Completed Simple HTPC (1 Viewer)

[solas989]

Case: Silverstone SG-01 Evolution Brushed Black

PowerSupply: Silverstone Element ST50EF 500W 80% Effecient

Motherboard: Asus M2A-VM
Chipset: AMD 690G
NIC: Realtek 8168/8111 Gigabit Lan
Hardware Revision: v1.0
BIOS: 1601
Integrated Video: Disabled
Integrated Audio: Disabled

CPU: AMD Athlon 4200+ 2.2GHz Dual Core AM2
Cooling: Silverstone NT06 Lite (no fan)

Video Card: Gigabyte 7600GT GV-NX76T256D-RH (rev. 3.0)
Cooling: Passive Single Slot
RAM: 256MB
Connections: DVI, HDMI, SVideo
Driver: 6.14.11.6921 (12/5/2007)

Sound Card: HT Omega Claro
Processor: C-Media Oxygen HD CMI8788
Output: 7.1 Analog, Coax, Optical
Input: Line In, Mic In, Optical In
Driver: 5.12.8.1731 (2/13/08)

Hard Drives:
2 x 250GB Western Digital Caviar WD2500KS SATA Internal
1 x 1TB Samsung F1 HD103UJ with Thermaltake N0012US Enclosure eSATA external
1 x 320GB Western Digital NDAS
Logical Partitions:
Drive 1: 14GB OS (c: )
Drive 1: 210GB TimeShift (E: )
Drive 2: 6GB SwapFile (D: )
Drive 2: 215GB Recording (F: )
Drive 3: 1TB DVD,Recordings,etc (H: )
Drive 4: 320GB NDAS, Music, Pix (Q: )

RAM: 2 x 1GB OCZ DDR2 PC6400 (800MHz) OCZ2P800R22GK

Cooling: 3x Zalman ZM-F1 Plus 80mm Fans
Logic: 1 80mm bring in cool air from top of case, blows over motherboard expansion slots/rear of case
1 80mm bring in cool air from left of case, blows over hard drives/front of case
1 80mm exhaust hot air top of case
1 120mm Power Supply fan exhausts air from over CPU out rear of case.

hvr2250_27023whql: LG Super Multi GSA-4167B

Display: Silverstone/Soundgraph MFP51 with Soundgaph iMon PAD remote.
Resolution: LCD, Resolution 96 x 16 pixels

Keyboard: Saitek Ecplise II Backlight Keyboard (pressure fit into entertainment pier) behind door
Mouse: Logitec MX518

IN PROCESS...Trying to make both work.
Tuners: 1 x HD Homerun Dual ATSC LAN Tuner
Driver: 12312008
Firmware: 12312008
1 x Hauppauge 2250 Dual NTSC/ATSC PCIex1 Tuner
Driver: hvr2250_27023

SOFTWARE

Operating System: Microsoft Windows XP SP2 with latest patches minus SP3
Utilities: XMidea NDAS service, Norton Ghost 9.0, CCleaner, AdAware, Spybot, Microsoft Remote Login
Multimedia: DVDFab5 Platinum, VLC, Winamp
Front End: Media Portal 1.0 with TV Service

 

[ppeterr]

Heej nice hardware - i dont think this is a simple htpc
I hope its not to noisy with all those fans....

 

[solas989]

Nope it is not loud at all since they are all thermal or resistor controlled/limited. Only time they ramp up is under heavy load...which is never since it is powered enough to watch and record HD at the same time. No BR yet though.

I think it is simple compared to MANY/majority others shared on here since it is the SFF instead of HTPC layout.

Thanks

Solas

 

[ppeterr]

yeah, i also recently worked out how to reduce the fan speed with fanspeed....seems to work oke.
How about that gfx card. I have this problem, that 1080p at 24hz aint always in synch. I use a onboard 780g chipset,
believe that it is a radeon 3200. I also would like to know, if such a card like yours, would improve any screen quality
compared to a solution like mine

 

[solas989]

I cant help about 1080p because my screen only supports up to 1080i.

I do not have any issues with flickering, syncing, etc. All looks well. Same for 720p. Now I dont know if issues arise when you go to 1080p or not, but I do know many people have issues with ATI based solutions...which is why I disabled onboard ATI and went with nVidia (that and I still like nVidia over ATI/AMD).

I love my card. It was BRIEFLY available to buy for about a month before the 8 series rendered it obsolete - the single slot passive solution. It never gets above 56C under full load and is only one slot. It is SOOO hard to find a good single slot passive video card - well at least 2-3 years ago it was.

Re: the 780 chipset, I know there is a lengthy thread with it...if you havent already, check it out there may be solutions there. I have no issues with my 690 chipset, but I really dont use the graphics or audio part.

I think what help me keep load down is everything is offloaded to the cards. Video processing is on the video card, audio processing is on the sound card, hdtv tuning is on the tuner card (well, except for the HDHR which is now collecting dust becasue it doesnt like the 2250) etc.

Solas