ION HTPC or AMD? Which one should I go for? (1 Viewer)

[gurabli]

Hi!

I am unable to decide which setup should I chose, please help me decide. I am aware of many pros and cons for both, but for sure not of all, you could help me to decide.

I had a WD HD player, I was quite satisfied, I used an old Athlon PC as a server, running torrent and NFS share for WD, but I had some problems with playback of some files, and decided to go for Windows based player - HTPC - so I will be able to playback all files now and in near future.

I plan to use the HTPC for torrent (7/24), for watching DVB-C digital SD and HD 1080i with a tuner and sometimes recording TV and for 1080p, 720p, DVD, xvid/divx playback on a Panasonic 42 720p Plasma TV. For a little while I will use only stereo sound, but will use optical DTS 5.1 soon.

ION rig:

Asus AT3N7A-I (Atom Dual Core 330 + ION) Link

Codegen MX-31 300W PSU + Card reader + Remote Link Likely to replace the built in Codegen PSU with picoPSU 75-90W (noisless and far less energy). I heard that Codegen PSUs are very bad and unreliable.

2GB 800Mhz DDR2 RAM (2X1GB)

1,5 TB 7200 WD Green HDD

Terratec H5 USB or Terratec Cinergy HTC USB XS HD or Cinergy C PCI HD (all for DVB-C)

slim slot-in DVD drive (eg: Optirac)


AMD rig:

Asus M4A785G HTPC R/C (HD4200)

AMD Athlon II X2 235e (45W)

Scythe Big Shuriken Cooler or some other, has to be very quite and fir into the case

MS-Tech MC-1200 case 350W link

2GB 800Mhz DDR2 RAM (2X1GB)

1,5 TB 7200 WD Green HDD

Terratec H5 USB or Terratec Cinergy HTC USB XS HD or Cinergy C PCI HD (all for DVB-C)

slim slot-in DVD drive (eg: Optirac)



The ION system is somewhat cheaper, and it is certanly quiter and consumes much less energy (however, the 45W CPU should not need much as well). I have read many reviews here that MediaPortal is running perfectly good on ION, and the system is fully capable of all HD (1080i 1080p, 720) playback, HDTV, and I think that the torrent should not be problem either.

The AMD rig is far more powerfull, it has 4500HD VGA, a much more powerfull CPU, but it is more expensive, much more louder (or not?), consumes more power.

So, not easy to decide, this is why I need your help, adviceces. I plan to use the system with the remote only, no keyboard/mouse attached at all - so like I used the WD, but now with MediaPortal, and to have all in one. I will access utorrent from WebUI or RDM.

Thank you for your help in forward!

 

[finrudd341]

I can't really answer your question, but I can say that I opted for a ION model because I am building a client, that will only run from a server.

I think you need to be very sure that you are ONLY going to be using an Atom PC for limited tasks, and not want to do other things later, because if you do, then you will want a more powerful processor in my opinion.

For me the ION is good because of the size and low power consumption. If you are going to be running cards on the machine, my instinct tells me that you should perhaps look at the AMD option.

Post back what you decide in the end!

 

[savocanberra]

Hi,

If i was going to do it again I probably would get something more powerful the ATOM ION (thats what I have now). At the end of the day if you get a 45w CPU your system will never use much more power then an ATOM ION because you will never be hitting 100% CPU.

AMD for sure but to save power use a PICO PSU (150watt) with a dell 12v 18amp adapter.