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Anyone ever wish they did their HTPC right the first time? (or better?)

10K views 334 replies 40 participants last post by  DrDon 
#1 ·
So one thing that I noticed in this forum that is of significant prevalence that I don't see in other forums is the continual behavior of pinching every penny, making compromises, or taking the path of least resistance. I know that I am guilty of it too. But I wonder why this is the case with HTPC when many of the same folks doing it I see obsess about the smallest details in other other forums. Is there some inherent thing about HTPC that make people do this?

I know when I first joined this forum I fell victim. I followed the trend that was saying all you need for HTPC is a celeron. Back then people building i5 and i7 machines were constantly being told it's not needed, waste of $$ etc.. So a celeron is what I built. I think I started a thread about it. I spent about $250 on the HTPC.

It wasn't too long I was back for more though. Turns out it wasn't exactly ideal for me and the more I learned the more I wished for something a little more. I was getting sucking into the world of HTPC. But I found a killer deal on a Asrock mobo that was a step up (I think I had an H61 and stepped to Z68 then) for like $75 (normally was like $120) so I jumped on it. I also came across a deal selling Pentium chips for $47 which seemed like a really good deal. It was about 500mhz faster than the celeron I was using so I said sure and ordered it up.

That was cool for a time, but then I realized it didn't do 3D. Crap. Well third time is a charm right? So by this time I had spent a little time in this forum and I really was beginning to understand HTPC better. I went out and grabbed that microcenter special on the i5 3570k and the Asrock Extreme Z77. I've had that for a couple years now, and I can honestly say I am happy and have no intention or need to upgrade that even a couple years later. Part of me looks back and wonders WTF was I thinking? Why waste so much time and money to save like $20 here or $30 there? Was it actually worth it ?

I love a great deal as good as anyone else. I've pieced together a desktop, server and HTPC by jumping on sales and good deals over the years. But at the same time as I get a little more mature about this stuff I see that for the small difference in cost the extra head room is well worth it. The insurance of knowing you have something good that won't need to be replaced anytime soon has a value to most people but I think that value is lost in this forum.

So I'll ask what is it about HTPC that makes people so freakin' cheap? Is it really worth saving that $20 on that suspect PSU? Or the $20 you save by not grabbing that better motherboard? Or faster SSD? How about the CPU? Worth getting a turd?

I see some people spent thousands on their display or speaker or AVR or subwoofer system. I see the same people spent $300 on a microphone to measure their system, and $80 on speaker wire to hook it up. Thousands more on furniture like AV racks or TV stands or theater chairs. In comparison that $20 you saved on that crappy PSU worth it? Or the $40 you saved getting the pentium or Celeron CPU ? I'm not sure what it is about HTPC that makes people think like this.

I know personally when I use something and it works really good it makes me smile. I like it. If I build something, buy something, use something that is great... it makes me happy. I like nice stuff, and I like stuff that works well. In comparison I get a little frustrated when stuff is less ideal, it makes me wish I had better or regret buying it, or make me upgrade. For $100 having a faster snappier HTPC seems like it's worth it to me.

Wait. Scratch that.

Having used HTPC for years now and having owned and built a bunch of them I can say with absolute certainty that having and using a snappier quicker HTPC is more enjoyable and worth it. Especially when I realize that better SSD was $20 and the faster CPU was only $40. It seems like money well spent, even if the cheaper crap is "enough". It's also insurance against the future and realistically will remain viable longer which has a value too.

So what is your story? If you could change something about your first HTPC purchasing what would you change?
What advice would you give someone or wish someone gave you when you started out?

My advice is don't cheap out. Get something nice you'll enjoy for a long time and you won't regret or have to fuss with. If you'll actually use your HTPC consistently and not just once it's pennies on the dollar.
 
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#2 ·
I like this thread because it is very true. I see people all the time having a heart ache over the idea of spending extra on their HTPC. I myself cut a few corners that I now regret. If I could build my HTPC over again I'm not entirely sure what I would do differently, I think I would opt for a smaller case and perhaps I would have purchased the i7 over the i5-4440. I like the i5 but what the heck!!! Why not right?

Also, I think I like the idea of a server instead of an HTPC/server is a route I would have taken as well. I am using my HTPC as a server right now and I feel like it can be a lot of waisted energy, however, I have the HTPC set to go to sleep when not transcoding. Transcoding is another topic that I want to explore and expand upon as the topic has been vaguely discussed (it seems) here. In the future, transcoding (or some sort of media streaming) will likely be the most important function of my HTPC/home server.

Anyhow, right now I am pleased with my HTPC, it does everything I want it to do and I have most of the control part worked out.
 
