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Kicking around the idea of building a mini-ITX machine

Bateluer

Bateluer

Lifer
I like my Revo 3610, but its a little under powered for my original intentions, video playback while connected to a 1080p LCD TV. So I started kicking around the idea of building a mini-ITX machine that I can connect to my TV that can easily be hidden or otherwise be unobtrusive. The TV is wall mounted, so the case cannot be mounted to the back of the TV.

I was looking at the case below.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811154084

Its got a 250W PSU and enough power connections. I intend to put in only a single hard drive and a BD-ROM drive, which I gather from the Newegg reviews makes the case a bit cramped. Also, gathered from the reviews, that the interior can get a little warm, but is easily remedied with the addition of a PCI slot cooler, which I have sitting in a box in the closet. Looking at the design of the case, I think this would remove the possibility of using a PCI 802.11n card, though a USB wireless adapter would likely work just as well for wifi.

For the motherboard, I was looking at this Intel LGA775 model.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813121381

Its a G41/ICH7 type, with support for the whole range of C2x CPUs. Its X4500 IGP is obviously weak, but I believe they do have some video acceleration capabilities, if I recall correctly. Fortunately, unlike the Atom based Revo, a faster CPU should be easily able to make up for that shortcoming.

For CPU, the Celeron E3300.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819116264

I did look at the LGA1156 models, however, the Core i3 CPUs are double the price of the Celeron E3x00 line. I am not certain if the Intel HD video is worth paying ~114 vs the ~50 of the E3300.

I have several hard drives here I can use, so no need to worry about those, and I can easily load the machine up with 4GB of DDR2 800 RAM, so no worries there. I think that covers all the bases for hardware.

Now, for capabilities, is the E3300 powerful enough to decode 1080P level content on its own, without assistance from the IGP? 1080P content may include Flash, BluRay, x264, etc. I know the Atom 330 in the Revo is completely not able to do any of this on its own.

Not sure if it would be worth it to spend the extra money for the i3 motherboard and CPU or not. Going i3 would double the cost of the motherboard, CPU, and require me to add the price of some DDR3 RAM to the mix, so it'd be nearly double the cost. But the LGA1156 motherboard seem to boast more features and ports than the LGA775 ones do.

This would likely run Windows 7, although WHS or Mint could also be used.

Any insights or feedback?
 
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I've got a case like that (black though) and everything fits pretty well. It's a bit of a puzzle to put together the first time, but there is really plenty of room for an optical drive and 3.5" HDD.

As for the guts, you may want to consider this bad boy. It is a 785G, so it has video decoding down pat. You'll have to use DDR2 SO-DIMMs though. It also has a mini-PCIe slot that you can use for a wireless card. You'll probably have to run some wires around the inside of the case to use as antennae. Pair it with a Sempron 140 and you'll have a cool little system.
 
mfenn said:
I've got a case like that (black though) and everything fits pretty well. It's a bit of a puzzle to put together the first time, but there is really plenty of room for an optical drive and 3.5" HDD.

As for the guts, you may want to consider this bad boy. It is a 785G, so it has video decoding down pat. You'll have to use DDR2 SO-DIMMs though. It also has a mini-PCIe slot that you can use for a wireless card. You'll probably have to run some wires around the inside of the case to use as antennae. Pair it with a Sempron 140 and you'll have a cool little system.
Click to expand...

Possibility, would require me to purchase DDR2 SO-DIMMS though the Sempron is cheaper. Wouldn't the E3300 easily bury the Sempron 140 though? The E3300 is Core 2 based, and despite having a lower clock frequency, the Core 2s usually best their AMD counter parts. The Sempron 140 does use less power though.

Will the Sempron 140 choke decoding 1080p video without IGP assistance?

Edit - Though, I do see an Athlon II X2 240 2.8Ghz is 52 USD, and the Sempron X2 2300 is 35 USD.
 
Did some googling and looked up some benchmarks and reviews of the E3300, looks like it pretty easily beats the X2 240 in most tasks, though I couldn't find a definitive answer to whether or not it will playback 1080p effectively. Information at Wikipedia says the X4500 IGP in the G41 chipset does not support HD playback on its own, leaving it solely on the CPU.

Edit - But, moving to a slightly more expensive motherboard, such as one below, will give that functionality.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813500041
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813121353
 
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Bateluer said:
Possibility, would require me to purchase DDR2 SO-DIMMS though the Sempron is cheaper. Wouldn't the E3300 easily bury the Sempron 140 though? The E3300 is Core 2 based, and despite having a lower clock frequency, the Core 2s usually best their AMD counter parts. The Sempron 140 does use less power though.

