New htpc. Upgrade from old GA-MA78GM-S2H

tigermad

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Hi folks. I have had my htcp for 2 years now. It has always just been on the edge od being able to stream and transcode 1080p and play iplayer hd etc. I want to change over to parts that are silent.

I have a Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H with a 4850e processor and an silverstone lco4 case with 4gb ram.

I would like a new case that is fan less and a lot smaller than the current one. I think I would like a new motherboard that has the cpu and gpu built in. I would like to play hd audio but am not bothered about 7.1 because I only have 5.1 setup but can play all hd formats on my denon amp.

I don't intend to play games or watch or download live tv.

I use Mediabrowser as my front end and play mainly 720p and 1080p mkvs. I also have my music setup in iTunes as apple lossless and mp3 and would like to still use this software. I would also like to watch iplayer hd without it struggling too much.

Has anyone got any recommendations For the quietest system. I assume a fan less one would be best?
 
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For iPlayer HD to be guaranteed to work - and if you want to do transcoding - then you're looking at an Intel on-chip/die CPU+GPU I suspect (unless you can wait for the AMD equivalent - Llano)

Atom + Ion or Zacate won't be powerful enough for CPU iPlayer HD (and hardware acceleration is tricky) - though both will deliver decent 5.1 HD audio (though the Ion will downsample to 48k/16bit any >48k or >16bit source as it outputs PCM5.1/7.1 over HDMI and isn't PAP. The Zacate should bitstream HD Audio over HDMI) Ion - and to be honest - Zacate will both require heatsink cooling if you don't have case cooling.

The downside of Intel CPU+GPU Sandy Bridge (and even more so Clarkdale) is that they don't properly run at 23.976Hz - so if you watch 1080p Blu-rays at their native frame rate you might get the odd microstutter (a repeated frame every 40 seconds or so) Some people don't notice this at all - and you can sort of get round it with ReClock apparently - though this may drop the odd audio packet instead if you are running HD audio bitstreamed.

Alternatively you could look at an AMD or Intel CPU only with a separate 5450 or 6450 passively cooled graphics card - though this will require a case fan.
 
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Thanks Stephen. Since posting this thread I have looked at the Asus E35M1-I DELUXE board with a m350 case and pico power supply. So this will not work any good with iplayer hd?

I can watch iplayer in hd on my setup now but its not the smoothest in the world but watchable. So is the processor and GPU on the Asus E35M1-I DELUXE not as good as I have now?

I dont watch loads of iplayer hd but do now and again and would like the option. Mainly use 720p mkvs or 1080p rips from my blurays.
 
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The E350's GPU is probably a bit better than the Radeon HD 3200 on the MA78GM (which I also have used) when running with a non-Phenom processor (The MA78GM works better - particularly in de-interlacing terms - with a Phenom on-board - not for the CPU power but for bus bandwith reasons apparently, as it will do VA de-interlacing with a Phenom but only MA with an Athlon AIUI)

However AIUI the iPlayer website Flash stuff is encoded in a way that even if you have hardware GPU acceleration support in your build and your Flash player software, it doesn't usually use the acceleration (variable frame rate encoding I think) so you rely purely on the CPU. (i.e. even if the Zacate has a better GPU it is irrelevant for iPlayer - though not for other stuff)

Not sure how the CPUs compare - but it seems neither are powerful enough for iPlayer HD ? (And similarly the Zacate is not a good fit for video transcoding duties unless you have transcoding software that exploits the GPU)

The Zacate does a really good job with 1080p Blu-ray type stuff, and has the huge benefit of supporting HD audio either bitstreamed or decoded to multichannel PCM (whereas your MA78GM only supports stereo PCM or DD/DTS legacy DVD-quality bitstreamed audio via HDMI)
 
Thanks for your advice Stephen, much appreciated.

So if I went for the spec I mentioned I would have the sound advantage and silence advantage if I paired it with a ssd. My only concern is if it overheats and end up getting case fans. It would then not be as quiet as I would like.

It seems like I will have to forget about iplayer being perfect. As you say it uses the CPU instead of GPU so unless I go a different route it will make no difference. I guess a system to support this will cost a lot more than £260 and won't be quiet with the case fans it will require.

I don't think I will bother about iplayer then if I don't watch it very often. There is always the standard quality version available anyway.
 
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I have just replaced my ASRock zacate mobo with a AMD Athlon X2 255 as I found the zacate to be good for media playback but under powered for most other tasks. I use xbmc and found most skins were sluggish, iplayer is sluggish and also I found that streaming sites resulted in a lot of buffering.

David
 
I have just replaced my ASRock zacate mobo with a AMD Athlon X2 255 as I found the zacate to be good for media playback but under powered for most other tasks. I use xbmc and found most skins were sluggish, iplayer is sluggish and also I found that streaming sites resulted in a lot of buffering.

David

Thanks. I would have thought the buffering was nothing to do with the processor? On my 4850e I can watch iplayer without buffering and mediabrowser etc flawlessly.

Are you saying I won't get as good results with the new
motherboard then?
 