#3 ·
Bigger faster makes more heat and uses more energy. My displays already dump a boatload of heat into my rooms. So it is not just initial cost, as they say its complicated. I want an HTPC that does what I want in the form factor, price and power consumption of a Roku 3. Trouble is everything is as you point out a compromise. Going bigger, better, faster at the early adopter part of the curve is not called the bleeding edge by accident. I bought a Ceton early on... ouch and it really only met my expectations of appliance like performance in the last few months. It needs a PC to host it just to use it with other PCs... So my 92" TV at 250 watts, the HTPC a Sandy Bridge i3 with the Ceton and a fairly mild Nvidia card is 120 watts doing its thing, add to that my AVR, my Darbee Darblet, the Lumagen Radiance, a couple of Ethernet switches and etc. Oh my goodness that is 600 watts to watch CNN.. it's all crazy. There has to be a better way.
 
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#5 ·
Bigger faster makes more heat and uses more energy.
This is the worst crap I've read around here and it's so wrong it's laughable but it get propagated time and time again and the education of the facts doesn't seem to stick.

Efficiency primarily has to do with chip design, not the power of the chip. It takes a certain amount of power to do a certain amount of work. For some reason people think a 3 generations old Pentium running 100% tilt trying to keep it's head above water for a transcode feed uses less energy than a 4.0ghz stock clock i7 4790k chip overclocked another 20% doing the same transcode and that's totally false.

The i7 is using less energy. It's more efficient and it's not running 100% or doing it as long as the old weaker pentium.

My i7 runs 800mhz most of the time like cruising AVS:






Just because the CPU can run high clock speed or do amazing CPU processing power doesn't mean it's burning energy when it's not. Not on modern chips anyways.. they all step down. The efficiency of my Haswell is inherently very good so it's quite energy efficient even though I my i7 can run circles around most CPU.

Think of it as a very efficient high horsepower engine car like a corvette cruising down the highway at very low RPM in top gear, gas mileage is just as good as any normal car out there on the road. now downshift and floor it and well your not getting that same gas mileage, but if you end up needing to get somewhere quick you'll get there a lot quicker. High powered CPU only use more power when they are working hard, and they are only working hard when you need them to do it.

The alternative is a weaker CPU struggles and you get skipping, or perhaps the system itself is just generally sluggish and annoying. When your i7 if going full tilt you are usually glad you have it.

Let's look at another CPU task:

Encoding a video from 1080p to another format for use on phone or something. You need to encode a 30GB MKV to say mp4 or something right? So you run the i7 for like what? 1/4 of the time of the Pentium ?? Ok so for like 15 minutes it's sucking more power than the pentium. Then it's done and watches that pentium suck more power for another 45 minutes trying to finish. That's not being energy efficient. That's just being weak.

The clock speed or max power of your CPU does not determine how efficient it is, it just determines the power or performance level it can reach. If a task takes X amount of processing power it doesn't really matter what you CPU clock speed is, it only matter how efficiently your CPU can do that task. A less efficient CPU running longer isn't going to use less energy, it's just going to use energy over a longer period of time.

Unless you have a CPU that's running under my 800mhz on my i7 and is also more efficient than my i7 it's unlikely you system draws less power than mine playing a video.
 

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#4 ·
I don't regret my original build decisions even though I've since upgraded from a celeron NUC running openelec as HTPC and Asus C60M1-I based mITX unRAID server to a Xeon E3-1230 / GTX 750 Ti / Win 8 pro all-in-one. 1) the unRAID server is still perfectly functional and wonderfully cost effective for dumb storage (it's really too bad ASUS discontinued that board btw). 2) the NUC will soon find a new home w / my dad who will use PleXBMC on it to be able to watch all my movies. So for what they cost, I still feel like I'm getting great value for them even though I've upgraded. I'd only be kicking myself if I wound up with a big investment doing nothing but sitting in my garage gathering dust.
 
#9 ·
Welcome to my world. :D

I think I've upgraded like 3 HTPC myself, another 3 for my parents.. My server got upgraded a bunch of times too.

The same story about my HTPC also happened on my server.

Originally I thought heck I'd do an all in one. It made sense. One machine, cheaper. So I built a big desktop in a Coolermaster Cosmos II case which I figured I'd just run an HDMI input to my AVR and I'd be good. I was still a gamer mostly so I was thinking big, i7 + SSD + 16GB DDR3.. case was a monster and held 14 hard drive bays + 2 more hot swap bays. Plenty of space for storage.

Well that plan crashed and burned because I soon realized if I was on the desktop surfing or playing a game my wife (girlfriend back then) could't watch something on the living room tv. That was annoying. So I build a cheap HTPC (that celeron) for use as a dedicated HTPC so it would not effect my desktop/server, I set up the new HTPC to just feed from my desktop all in one I built.