Will the Sempron 140 choke decoding 1080p video without IGP assistance?

Edit - Though, I do see an Athlon II X2 240 2.8Ghz is 52 USD, and the Sempron X2 2300 is 35 USD.
Click to expand...

The idea is that the 785G chipset on that mobo can handle the decoding.
 
mfenn said:
The idea is that the 785G chipset on that mobo can handle the decoding.
Click to expand...

Isn't it tied to only some codecs and players? The intention is not to be tied to any specific codecs or software, to do that, the CPU needs to be powerful enough on its own.

I am leaning towards the Zotac 9300 board with the Celeron E3300, or, possibly the Pentium Dual Core E5400. Same clocks, double the L2. That motherboard has wifi built in, as opposed to the 785G board, which would require me to buy a miniPCIe wifi card, and RAM. The AMD route for this project is pricey.
 
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Bateluer said:
Isn't it tied to only some codecs and players? The intention is not to be tied to any specific codecs or software, to do that, the CPU needs to be powerful enough on its own.

I am leaning towards the Zotac 9300 board with the Celeron E3300, or, possibly the Pentium Dual Core E5400. Same clocks, double the L2.
Click to expand...

Well yes, it is a bit harder to setup but I don't think it's a big deal TBH (waiting for Zap to come in here and flame me 😀).

If you really want to have the CPU do everything, then just stick with the E3300. The cache isn't going to matter in a low spatial locality situation like video decoding.
 
Bateluer said:
I am leaning towards the Zotac 9300 board with the Celeron E3300, or, possibly the Pentium Dual Core E5400. Same clocks, double the L2.
Click to expand...

If you're paying that much, may as well aim for socket 1156.

mfenn said:
Well yes, it is a bit harder to setup but I don't think it's a big deal TBH (waiting for Zap to come in here and flame me 😀).
Click to expand...

Eh?
 
O I C

I still stand by that, BTW. Release candidate or no release candidate for Flash 10.1.

If you just want your high def pr0n to play without having to fiddle with shit, then get a fast enough CPU.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3765/new-driver-enables-smooth-1080p-flash-playback-on-nvidia-ngion

It’s not all good news though. The frame rate will drop the minute you move your mouse and reveal the playback controls. That compositing still happens on the CPU. In fact anything that appears over the video kills frame rate. You can stop the playback controls from coming up by simply not moving your mouse, but a YouTube ad appearing over the video is less predictable.

Hulu continues to be a problem. Even a 360p video scaled up to 1080p will drop frames with the new driver. NVIDIA is aware of the issue and is working on it. To NVIDIA’s credit, Hulu has always posed problems for GPU acceleration ever since the Flash 10.1 betas hit.
Click to expand...
 
Zap said:
If you're paying that much, may as well aim for socket 1156.
Click to expand...

The Core i3 route is even more expensive than the AMD route. Cheapest i3 is 114, double the price of the E5400. Plus, I'd have to buy DDR3 ram and a WiFi card. This puts the total price a little more than the AMD route, though potentially the highest performance.

How does the IGP on the Core i3s compare to the 9300M that would be paired with the E3300?

My proposed doc is at the link below.
http://www.bateluer.com/MiniITX.ods

The E3300 weighs in at 355, the AMD at 500, and the i3 at 515.
 
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Hulu at 480P, playback full-screen to 1366x768, drops frames on my AMD BE-2400 underclocked to 1.1Ghz, with a 780G chipset at stock speed (500Mhz GPU).

Overclocked to 2.875Ghz, with the GPU overclocked to 750Mhz, video playback is perfectly smooth.

This is with Flash 10.1.

Even underclocked, and dropping frames, the video was still synced up with the audio pretty well. It was definately watchable. I'm just surprised, with the supposed video capabilities of the 780G and flash 10.1's HW accel, that it was dropping frames playing back at 1.1Ghz dual-core.

My friend's computer, with a 9600GSO, and Flash 10 (not 10.1), he plays back full-screen Hulu just fine, on a 1920x1200 screen, with an E5200 OCed to 3.625Ghz.
 
I'm putting together an Intel G41 chipset/E3300 Celeron PC for a friend this week. But she won't be viewing Blu-Ray, so I have no way to test that.
 
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