Budget HTPC - £250 (Updated Now £350)

[Ciruz]

Hey,

Completed my budget htpc for under £350 (was £250). Ive have seen alot better but at twice the price. It has everything i need and is stable, reliable and prepared to give me a few years usage.

History
The Computer is an old Dell Dimension 4100 which i purchased because it was £35! After a year of deciding what to do with it, i discovered Media Portal and the rest you know

The following is a list of my requirements (seems to be ever growing) from the HTPC:

TV / Recording
Game Play
Weather
News Feeds
Film Trailers
Music Videos
Radio
Email

Computer (Recycled):

1Gig P3 Socket 370
Creative SoundBlaster 64 PCI
Intel 845G Motherboard (Dell Dimension 4100)
Standard Dell 310 Power Supply

Additional Components:

19db Whisper Silent V Heat Sink/Fan Cooling
2 x 256Mb PC133 Ram
Geforce 6200 128MB AGP 4x
WinTV 150 PVR
2 x 400Gb Samsung 7200 Rpm 8Mb Cache
1 x 16x Dual Layer LG DVD/CD-RW
Silicom Image PCI IDE RAID Card
USB/Firewire PCI Card
Wireless 54g Network Card
Aplus G3L Black
2 x Saitek P2900 Wireless Control Pads
Medion X10 Remote Control
2 x 1000 Rpm Ultra Silent 8dB 80mm Case Fans

Software:

Windows XP Pro SP2
Completely stripped down and running MP as a shell. Using this configuration the boot time currently stands at 20 seconds to get into a MP start screen. I wish i could list the tweaks etc but i lost track along time ago

Media Portal 0.2.3.0
Standard setup, splash screen has been removed via patch i found on MP downloads. WebEGP works correctly and logos have also been replaced again from MP download section.

SilencerHDD
Sacrifice performance for silence, both drives sound dead but still give good performance. Could be the RAID 0+1 which has given a decent performance boost. Working on before and afters using various benchmark softwares.

HotKeyP
Due to issues with mapping windows commands to the remote i have decided to map the commands to the game pad instead. This software allows me to terminate any application open at the press of a button.

RealVNC
Just for performing checkups and updates from anywhere in range of the wireless switch.

NVidia PureVideo Decoder
K-Lite Video Code Pack
Project 64
Meka
Nestophia
pSX 1.13
Zsnesw

Overview
All in all, the media center performs great. Noice is reduced to a minimum as the case seems to keep it all under wraps and i have tried to select noice reducing hardware at reasonable prices. The use of two 400Gb hard drives is not for capacity but more for backup as my collection of backed up dvds are stored on the drives. Using a PCI RAID controller im able to use RAID 0+1 (Mirror & Stripping) to keep an identical copy of the first hard drive on the second and use both to read/write from, increasing performance & safe guarding my data. Basically if a hard drive fails i have an identical backup made on the fly and the media center will just continue from the second drive as if nothing had happened.

I also now have the added bonus of installing four more IDE devices and the ability to hotswap them

To keep the system running in top order, things like defrag and clearing temp files etc... have been added to windows shedule and run on the first saturday of every month. This has been done using command line switches for each application.

Issues to be Resolved:

1) Still working on getting pSX (a new PSX emulator) to boot straight from CD.

2) Using the remote to close emulators....i just havent got around to this yet

3) The case has 2 front USB, firewire, Mic In, Audio Out ports via a drop down panel and yea....the Dell mobo just does not have any pints to support any of this. I now have the firewire and usb working using a female to male pin out cable which connects to the PCI Extension card. This also applies to the audio and mic.

Future Plans:

Bluetooth dongle and a simple config of folders in Windows to allow people to send pictures to the media center.

BIG MONITOR / TV possibly HDTV as the graphics card has DVI OUT. Looking into performance issues due to low spec first but i believe it will be fine.

Maybe another WinTV 150 PVR card for recording another channel but i have run out of PCI slots

Adding the ability to wake from standby on any key being pressed from remote.

Adding the ability to wake from standby when scheduled applications need to run.


Images:

Pictures of the inside are old now and i will be updating these asap but the outside is still the same.










The PDF for the case can be found here also:

http://www.esystem.org/htpc/AplusCSGL3En.pdf


Questions welcome......answers....ill try! If you have any comments on improvements etc please feel free to leave a msg here.

Mark - Bath City, UK

[Marcusb]

hey and welcome to the forums

Nice pics. Looks like a good machine for a very budget price. Well done.
Pity about the "no tv out" but most LCD and Plasmas have VGA inputs nowadays so shouldn't be an issue.

[druffski]

Nice setup. Mine is also a cheapish build, mainly sourced bits of gear from friends and family going overseas.

I have an overheating problem as well - however its 30C today so that could explain it partially

Shame about the no TV out - maybe updating the video card? There are plenty around that have a S-Video connection for the TV. And if your TV doesn't support 2-Video, you can get converters (as I've done in the past).

[Ciruz]

Ive looked into getting a new 4x AGP gfx card and from around the forum the Geforce 5200 came best off for price, performance, noise and features.

I do really need one for future use but im not so sure about 5200 as i had one before.

What is the best performance / feature packed gfx card supporting 4x AGP?

Cheers for comments guys,

Mark

[cheetah05]

Hi there,

Nice post, anychance of more pictures of the case - maybe in better light etc?

I only ask as that looks like a cheap case for me

Any thoughts/opinions on the case?

Thanks.

[Ciruz]

Some more images of the case and ive included one of the controller and remote.









Mark

[cheetah05]

Looks good! Looks like that's the case for me

Is that remote IR or Wireless?

Thanks.

[Ciruz]

The remote is wireless and works great. Distance is around 10 Meters and thats limited if it goes through walls as expected.

The only gripe i had with the remote is that i wanted the receiver inside the case but it just didnt work well at all. I forgot to list the front ports so here they are:

Left:

2x USB
1x Mic
1x Headphones
1x Firewire

Middle:

Reset button and big blue neon power on button

Right:

Just a 3.5 bay

All are nicely hidden by doors that when pushed in unclip and come down.

The case is great for a nice looking tidy HTPC but it is a little big. Its metal, black sprayed but the front is a combi of metal / plastic to resemble a stereo front. The front easily comes off so hardware like dvd drives can be fitted.

It has an assortment of screw slots to suit different motherboard sizes and a large selection of grills (1 on top, 1 on each side and 2 on back) for venting. There is also one located under the mobo.

Other than what ive mentioned i cant think of anything else to say.

Hope that helps

Mark

[cheetah05]

Is there enough space inside the case and did it come with any fans?

What are the dimensions of the case too?

[Ciruz]

Ahhh.. forgot something

Size - 295 x 245 x 385
Weight - Est 6kg

Looking inside id say i could fit 3 x HDD, 2 x DVD Drives and a larger mobo. Plenty of space really. Fans are not included which i can understand for the price. I just jumped on Amazon.co.uk and it seems to have been removed from listings. Weird.

Heres the technical datasheet that helped me alot in deciding if this was the case for me.

http://www.esystem.org/htpc/AplusCSGL3En.pdf

Hope that helps,

Cheers

Mark