Well... nope. That still sucks dirty balls. Every time I restart or crash or fool around on the PC wifey's video stops playing. Can you say annoying ???? She can. I heard it a lot. Plus my gaming machine with overclocked i7, big GPU card and 1000 watt PSU wasn't as stable as I like overclocked 30% and gaming. Such is just how those kind of systems are.

Back then windows 7 seemed like it was less stable too. It's gotten better in the last few years I think. Or drivers and stuff have just matured.

So I decided to build a dedicated flexraid server. Nothing crazy. $300. Celeron. I wanted to use that H61 motherboard I had in the HTPC when I upgraded that HTPC to Z68. So I used the old celeron and H61 motherboard from the HTPC for the new flexraid server. I set up flexraid in an old desktop tower I had and ran Window Home server. It was nice. I liked it. WHS was stable, flexraid was great ! I moved about 12TB of storage (mostly WD green drives) over to the flexraid server and I set it up with full drives which was really nice. No data loss and everything worked great. I also gained parity back up and recovery and the new WHS server was very stable. Having a dedicated HTPC and a dedicated media server was SOOOO much better. No more restart or crash problems. No problem surfing or gaming on desktop while wifey watches movie on the HTPC either.

But, that celeron was too weak. It was always near 100%. The server was rather sluggish. I knew that G530 CPU I was using was not going to cut it very long. I eventually upgraded my HTPC to the i5, so then I took the Pentium and the Z68 board from the HTPC again and use it in the server. That was a little better. Then I bought a 3.0ghz G860 CPU for it because it was really cheap again, and basically it was the i3 2100 I was considering but without the HD2000 graphics, 3D or quicksync. Since it was a headless media server I figured I did not need any of that and grabbed the G860 for only $64. If you are keeping track that's $40 for the Celeron, $50 for the first pentium, then $64 for the second.

Turns out with PLEX and MB server and transcoding coming up in the world of HTPC and with my media collection growing and my wanting to share my collection with my parents and brother/sister my new Pentium CPU was not enough. It barely could transcode, and it could not do dual streams. Soo.. YES YOU GUESSED IT! Time to upgrade the CPU in my server a 4th time.

This time I went all the way and bought a 4770k i7 basically over a year ago when it first launched haswell and Z87; I got the microcenter deal on the Asrock Z87 Extreme combo. That free up my 2600K i7 from my desktop for use in my media server so today I have a i7 in my media server it works wonderfully.


in fact I just looked:





Looks like my wife is watching pure trash TV and my dad is watching (at his house on ROKU) COPPER because he likes american history and I told him it was good. Sometimes my brother is watching at his house, and if I was not on AVS I'd either be on the projector watching a movie or laying in bed with headphones watching something on the ipad.

4 Streams and 3 transcodes is no sweat now!

Funny I spent as much on the three previous CPU as I did on the i7 when I think about it. If I had really known I would have just grabbed an i5 in the first place. I got a little lucky because I was able to repurpose and trickle down so many parts. As I went from all in one to dedicated HTPC then to dedicated HTPC and dedicated media server and a desktop I was able to resuse machines and parts.

I actually ended up using the pentium for my brothers HTPC and also my parents HTPC. I had nothing else to do with them. Then my dad got a new 1080p 3D projector and wanted 3D so I just bought an i3 Haswell for him, I'm upgrading his pentium to a new CPU and machine tomorrow :)
 

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#6 ·
HTPCs are no different than anything else in this world. Some people are enthusiasts, other people dabble with them, and there are still plenty pf people out there that don't even bother with them. I think the confusion comes in when people try to lump the first two groups together.

People who dabble, don't necessarily need to spend extra money as a simple HTPC will do just fine. They don't get distracted by every fad that comes along (Ohhh! 3D! Now I gotta do 3D! Hey what's that? Transcoding? Oh! Now I want to transcode! If I can't figure out how to cram Prometheus in full 1080p onto my 4" smartphone, I'm not complete as a human being! 7.1 bit-perfect surround sound? **** that 5.1 ********! I need those two extra channels or my wife will never be able to enjoy "The Real Housewives of Punxsutawney" the way it was meant to be enjoyed.) That's the sort of mentality that always leaves you wishing you'd spent more.

A huge segment of the population can't tell the difference between 720 and 1080 and many of those who can, don't necessarily care. They're perfectly happy listening to 5.1DD surround for the same reason they're happy listening to lossy MP3s on their iPod. They don't care that the picture they get from Comcast has been compressed, recompressed, multiplexed, and who knows what else, to wreck the picture. They don't care the stream from NetFlix doesn't look as good as the BlurRay. I'd venture a guess most people using NeFlix don't even have more than 2 speakers connected so lossless surround sound would be lost on them.

