Ongoing Low power MP build - i3 3225, ssd and quad dvb-t card (1 Viewer)

[yrehan]

I am using AMD Radeon RAM Disk with Windows 8. Its 4GB version is free. You can download it here http://www.radeonmemory.com/software_downloads.php
For me its works like a charm. No complaints at all.

To further save my SSD, I use NTFS symbolic links (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS_symbolic_link) to put the logs on the ram disk as well.

 

[datfreak]

thanks yrehan - I changed to the softperfect one and so far so good.

A lil update, I've ditched the 2 X twin dvb-t usb dongles and now have a single DigitalNow pci-e Quad dvb-t card. See specs / pics at website at:
http://digitalnow.com.au/product_pages/Quad.html

I have had a few Digitalnow tuner products previously (tinytwin,quad dvb-t/s,s3,s2) and have had some failures but overall quality has been quite good. Email from tech support either comes late or not at all which is a shame because their products have a lot of potential.

Anyway, plugged the card in the skinny pci-e X1 slot(after putting on the high bracket), installed the driver from the website - and presto - 4 tuners on tv server.
Inital testing seems very good, channel changing is quite snappy(better then prev usb sticks).
I'll report back here after testing for a few days - ill be interested to see how it goes after standby/resume cycling etc and multi transponder recording.

I like the cleaness of having only 1 antenna input for 4 tuners, no more wiring mess.
It comes with a MCE style remote and plug in receiver - I have not tested the combo but it seems the remote itself is NOT compatible with my existing Microsoft MCE receiver.

EDIT: Also just noticed that this card has DAB+ , when/if MP tvserver has support this will be a cool bonus.

After a few days testing the Quad card, im still very happy.
I had 1 instance when after standby it appeared as "only" 2 tuners in tvserver - I set a 5 second delay after resume before detecting cards and the problem has not returned as yet.

 

[datfreak]

quick update - have since installed MP 1.4.

Since getting the digitnow quad card, it is a very very rare to get any crashes(compared to when the usb sticks were in).
I highly recommend this card - it is $179au posted (see above link - ? maybe expensive for overseas post?) for a 4 dvb-t, that -for me at least- just works.

The asus mobo/i3 combo only annoyed me once - all sound had stopped, after awhile trying different things it was fixed by deleting and reinstalling the sound driver. Otherwise all good.

samsung ssd - no probs. As above, I have set the timeshift to ramdisk(but i would probably do this in future even for a nonssd HTPC. The drive may be a bit of a overkill for this standalone system, as it only goes to standby and doesn't restart.

 

[tony72]

Hey, did you stick with the stock cooler in the end, or did you change it? How noisy is it? I'm building a similar system (same CPU and motherboard, but in an Antec Fusion Remote), and I'm hoping it won't be much noisier than my current (nearly silent) system. I went with a BeQuiet Pure Power 530W PSU, and I stuck a Scythe Shuriken cooler on the order at the last minute to give me an option (didn't research that, hope it fits if I need it).

 

[datfreak]

I was going to update the cooler, but I havn't bothered as it is so very quite.
I figure the cpu is such a low power user that the fan doesn't work very hard at all.I also have the cpu undervolted and a 120mm case fan..
The only time i can hear it (at all) is when I first resume from standby, at this point it revs out for ~1second and then goes quite.
My prev amd 550 cpu fan was loud - but with the I3 I can not hear it at all (the 120mm case fan may hide this, although it is a quite one.)

 

[kiwijunglist]

The intel fans are very quiet.

 

[datfreak]

Its now 3.5 years later and this system is still going strong. No hardware or software changes except for updating MP whenever a new stable is released.
On the latest 1.15 now (it didn't like the 1.14 one), and still on windows 8.1. I didn't bother updating to win 10 as its been working so well I didn't want to rock the boat with a new OS.

Maybe buying a 4k TV in the next year and will probably keep this setup but upgrade to a GPU with HDMI 2 for 4k. Maybe a AMD 460 videocard hopefully passively cooled.

Longterm the intel - asus - 4 tuner card - ssd - mediaportal combo has served great.