Please help me choose a MB/CPU for a media centre (PVR) setup :)

[crazylegs]

Hi guys and girls,

I've been meaning to build a MC for a while now and have recently purchased a nice 1080p 40" TV 😀

Anyway - i plan to use to machine for all forms of media, viewing pictures, listening to music, watching DVDs (prob add a blu-ray player later), streaming online content and i'll be adding a capture card to the machine to use it like a PVR, through Win7 Media Center.

I plan on running HDMI out of the PC into an amplifier, which will run 5.1 suround sound and pass the image onto TV. Ideally i'd like to use an on-board solution, will keep cost down, also keep noise and heat down. I wont be gaming on this machine 🙂

I'm having a really hard time choosing which MB/CPU to use, form factor is not a massive consideration also an mATX MB would open up more case possibilities.

Have looked at both AMD and Intel solutions. Leaning towards an AMD solution for cost reasons and the fact that their on baord GPU seems more capable.

Cost is a factor and don't want to spend too much if i don't have to!

Thanks in advance for any suggestions 😀

 

[Winterpool]

If you're going AMD, I expect you've been perusing AMD 780G / 785G boards? The onboard Radeon HD 3200 / 4200 is capable, but there are some limitations which may come into play under heavier workloads (eg deinterlacting 1080i content).

Why not buy one of those Dell Zinos? You won't be able to build for much less. The default Zino config might not meet your audio requirements, however; read the specs closely.

You should note that if you plan to record cable content beyond ClearQAM (which seems to be endangered anyhow), you'll need a CableCARD-capable unit.

I've built three HTPCs round the AMD 780G chipset (mostly Gigabyte boards) and dualcore Athlons, and I must say I'm not sure it wouldn't have been preferable to use a cheap, low-profile video card rather than rely on the chipset graphics. In fact, in the pater's machine I had to add a discrete card anyhow, for a variety of reasons...

So far as processing demands go, the big question is going to be whether you'll be multitasking on this media computer (eg transcoding / recording and viewing at the same time). Otherwise a basic modern cpu and decent graphics will probably be sufficient.

 

[Winterpool]

Right, I should mention this specifically: Flash is much more intense workload than your typical MPEG4 codec at the same video quality & resolution. So if you plan on watching a lot of Flash content (Hulu, YouTube, etc), bear in mind that Flash player only began using graphics processors in 10.1 (which is still in bloody beta!), and not all video-decoding GPUs are supported.

Netflix streaming ('Instant Watch) is a great source of online content but uses Silverlight, I believe, and is limited to 480p content on computers right now, so processor demands shouldn't be too extreme.

 

[mfenn]

785G + Athlon II X2 + $120 = Done

 

[crazylegs]

Thanks for the input guys.

To clear a couple of things up:
- I live in the UK, will almost certainly be using a Hauppage WinTV-NOVA-TD 500, had some experience with this card before. Is a very good value dual tuner imo.
- Prefer a self build, so in the future i have more options along lines of adding a dedicated GPU / more HD capacity (or dedicated OS drive) etc.
- Won't be doing much flash streaming, will be mostly terrestrial TV watching / recording, some music and picture viewing also.
- i'm not THAT much of an Audiophile. Plan to run a HDMI pass through into an Onkyo reciever. This will pass video to TV and sound out to an 'entry' level seperates 5.1 🙂

785G MB probably fits the bill perfectly.