The question, @Mfusick, is why do you drive a Mazda? Why not Lexus or Mercedes? Why not a Ferrari to quench your insatiable thirst for more speed and more power? Heck, if you're looking for a good deal, you can pick up a 'Vette that will keep pace with a Ferrarri for 1/6th the price. (I know how you love a good deal and all)

If you can tell me why you drive a Mazda, I'll tell you why not everyone want's to splurge on their HTPC setup.

But I'll tell you this... If you're always chasing after the next gimmick to come down the pipe, and be an early adopter, buying a faster PC is no guarantee that you'll be ready when that next thing comes around the corner.
 
#11 ·
If you can tell me why you drive a Mazda, I'll tell you why not everyone want's to splurge on their HTPC setup.
Haha. Because I'm poor and can't afford a BMW and the mazda drove the best. Mostly cost, but also the CX5 just seemed like it drove and handled the best and it was basically the best driving cheapest thing I found that could fit two car seats in the back. Well, that and I used to run a Mazda dealership years ago and friend still does.

But I hear you what you are saying. Cars are not always a good analogy. At least not for me because I'm really not too caring about what car I drive. I have zero tolerance for something crappy old and unreliable, but if was to lease a Honda, toyota, Mazda, Nissan.. Ford... whatever... I would't really care. It's all the same just a car. Not my thing. It just needs to work reasonably well. That's it. It takes me to work. But it's not total crap either, it's still a 2014 model under warranty and it's well reviewed and compares well with others. Like I said cars are perhaps a bad comparison, because if my Mazda was an i3 and your BMW was an i7 that means a celeron is what ? A 10 year Chevy with 100k on it? Yeah no thanks.
 
#7 · (Edited)
I simply don't value cable TV and other home video entertainment enough to spend very much money on it. I'd rather spend my money on other things. I just want something that works well and is quiet, reliable and efficient. It only costs me a couple of hundred dollars to meet those requirements. I rent, stream and record cable TV. I don't need vast amounts of storage, servers or high performance. I have no desire to run my own Netflix service. I guess it's my engineering mentality that compels me to find the optimum solution for every problem, nothing more than is necessary and nothing less.
 
#8 ·
As far as advice for first time builders:

Do lots of research before you spend a dime. Figure out everything an HTPC could possibly do. Then figure out what you want it to do. Make a list of well defined requirements. Then buy parts or a whole PC to match those requirements.

Assemble.
Configure.
Enjoy.

That, or save yourself a huge number of headaches, and go buy a Roku or AppleTV.
 
#10 ·
I'm quite happy with my cheap build, which I got started on because of Mfusick's thread.
http://www.avsforum.com/forum/26-ho...-htpc-s-decent-proud-myself.html#post21888093

Sometimes I hear some fan noise but I'm not sure which fan is creating most of it. The Intel CPU, the PSU, & PC case came with their fans so I really didn't buy cheap fans because they were included with the components. Maybe I could have bought a fanless video card, but for $15 the cheap one I got fixed the 29/59 bug. So I guess that's $15 that could have been spent more wisely.

I actually splurged a bit & bought a dual core Pentium instead of Celeron. For less than $400 I have a 4-tuner OTA DVR which can also be used to watch Hulu or other channels, & of course can be used as a regular Windows 7 PC.
 
#12 ·
Yeah I remember you doing a build about the same time I was doing a few. But you represent a great point though, I think the one Ajhieb was stressing about. You built what works for you and what you needed, nothing you didn't need. So years later it's still going strong for you doing exactly what you want it to do, and it's not failing to do anything you want it to do.

So in your case you did great. You did not spend tons of money, (actually almost nothing considering what you have) and even years later it's working rather well for what you do with it.

If someone could actually figure out exactly what they needed to do with an HTPC, and exactly what they'd never need to do it's a lot easier to get it right!

In my case I did not know enough to do that very well, and in a lot of cases the world of HTPC just rapidly grew around me like a giant bean stalk I needed to climb. There was no mediabrowser server, or transoding, or even PLEX back then. Slowly it all came out months later forcing me to upgrade.

Since I have two streams running now as I type this obviously I use it. We use it a lot and enjoy it. So depending on what you need to do with your HTPC or server will dictate the proper level of hardware you'll need. The hard part is for someone that's new to a lot of this they might not really know enough to make those determinations and understand things. I think for that reason having a little headroom or buffer zone isn't a bad idea generally speaking, especially for the people who have the money or don't have a huge budget restriction.
 
#15 · (Edited)
I think of all the crappy $2000 PCs I bought back in the 90s and early 2000s and still shake my head when someone complains they can't get a PC that does everything they want for $100 like someone's trying to rip them off or god forbid make a profit for their time and actually cover the cost of parts, shipping, PayPal fees, etc. "How can it cost so much when it's just metal and plastic?" For real?

