Help me build an HD HTPC.

Robert1986

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I'd like to build a HTPC for my brand new 1080p 40" SONY tv. It would need to be able to play videos in full 1080p resolution with no stutter or lag. No to bothered about it be able to play top end video games like crysis, just as long as its powerful to run games like Half Life 2 maxed out.

I currenty have an old PC that I bought in 2003 doing nothing, it just doesn't cut it for my needs though. It would need to be able to run VISTA 64bit HOME PREMIUM.

My old pc that does nothing:

Motherboard: ASUS A7N8X Deluxe NVIDIA nForce2 SPP Motherboard DDR
Processor: AMD Athlon XP Processor 3200+
Memory: 1GB Corsair XMS DDR SDRAM PC-3200 - 2x512MB
Video Card: ATI RADEON 9800 XT 256MB 8x AGP w/DVI & S-Video
Hard Drive: 160GB Seagate Barracuda Serial ATA 7200rpm w/ 8MB Cache
Sound Card: Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 6.1

I was thinking of buying these parts to build an HTPC. All from OCUK.
HTPC

CASE: Antec Fusion Black HTPC Case - £123.36
CPU: Intel Celeron E1200 1.6Ghz Dual-Core - £35.24
CPU Cooler: Scythe Mini Ninja - £28.19
GPU: GeForce 8600 GT 512MB DDR2 HDTV/DVI - £46.99
MEMORY: Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2-5400C4 TwinX (2x1GB) - £32.89
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 500GB SATA-II 32MB Cache - £42.29

Total - £307 + free delivery.

Any input on this setup and any advice on what I could do with my old set up would be very much appreciated.

Thanks.
 
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Ok, but ditch the 8600GT its old hat now and much slower than the Radeon 4670 which is about £58-65. It has much better HD facilities including 7.1 HD audio over HDMI, which maybe useful later.

You could probably reduce the price by shopping around to, OCUK are rarely cheap.
 
Ok, so I'll change those things. Also, I think the CPU I listed is under powered for HD.

GPU: Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4670 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - £60.50
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 - £88.11
 
You could try the Gigabyte GA-MA78-S2H and an Athlon X2 4850e.
I am building a HTPC at the moment and this combination seems to be very popular. Has onboard digital out, DVI and HDMI
 
I've just replaced my intel core2 setup with a Asus M3A78-EMH HDMI, 4850e, modded my Thermalright SLK 900U to fit am2 and using a silverstone sugo case, got it running passive except for the psu fans and its handled mkv's and blu-ray superbly so far. No complaints. In your case though you're obviously gonna need a decent vga card for gaming but the amd cpu is more than adequate for hd playback so long as what you buy does hardware decoding.

Asus M3A78-EMH HDMI
4850e
2gb corsair vs pc6400
Thermalright SLK 900U
wd1200 120gb
wd800 80gb
 
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Ok, So I've decided to go with a Giga-byte GA-MA78GM-S2H Motherboard and just use its integrated graphics card to save money. Its still a decent enough card to run games.

Updated HTPC spec

CASE: Antec Fusion Black HTPC Case - £123.36
CPU: AMD Athlon X2 4850e - £50
MOTHERBOARD: Giga-byte GA-MA78GM-S2H - £70
MEMORY: Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2-5400C4 TwinX (2x1GB) - £32.89
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 500GB SATA-II 32MB Cache - £42.29
CPU Cooler: Scythe Mini Ninja - £28.19

- £346

Is this good enough to run all my 1080p content without a hitch?
 
I've decided to just turn the computer am on right now and turn it into an HTPC and use my old PC. These days I hardly play pc games and watch more movies or play my PS3 on my big screen.

My old PC will just be for web browsing, I'd like to upgrade the CPU and add more ram however to it.

My current system am on right now.

Ultima OC HD 3870 X2" Intel Core 2 DUO E8400 3.00GHz @ E8800+ 3.66GHz Dual Core DDR2 System 8800GTX

t80y86.jpg


I'll be taking my old alienware and moving all the parts into the antec, and taking the antec parts and putting them into the antec fusion HTPC.

Thoughts? :)
 
Tagging this thread Robert as I'm looking to build my own HTPC, looks like you've already done some of the leg work.
 
The Gigabyte GA-MA78-S2H and an Athlon X2 4850e is good for 1080p as long as you have the proper codecs installed and the .mkv's you're watching are encoded correctly. DXVA works very well if the conditions are right..

If you're just using the processor, things can get slightly laggy.
 

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