Ongoing Livingroom HTPC (1 Viewer)

[caveman]

My good old HTPC machine died.
All the gray smoke that lived in it has gotten out.... Rest in peaces..

So now I have the great fortune to build a new one.
Well i dont really have a choise.

The requirements are:
Must support firewire - Due to my fire-DTV tv card.
The pc will only be used for HTPC.
Quiet / silent since it's in the living room.
Play Full HD / Blue ray.
Should be future proofed (whatever this means for a HTPC)

The choise was between the i3 or a AMD.

After searching, guessing and borrowing ideas i came up with this list:

Case used: Origenae X11 - The old one i had.
MB GIGABYTE GA-A75-UD4H (rev. 1.0)
CPU AMD A6-3500
Cooler Noctua NH-C12P SE14 CPU Cooler
Memory Kingston 4GB DDR3 1600Mhz (2x2) HyperX
GFX PowerColor Radeon HD6570 Go Green (1GB)
Powersuply Some silent one I had.

If it sound ok / Have suggestions / Comments let me know.

Tanx for your help.

 

[kiwijunglist]

Yes that will be plenty fast enough to run mediaportal, and that GPU will be fine with hardware acceleration. If it was my HTPC I'd run it with 8GB of cheaper RAM. The CPU cooler might be excessive, you might be better to save money and use the stock cooler as well as speedfan or use the bios to control cpu fan speed to keep it quiet. I found speedfan better than bios because it gives you more control to keep the fan slower. You can vary the cpu fan speed in speedfan until you get it so it's just audible, then set it at that fixed speed and only allow it to go faster if the CPU gets really hot.

I know with the older AMD vs Intel CPU the stock coolers on the intel were A LOT quieter. I am not sure what the situation is with the newer AMD CPUs. I have an i3-2100 and I use speedfan to control the fan speed, it is very quiet (less noise than case fans)

 

[caveman]

Would it be an idea to upgrade the tvtuner from the fire-DTV to maby someting like the: Digital Devices Octopus CT (Dual DVB-T/C) PCIe

 

[kiwijunglist]

I don't have any experience with DVB-C. If it works fine no point in upgrading it unless 1. you want the tuner internalised 2. having firewall limits your mobo choices 3. that particular firewire tuner has driver issues with MePo/Win7/Win8.

 

[caveman]

Well multiple tuners i guess are always welcome. The MB was selected because it has FireWrire.
I dont know if there will be any problems with mpeg-4 chanels in the future.
I guess it's more the case, i have to upgrade anyway. So why not make sure everyting is future proof.

Regarding RAM, is there any differenche for a HTPC between cheap RAM, and something like the Kingston RAM.
MePo will be installed on Win7 again, unless there is a really really good reason for Win8.

 

[kiwijunglist]

Not worth buying premium RAM just get standard/cheapish RAM. You could probably get 8GB of cheaper RAM for a similar price, and 8GB will give you better performance, you could even run 8GB with a 2GB RAM drive for timeshifting.

I would chose 8GB of Kingston Value RAM over 4GB of Kingston HyperX RAM, and it's probably cheaper with the 8GB as well.

You wont notice any difference with RAM speed, however an extra 4GB may make MePo/Windows slightly nicer to use with texture heavy skins. Also with 8GB you can run a 2 GB RAM drive for timeshifting.

 

[caveman]

The next thing would be for me to ask you on how to setup the 2GB ram timeshifting
Any specific reason why you selected the:
Intel i3-2100
Mainboard: GA-Z68XP-UD4
For your setup?

 

[kiwijunglist]

I got it at a really low price second hand but never used. i3-2100 seems quite popular for HTPCs, although you could go with a cheaper CPU and still be ok. That motherboard is a performance based motherboard for overclocking so I would recommend cheaper motherboards if buying brand new. The mediaportal wiki has all the information you require about ram drives and timeshifting.

 

[caveman]

and with i3 no problems with the "mystical" framerate problem? the 23.9 some what?
because i dont have any preferences to either i3 or a6 "just" need a firewire, and that could be added with a PCI card.

 

[kiwijunglist]

Never heard about that problem I'm not sure if I've noticed it, but I havn't looked hard. From googling if you turn off UAC it would go away. Playing 23.976fps at 24fps would introduce a double frame every 40 seconds, however My TV only does 24/50/60Hz i'm pretty sure it doesn't support 23.976Hz although I might be wrong.