Anyway, I've been through a few HTPCs and servers now. I don't necessarily regret those past builds. At the time they were a good mix of speed, cost and efficiency. After a while though they do get long in the tooth or are missing some feature I'd like to have so I upgrade then. I like my current A8-3820 HTPC but even though it's a 2.5GHz quad-core it still has it's slowdowns and annoyances. I'll probably go Intel CPU + discrete GPU in my next one. At this point though I've got so much unsold hardware lying around I might not have a choice what I use.

My main HTPC through the years:
1. AMD Athlon 5050e + Gigabyte 780G motherboard
2. AMD Athlon II x4 + ASUS 785G motherboard (add HD5670 GPU to get HD-audio)
3. Intel i3-2100 + ASUS H55 motherboard (added back HD5670 GPU because of 29/59 issues)
4. AMD A8-3820 + ASUS A55 motherboard (current)

My servers through the years:
1. Off-lease Dell GX620 tower (WHS v1)
2. ASUS E35M1-I + Lian-Li PC-Q08 (WHS2011)
3. Giada N70E-DR + Lian-Li PC-Q08 (WHS2011 - current)

My bedroom HTPC is usually something I am experimenting with. Right now it's a Q1900B-ITX in a SH-55 case with a picoPSU. Past has been everything from Intel i3-530 to Intel G620 to Atom D2700 to AMD E1-2100, i3-3217U, and who knows what else.
 
#23 ·
I primarily wanted an HD DVR to record, watch, & delete TV programs. And to watch Hulu if I missed something. It was a bit confusing to get started building an HTPC because I read about things such as madVR, XBMC, etc. Turns out all that was needed was WMC7.

My HTPC is basically an appliance. I used to record movies & programs with a DVD recorder or VCR. But we rarely watch a movie twice so I basically stopped collecting. So I didn’t need a server or fancy front end to display a lot of movies.

I have a single HDD & the HTPC wakes up from sleep in about 10 seconds when I click on the remote so I never added an SSD.

I do want a more powerful desktop PC & plan on doing that upgrade in the near future so will spend a few bucks on that. But the HTPC just keeps working as is.

And I do like cars. If I had a bigger budget I’d like to get one of these.
http://www.drivesrt.com/2015/challenger-srt-hellcat/
 
#26 ·
The builds that I regret are the ones where there I didn't have a plan. On those I was always thinking "ooh, what if I added X?". I constantly tinkered with them. They had frequent downtime and horrible WAF. They were overspecced because I wanted flexibility. At the end of the day, all I did was pay extra for a worse HTPC. Sure, I learned stuff along the way, but what I really learned was not to do that.

The builds that I don't regret...those were the cheap ones. I had a finite list of features and paid only for the minimum hardware to perform them. Once built, I didn't fiddle with them. They sat and ran and ran and ran and nobody even thought about them as computers...they were appliances. Those were my good builds, with high WAF and worth every penny.

I agree with Stardog and ajhieb. Have a plan. Build to spec. Save the what-ifs for next time. Ignore the "moar power" crowd; that path leads to a white elephant HTPC that could do everything but actually does nothing.
 
#28 ·
You make some great points, but I don't think it's about "MOAR POWER". I think people are reading my signature and just misinterpreting some of what I am trying to say. Or perhaps they just know my personality and are making assumptions.

The main thing I was asking in the opening post was what is it about HTPC that makes it like a red headed step child to a lot of people? It seems like there is a strong prevalence in this forum to cheap out, or cry about dollars, or quickly make compromises- and there is an abnormally strong tendency to be conservative or appreciate moderation even if it means slow and low performance come for a ride too.

I saw one dude spend $300 on a microphone to measure his subs and speakers and then only $200 on a laptop, then realized it was only a netbook and he needed a real laptop with windows ($350)... LOL! Ended up costing him $550.

I saw another not to be named poster talk about energy efficiency and choose a weak ass CPU because of misplaced concerns of heat and energy consumption and when I clicked the link in his signature I looked as his system and the dude was posting about running a 4th 20amp circuit to his AV closet for another amp for his subs. He had like two full closets full of stuff sucking juice... and I just lol-ed.

This happens all the time. Because it's computer related or HTPC people treat it differently. They are quick to make a compromise or give up performance, and they are pinching every penny worry about a difference of $20. I saw another guy spend $2500 on his TV stand then cry about $40 difference in price from a nice HTPC case to a rather crappier one. WTF? Some of the compromises people make around here on stuff they would never do if they were buying a TV or speakers or sub woofers, or a projector or screen.

