Minimalistic HTPC for 1080p (1 Viewer)

lubbe75

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October 23, 2008
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As hardware get outdated very fast I find it difficult to find a good recipie for what I need. Is there anyone who has a working recipie for a minimalistic HTPC that can play 1080p ? Any link? Searching various forums I can only find "old" recipies or descriptions of monster machines.

With minimalistic I mean small in terms of price and size. I will run Windows XP and MediaPortal (of course). I am going to use it as a PVR with one or two built-in TV receivers. Hmm... that's about it I guess. Thanks.
 

revs

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  • February 1, 2007
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    The Sauce of Worcester
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    Depending on the type of video, 1080p playback is easily acheived now with a cheap (~£30 GBP) graphics card that offers hardware acceleration. A fast CPU is not needed.

    However - playback of 1080p AVI/MKV files would require a fast CPU, as the graphics card if not used.

    I suggest a Core2Duo based machine, 2GB of RAM, and a cheap graphics card that handles hardware accel (ATI 3450/3650). That shouldnt cost you much, and you can get it all in a pretty small case. Should be low heat too, so low noise!
     

    lubbe75

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    Thanks for the fast reply.

    Would any core2duo do the job or should I look at CPUs over a certain clock frequence? Is that socket 775, or does it not matter?

    As for the memory, do I need to look for a certain speed or doesn't it matter?

    Last of all, do you know of any project like this that has proven to work, or will I simply have to take the risk and go for it anyway?
     

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    Any Core2Duo should do - they are all fast - go for the best value:speed ratio. Anything over 2GHz I guess!

    I have an AMD X2 3800 and that plays 1080p files, a Core2Duo should be loads faster.

    The graphics card and a suitable decoder (e.g. PowerDVD Codec) will hardware accelerate all mpeg2/h264.

    Memory speed wont really make a huge difference, again, go for the best price:speed ratio.

    Once you decide on what you want - post the spec here and then we can see if anything could be improved/changed.
     

    lubbe75

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    A lot of decisions depend on what case and motherboard I select. What format do you suggest? Micro/mini/midi-tower? Again, small and simplistic is nice, but I'm not a purist. That goes for noise as well. It should be fairly quiet.

    Am I right in saying that I don't need a powerful power unit? Would 250W be enough?
     

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    Personally I went for a mid case. I have a Seasonic S12 PSU (very very quiet)

    Case size and motherboard type are up to you, depends how many PCI cards you need/ how many hard drives etc.

    I tend to get one with a 120mm fan, and then buy a noctua fan (extremely quiet). for CPU cooling I go for Arctic Cooling, also very quiet.
     

    lubbe75

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    Ok, starting to get something...

    Case: Antec NSK2480 including 380W power supply (not very small but seemingly popular)
    CPU: Intel core2duo E7200 2.53GHz (3 Mb, 1066 MHz, s-775) including fan
    Graphics card: ASUS HD3450 256MB GDDR2 PCI-E DVI/HDMI/VGA (passive, low profile)
    Harddrive: deciding later
    Optical reader/writer: deciding later

    Looking good so far?

    How do I choose a motherboard? There are just too many and I don't know what to look for. I suppose it doesn't need to have an HDMI connector since I am going for a separate graphics card with HDMI. But I do want an optical audio connector (not planning on a separate sound card).

    And memory? 2Gb, but what else to look for? It has to fit with the motherboard in terms of connector, but also I don't want to waste money on memory that is too fast for my motherboard... It's a jungle.
     

    lubbe75

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    Hmm... did some thinking and reading overnight. It seems like Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H is a good choice for a motherboard, with built-in GPU and HDMI output. It means I can skip the dedicated graphics card for now and maybe settle with a smaller box.

    What is a good micro-ATX box? Does anyone have a tip?
     

    lubbe75

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    No, I haven't looked at that. Wouldn't you say that they are too small (too warm) to play 1080, blu-ray and have enough space for TV-card etc?
    Again, if there is a description for a working mini-itx project then I am interested.
     

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