Chip in question:
http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Bulldozer/AMD-A8-Series A8-6600K - AD660KWOA44HL.html
I recently came into a free A8-6600K and wanted to put it to good use. It is 100W TDP which seems to be above the norm for a media center pc.
I'm not really concerned about its power usage, as it won't be on all the time as I intend to use the media center pc to just play my movies from my home server and possibly streaming through Amazon Prime. I'm more concerned about keeping it cool in as small a form factor box as possible.
I am currently using SageTV boxes around the house but they are a bit slow and no longer supported or sold, so I was thinking about building a box around this chip for something in the $300 range.
With that said, a few questions and thoughts:
Could this be pulled off for this price and/or is it even worth it? Would I be better off just ebaying the chip and getting something cheaper and pocketing the rest?
I was thinking of just putting a small ssd in it for fast boot times and to hold the OS and XMBC or whatever front end I decide to use.
I don't need the box to do any decoding, just pass through to my receiver which can do the decoding. So I guess I will need a motherboard with an HDMI connector?
How much ram would you suggest for a box doing this, I was thinking 4 would be enough, but ram is dirt cheap.
MiniITX vs MicroATX? I am thinking the smaller the better since it will sit with my other AV gear.
http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Bulldozer/AMD-A8-Series A8-6600K - AD660KWOA44HL.html
I recently came into a free A8-6600K and wanted to put it to good use. It is 100W TDP which seems to be above the norm for a media center pc.
I'm not really concerned about its power usage, as it won't be on all the time as I intend to use the media center pc to just play my movies from my home server and possibly streaming through Amazon Prime. I'm more concerned about keeping it cool in as small a form factor box as possible.
I am currently using SageTV boxes around the house but they are a bit slow and no longer supported or sold, so I was thinking about building a box around this chip for something in the $300 range.
With that said, a few questions and thoughts:
Could this be pulled off for this price and/or is it even worth it? Would I be better off just ebaying the chip and getting something cheaper and pocketing the rest?
I was thinking of just putting a small ssd in it for fast boot times and to hold the OS and XMBC or whatever front end I decide to use.
I don't need the box to do any decoding, just pass through to my receiver which can do the decoding. So I guess I will need a motherboard with an HDMI connector?
How much ram would you suggest for a box doing this, I was thinking 4 would be enough, but ram is dirt cheap.
MiniITX vs MicroATX? I am thinking the smaller the better since it will sit with my other AV gear.
Facebook
Twitter