It seems like to me that the cost of HTPC and PC components is really pennies on the dollar compared to the rest of the average home theater system on this website. This is after all AVS, so it's not like there's a ton of walmart $99 special home theater systems on here. The folks around here (even the less affluent ones) tend to have nicer stuff and a general appreciation for audio and video performance. The cost of a HTPC compared to a display, or AVR, or speakers, or subs is really small. It's less than what people spend on TV stands or racks, or even interconnect cables for their components. Then think about how much you spend on media! $100+ a month for cable and internet. plus rentals. Plus movies or tv box sets you buy. It's way more than HTPC, even a rather premium one is going to cost you.

And HTPC last for a while, especially if you spec it right and make it nice. A $500-$750 HTPC has potentially many years of viability. I'd think any i3 or higher or equivalent powered AMD build should suffice for an excess of 3 years so cost broken down per year is so small compared to a cable bill, or any other part of your system. The viability and longevity of an HTPC only increases with better performance parts. Spending that $20 extra on the Samsung PRO SSD and that $40 extra on that core i5 quad core instead doesn't mean lower reliability or problems either. I know what you are saying and I agree 100% about the needing a good plan part, and if you piece something together on a whim it's less ideal and more problematic. I agree. But that's user error, it's nothing wrong with the hardware. Choosing a faster SSD for $20 doesn't make your HTPC less reliable or more problematic. Actually the Sammy Pro has a 10 year warranty is reasonably expected to be more reliable. Spending $40 on that i5 CPU doesn't lead to more problems either, it just means your HTPC is faster and more powerful and should last you longer before it loses it's viability as a proper solution. It's not burning any more juice playing a video either, not enough to be of any consequence to anyone, including even the most excessively brain damaged tree huggers. It's so insignificant compared to other areas of your home, lifestyle, or even home theater system. But no one looks at those areas, it all about the HTPC like it's the single point source in your house for excessive energy consumption. Lol. Just turn your AC up a couple degrees, or upgrade your fridge to something more efficient. My wife blow drying her hair for 5 minutes burns way more energy than my HTPC. That extra 5 minutes in a hot shower with an electric water heater ? It's just weird to me how people are so misinformed about energy and HTPC in relation to other parts of their lives yet seemingly everyone has some obsession about HTPC and energy and treats it differently than stuff like it's of way more and paramount importance.

So what is it about PC or HTPC and in this forum that has such a prevalence for moderation and compromise, and an inherent universal tendency to pinch every penny so tight? It seems like the same folks crying over seemingly little money differences in parts or a build options goes off full tilt in another forum on speakers, or subs, or displays or amps. It's like mismatched. It's something funny about this forum that's been this way for a while where compromise and moderation is appreciated and that leads to a culture that promotes that. I feel like sometime people who are not naturally like that get bad advice here because of this. I know it happened to me when I first joined. I even jumped on the bandwagon and called people out for using a quad core saying "it's not needed". I've learned the error of my ways.
 
#27 ·
I've lost track of how many times I've upgraded my HTPC. I've gone through a multitude of changes in recording technologies and formats since the early days of VCRs. I've been a diehard couch potato most of my life so once I tried time shifting I was hooked. I went through VHS, Beta, S-VHS, Tivo, and ReplayTV for cable and OTA and eventually switched to DirecTV. I still used Tivos and ReplayTVs with sat receivers for recording and also used D-VHS recorders with an early Hughes sat receiver that could also get Dolby Digital. When the dual tuner DirecTivo came out I jumped on it, although we had to hack them to enable the 2nd tuner at the time. I built my first HTPC to record OTA because DirecTV didn't provide all of my locals and only one of the two markets that was available in my area. I was using BeyondTV with a socket 939 motherboard and CPU at the time and it worked great.

Years later, DirecTV announced they were dumping Tivo for their own DVR and it turned out to be pretty buggy at first. I decided to switch to FIOS as soon as it came through my neighborhood and I'm still with it today. I was able to swap out my DirecTivos for the current series 3 model that worked with digital cable so I could record from FIOS. Fast forward again and Ceton announced the InfiniTV 4. I got on the notification list and placed my pre-order as soon as I got the word it was going into production. When it finally arrived five months later I made the switch to Windows 7 and Media Center.

Since then I have probably invested at least a couple grand and made numerous upgrades. I bought a nice Silverstone HTPC case and have probably swapped out the motherboard, CPU, and memory about 5 or 6 times since then (I had two bad Intel motherboards in a row, both different models). I've gone through more ATSC tuners than I can count. I currently own thre InfiniTV 4's, an InfiniTV 6, and a HDHomeRun Prime.

