[mascot]

I've actually never been a fan of HTPC's but I've now come to the conclusion that all the home electronics gear simply never develope into what I want and never make me 100% satisfaction.

I waited for Dreambox DM8000 HDTV linux satreciever, it never seems to be ready...
I waited for a region free HDDVD/Blu-ray/DVD combo player without alot of bugs - the Samsung BD-1400 came out, was made regionfree - but has alot of bugs - wich makes the wait for the Samsung combo player non interesting.

So... the conclusion - HTPC

I want it to handle everything EXCEPT games.
CD, DVD, Blu-Ray, HD-DVD, MP3, Radio, Photos, Satellite-TV (including HDTV)

So. My first components list looks like this..
The components I'm not sure of is within () please give me recommendations of options here..

Case: Silverstone LC17 (Black) or Silverstone LC18 (Black) depending on if I'll use my external 10" Lilliput touchscreen or not.

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 2,67GHz
-I know it might be too much but I want to be able to record from HDTV in background while watching blu-ray and hddvd discs etc. It also seems very easy to overclock alot this one...

CPU cooler: Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme

Graphics board: Sapphire Radeon HD2600XT Ultimate Dual-DVI 256MB

Audio card: Auzentech HDA X-Meridian 7.1

(RAM: Corsair XMS2 Xtreme TwinX DDR2 PC6400/800MHz CL5 2x1GB)
-Any use for more or faster memory?

(Motherboard: Asus P5B)
-Seems to have all I need. Is there a better option?

HDD: Samsung SpinPoint T166 HD501LJ 16MB 500GB
Blu-ray drive: Pioneer BDC-202 or BDC-S02
HD-DVD drive: Toshiba SD-H802A

(PSU: Corsair CMPSU-450VXEU 450W)
-I really don't know anything about PSU's. This one was cheap and seems to be fairly quiet.

I want a quiet HTPC. I know I'll probably have to get rid of the included fans in the Silverstone case couse I hear the ones inclouded are very noisy. Help needed!!

2x Technotrend S2-3200 (DVB-S2 cards)

I plan to run mediaportal (ofcourse), Power DVD Ultra, AnyDVD, DVBViewer.
What other software do I need? I want to archive my MP3's, photos and some standard DVD to run straight off the HDD, play blu-ray, hddvd, dvd, cd, listen to internetradio, watch downloaded tv-series (both standard and HD), watch and record from both my DVB-S2 cards... what other software could I need??

Screen is a Pioneer 50" PDP-507XA plasma and I want to run everything at 1366x768@72 hz.

[ThaClown]

Whow you must have alot of cash to spend.....
Well first off: why not get a BluRay & HDDVD combo player?? (like this one: http://www.lge.com/products/model/detail/ggw-h10n.jhtml) 2 of them seems really really overkill

Also the Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 2,67GHz is really too mutch in mho....

The PSU should be fine.

Get some silent case fans (there are many around) too keep the noise down....

[mascot]

I would love the LG combo reader/blu-ray and dvd writer. Unfortunately it's more than double the price of the two separate drives! It's 7000+ swedish crowns and the two separate are about 2600..

And I will never be interested in burning blu-ray discs at all. If I need a backup, I'll prefer to have it on the HDD instead, wich I will have when I get more HDD's. Thinking of buildning a really huge movie and music server with like 4-5 TB storage for DVD and blu-ray archive, music etc. HDD's are so cheap like less than $2 to store a standard DVD on HDD for instant playback.

CPU: I was looking at the E4500 at first but the price difference is so small nowadays and tests all around decoding blu-ray and HDDVD with the Radeon HD 2600 XT card recommends atleast an E6400 or like 2.4 ghz CPU.

I will look at quiet fans for the cooling. Because both the CPU and the graphics card will have passive cooling w/o fans, so I guess I need a couple of fans after all...

Regarding money-to-spend. Well it depends on how you see it. The point I want to reach is to fully replace a twin tuner DVB-S2 HDTV satellite reciever, a standalone blu-ray player, a standalone HD-DVD player, a mediaplayer for MP3, photo, videos on hdd etc + a high-end scaler. Would love to compare a HTPC like this with a standalone 1080p scaler like a $5000 Crystalio II...

For about 11500 swedish crowns I can build the HTPC above. Thats about the price of a quality standalone Blu-ray player (Like Pioneer LX.) and the comparable Dreambox DM8000 DVB-S2 twintuner reciever will be around 8000 swedish crowns alone.. if it EVER will be released... they said it would be out before the world cup 2006...

Can I run Power DVD Ultra and DVBViewer through mediaportal??

[RanaUK]

Hi Mascot,

I think I can see some potential problem/bottleneck. As far as I know, E6750 has a FSB of 1333MHz - where P5B (an amazing board; I am using it myself with a 60% OC with airCooler) supports FSB upto 1060MHz; You may want to look at Asus's new P35 based mobos.

next, core2 works faster with fast ram that tight ram timing; best performance is achived when fsb:memory_clock runs at 1:1 cycle, which means faster RAM (than 800MHz) would be better.

Audio: Are you using an external decoder? If so, you can use onboard spdif; else I think x-fi extreme music might be a better card (from reading the stats; also CMedia codecs are known to use cpu cycles)

PSU: Are you sure it has enough juice? we are talking about E6750 with HD2600XT and 3 Drives. I admit I don't know the power consumption of the video card though.

[mascot]

RanaUK: Thank you! That reply was truly helpful. I've built a couple of PC's in my days but I'm definetly no pro!
I learned alot in your reply, and got the help I was looking for!! I'll chose faster ram and I'm looking at a bigger PSU aswell. a very quiet Zalman model with more juice.

/edit

Memory: Kingston HyperX DDR2 PC9600/1200MHz CL5 2x1GB
Motherboard: Asus P5KR with Intel P35 chipset and 1333 Mt/s FSB.. thats what is needed to gain the best frpm the E6750 CPU right?

PSU: Thermaltake Toughpower W0117 750W 16 db. Enough for 2x5.25 drives and perhaps up to 5xHDD's? (Sammy spinpoint 500 gb)

[ThaClown]

Hey Mascot,

good reply I see now what you mean about relative price...
I totally agree I must say.
And now that I think of it I must have spend quite alot by now on my HTPC...
But stil it is less then 1 standalone BlueRay Player+MP3 player so I did good I think!

Good luck with your build, it looks to become really nice!