirely comfortable that the mobo, CPU and RAM I've selected will play well together. I also wanted to make sure that the on-board video chip will be able to stream 1080p content from my local NAS as well as the usual online suspects (Hulu (Flash), Netflix (Sliverlight))

Does this build list look compatible?

GIGABYTE GA-880GMA-UD2H AM3 AMD 880G
Patriot 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600)
AMD Athlon II X2 250 Regor 3.0GHz Socket AM3 65W
SILVERSTONE SG06-B Black Aluminum/SECC Mini-ITX Desktop Computer Case SFX 300W
 
I have the 2.8GHz version of that processor and I have never had an issue. I routinely record two HD TV shows, while watching a different one or while playing a Blu-Ray. My motherboard is a GIGABYTE GA-MA785GMT-UD2H, which has a Radeon 4200 on-board video processor. In reality, my TV-Tuners handle pretty much all of the video encoding and the on-board video handles all of the decoding, so there is actually very little processor usage.

The reason I got the 2.8GHz processor is because (at least at that time) it was the fastest 45W processor available and I was worried about power usage, heat and noise.
 
The TV tuners don't really encode anything. The TV digital stream is already encoded. It just has to capture that and write to disk. This is what makes it possible for Atom/Ion systems to be a valid HTPC. I'm sure any Athlon and a suitable graphics solution (pretty much anything with few exceptions ie. GMA 500) is more than enough.

If the onboard video isn't doing it for you, a $40 GPU will fix that.
 
$9/AR HD5450 is quite competent with xbmc and does all bit pass-through hdmi.

i stick to intel because it just works and well seems to use less power for the bang.
 
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