My original Windows 7 setups were more than a bit buggy, but things seemed to even out after a few more hardware swaps and the release of Service Pack 1. Nowadays I just install Windows 7 and associated drivers along with any additional software and everything just works. I've got three satellite HTPCs in addition to my primary HTPC, all of them i3 NUCs. I've tried using hardware that was supposed to be "good enough, " but it always fell short. I've adopted a philosophy that if something is supposed to be "good enough" it's usually marginal at best and stepping up one or two CPUs better (i.e., from a Celeron to an i3) will usually do everything I ask of it and do it well. Going to anything more powerful is just a waste, unless you actually need your HTPC to do more than record and watch TV or stream Blu-Ray rips from a server.

I've found that if you go cheap with your HTPC, you'll probably be disappointed in the results. You get what you pay for, but only up to a point. Buying way more than you need doesn't make any more sense than not buying enough. Look at the basic requirements and then bump it up a notch or two just in case. If you think you'll need to transcode or play games, then plan for that as well.

I initially based most of my builds using recommended components from the build threads from both renethx and Assassin. The main problem I had was that many of those threads were outdated and the hardware was getting hard to find. I have since found that most current hardware will work just fine, especially with the latest CPUs and integrated GPUs. Windows 7 has matured to where it is extremely stable and hardware drivers have reached the same level of stability. It's gotten to where it's becoming difficult to have a problematic HTPC build. Life is good. :D
 
#29 · (Edited)
No regrets here. I feel that I've always chosen the best parts for my intended use and have just been limited by the technology available at the time of building.

Could I have overspecced my first HTPCs to be quad-core Q6600 guzzlers? Sure. If I had though, I would have have wasted money in parts, cooling and electricity unnecessarily. I had also been considering spending a few grand on a dual-socket LGA-771 Xeon build with FB-DIMMs for my server and boy, what a mistake that would have been. I'm happy I just saved the funds and stuck with a single socket Yorkfield LGA-775 solution.

The thing is even now, my old Celeron E3300 builds paired with appropriate GPU can accomplish all the tasks I require of my front-end HTPCs. They can handle Blu-ray (3D), live TV, Flash HD, Netflix HD and even my PSX emulators. Not once have I felt that my 4-year old i3-530 HTPC was too slow to handle HTPC duties and the occasional system maintenance (at least once I replaced the HDD with SSD).

For me, a lot of the fun in HTPCs is the planning, speccing and building. Alas, the HTPCs have been running pretty stable for 4 years and aside from switching to SSD, have never needed upgrades. I recently built 2 Mini-ITX Haswell Pentium and 2 Mini-ITX Ivy Bridge Celeron ULV and have the parts for an i5-4570 build partly to satisfy my itch. :)

I can see Mfusick's point. With current CPU options, I'd pretty much always go i5 quad over i3 "fake quad" for the extra $50 or so. However, between a $50 Celeron/Pentium and a $200 i5, I'm likely to save the extra $150 if my intended usage doesn't require much CPU power. Same thing between a Crucial MX100 and a Samsung 850 PRO. In 10 years time, I expect we'll have moved to PCIe SSDs anyway (or even a totally different technology) and you can probably buy 2TB or more for the same price 500GB will cost you now.
 
#30 ·
This thread speaks to exactly why I've been putzing about the HTPC forums for the past month. I'm trying to make sure that the machine I end up with (whether I build or purchase off the shelf) is able to do the things I need it to do the first time. I want to leave a little wiggle-room for increased performance demands, but I don't want to overshoot the mark so much that I am using a .50 caliber Desert Eagle when a lady's clutch .22 Beretta would have done everything just as nicely.

I now know I am best off making my HTPC and my server separate machines, something I originally was not going to do in order to save money on the second machine (which it turns out can be rather inexpensive). I now know that, despite many claims to the contrary, that those i3 PCs I was looking at really aren't going to handle everything I need them to. Coming here, I have actually found many places where I was clearly over-spending (like investing in a high-end vid-card), meanwhile, I have found a few places where I would be wise to invest a bit more.

The "final" server PC is being acquired in less than three weeks. Hopeffully by then I'll have learned even more and can really refine what specs I actually should be shooting for the first time around.
 
#32 ·
Start a thread with a good accurate title and build advice and let everyone hammer it out. You'll get many different opinions, yours it all that counts but I find it useful to read what other people have to say... it makes me think about things I might not have thought about.

Having built like 20 HTPC's the little things are the things that matter most, like does your motherboard have a fan speed controller and enough headers to control all the appropriate case fans... does the case have USB3.0 on the front? If so, you'll want a mobo with that header too. Do you want to use an IR device built in to the front of the case? Is so.. need that header. Otherwise.. USB to IR adapter works great. Does the PSU fit the case well? Some smaller cases are tight, certain PSU is better than others. Did you remember to buy the extra small cables you might need incase the motherboard model you choose does not come with them? Aftermarket cooler or stock? If aftermarket make sure it comes with thermal paste. Worth upgrading that for $5 ? How about screws to hold drives and stuff? Got enough ? Does motherboard have enough SATA ports? There is a lot of little things to consider that some of the veterans might point out good tid bits to you when they see your thread and build list.