I assume BBC and ITV players as well as YouTube will be using the CPU rather than GPU, I am on 50 mbps broadband so its not the connection.

David
 
Thanks for your advice Stephen, much appreciated.

So if I went for the spec I mentioned I would have the sound advantage and silence advantage if I paired it with a ssd. My only concern is if it overheats and end up getting case fans. It would then not be as quiet as I would like.

It seems like I will have to forget about iplayer being perfect. As you say it uses the CPU instead of GPU so unless I go a different route it will make no difference. I guess a system to support this will cost a lot more than £260 and won't be quiet with the case fans it will require.

I don't think I will bother about iplayer then if I don't watch it very often. There is always the standard quality version available anyway.

You will definitely need a case fan if you aren't running a heatsink fan on the Zacate. You can't cool them entirely passively AIUI - the heat has to be extracted somehow, and convection on its own is not going to be good enough I think. The heatsink cooling fan is optional - presumably because a good case fan will do as well (and will be bigger, and thus quieter) - but I wouldn't expect to be able to go without any fans at all.
 
Yep - the Zacate is definitely an Atom level CPU. It runs at 18W for a reason!

I have run Atom N230 single-core with Ion, and a Zacate E350 - and the E350 is massively more responsive. Media Center is very snappy with the E350 - and 1080i and 720p content don't cause it many problems (though AIUI it won't VA de-interlace) I built this purely as a DVD/Blu-ray/SD & HDTV client - no web browsing or Flash required - for that it works really well.

The aim is for it to play Blu-ray and DVD ISOs, watch Recorded TV from a shared folder, and to use DVBLogic virtual tuners over the network for live viewing. Looks like it will do that well. Just got to get the HD Audio bitstreaming - need to confirm which player does it.
 
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Thanks for all the replies.

I have decided to stick with what I have for the moment. It does most things well.

I usually use mediabrowser for my front end but gave xbmc a go last night and really like it. It's a nearly like a new pc now using this software :)
 
Me again.

I was convinced I was going to go with this system until the posts from rorackowe and DavidT put me off. I am glad they posted. I didn't realise that the CPU wouldn't be powerful enough to stream normal programmes at all.

How come there is no much about this being reported elsewhere in reviews?
 
Me again.

I was convinced I was going to go with this system until the posts from rorackowe and DavidT put me off. I am glad they posted. I didn't realise that the CPU wouldn't be powerful enough to stream normal programmes at all.

How come there is no much about this being reported elsewhere in reviews?

For playing SD and HD movies streamed from either an internal or external HDD the zacate's work very well and have the bonus of very low power usage but if you want to do other things like stream from BBC, ITV etc where the CPU is utlised rather than the GPU then the zacate's are not so good. Basic internet surfing works ok to but I wouldn't want to use MS Office on it. I am going to use my zacate just for movie streaming with a lite version of xbmc skin and it will work well.

David
 
Something else that I wanted was to be able to use any xbmc skin but unfortunately xbmc is not GPU accelerated so skins like Aeon need a fairly fast CPU.

David
 
Me again.

I was convinced I was going to go with this system until the posts from rorackowe and DavidT put me off. I am glad they posted. I didn't realise that the CPU wouldn't be powerful enough to stream normal programmes at all.

How come there is no much about this being reported elsewhere in reviews?

Depends what you mean by stream... It's fine for content that can be fully GPU hardware accelerated - which is SD and HD TV broadcasts in MPEG2 or H264 (received in Media Center either from a local tuner or via a networked tuner using DVBLogic's TV Source), and DVDs or Blu-rays (either original discs or ripped ISOs or Folders) and content that has been encoded correctly. There may be some issues with network drivers that need tweaking after the machine has come out of S3 standby that can cause high bitrate Blu-ray rips to stutter if streamed from a NAS or similar. Haven't seen it myself.

What is more of a problem is stuff that can only be played with the CPU handling decoding duties - which is some Flash and Silverlight web streaming stuff. If you are using an HTPC for this kind of stuff - then the Zacate (just like the Atom + Ion) is probably not a good idea.

The Zacate E350 is best considered as similar to an Atom N330 (or similar 5xx series) processor combined with an nVidia ION (which is effectively a 9400 GPU). The Zacate is a bit more powerful in some respects - and should have the ability to bitstream HD audio over HDMI (which the Ion can't handle)

It appears to be even cooler running - and similarly low-cost. (Motherboard with CPU and H264/VC-1/MPEG2 + HD Audio capable GPU on-board for less than £100 - and capable of running passively with an entire system drawing less than 40W on load?)

Similarly, software that uses CPU for "effects" - like some XBMC skins can also feel a bit slow.

That said - the Windows 7 UI is pretty snappy on my build (2GB RAM running Win 7 32 bit) - certainly a lot snappier than a single core N230 Atom + Ion.

Am very pleased.
 
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Thanks everyone. I will have a think and decide one way or t'other. Looks like the mb is out of stock everywhere anyway plus I don't have the wonga yet.
 

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