Stardog was the first one to teach me about the fit of a PSU with a certain case I was using once, I remember that after that single quick comment he made how really grateful I was he took the time to make it. The PSU I was originally going to use would not have fit. Saved me a lot of trouble with a 5 second single sentence post.
 
#34 ·
I had a 530 watt Rosewill power supply, 8GB (2 x 4) DDR3 1866 RAM, LG/Hitachi USB BD-ROM drive (that will only be attached when needed since I will continue to rip on my desktop system), and 4TB worth of HDDs just lying around, so I did what any reasonable person would do and used them for a new HTPC build ;) In fact, I just ordered the parts today.

I went with a 128GB SSD boot drive, an i5-4690K, an Asus Z97 M-Plus MB, a Silverstone GD09 Black case, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit, and a Logitech K400 keyboard/mouse (in addition to my iPhone apps).

What's wrong with overkill? This thing will be faster than my desktop (i5-4440 with Z87 MB).
 
#36 · (Edited)
What's wrong with overkill? This thing will be faster than my desktop (i5-4440 with Z87 MB).
If you want overkill, nothing is wrong with it.

For others, overkill is just a word that tries to put a positive spin on wasted time/resources/money/etc. For those, there is something very, very wrong with overkill.

Neither person is wrong; but only in regards to that individual, and that individual alone. They are not right in regards to anyone else's build. Only person doing said build is. Someone who loves overkill trying to say anyone and everyone else should build their rig to overkill is just as wrong as someone who doesn't want/need/desire overkill saying no one should build their rig to overkill.
 
#38 · (Edited)
So explain why would a soccer mom who needs to move 4 kids back and forth, and will never drive over 65mph, listen to your advice? What you said is the exact problem I was describing.

So yes, for others, there is such a thing as too fast. In terms of both cars and computers. Don't put your words in other people's mouths and try to say your way is the only way.
 
#42 ·
Know your audience.

Three simple words that will make you as a member of society much more useful to those around you. It doesn't matter if you're writing a speech, coding a new program, working on a car for a friend, or giving advice about anything... Whatever it is that you're trying to share with the rest of the world, you should keep them in mind, not you.

As it pertains to here, most people coming to these forums are seeking advice/guidance. And in the case of these forums, your audience isn't necessarily the people participating in the discussion. Look at the page views on some of these threads. In some cases thousands of people are reading but not necessarily responding. So even if your are having a specific discussion about a given topic, it's important to remember that this is a public forum and by virtue of that, your discussion isn't private. There are likely hundreds of people reading what you say and not all of them are going to read 75 pages of a thread to make sure they get everything in the right context. Personally, I think if you want to actually help people it is important to qualify your statements so they can stand on their own and not need 75 pages of context in order to frame them properly.

I try to avoid saying things like "YYZ motherboard is the best choice," and instead would qualify it with "I think YYZ is the best choice for your application because..." That serves multiple purposes. 1) random visitor reading the thread doesn't get the idea that YYZ is what he should get because someone said it was "the best choice" when in reality it might not suit their needs very well. 2) I usually try to back up my opinions/advice with factual material. I think knowing YYZ is the better choice for you is good information, but I think knowing why is just as important. 3) "I think" makes it clear that I'm stating an opinion and not some universally agreed upon maxim.

Sure, not everyone is going to qualify everything they say in that manner, and we're all guilty of making the occasional blanket statement even if it isn't always accurate. But I think its important to at least make the effort to give good advice for those reading and not just those that are involved in the discussion. Personally I don't think there is any room for hyperbole when giving advice. Anytime you make a statement about what works, what doesn't, what is good or what is bad, it can be considered advice. It may not be intended as such, but if you remember your audience, you'll find those sort of statements can easily be taken as such.

And let's not forget, this is the A/V Science forum.
 
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#44 ·
I know when I first joined this forum I fell victim. I followed the trend that was saying all you need for HTPC is a celeron

So what is your story? If you could change something about your first HTPC purchasing what would you change?
What advice would you give someone or wish someone gave you when you started out?
Built a bunch of HTPCs now, and never regretted building with a celeron. They always did exactly what I built them for

Having built like 20 HTPC's the little things are the things that matter most, like does your motherboard have a fan speed controller and enough headers to control all the appropriate case fans... does the case have USB3.0 on the front? If so, you'll want a mobo with that header too. Do you want to use an IR device built in to the front of the case?
You always tend to overstress the fan controller bit in my opinion. This is because it's of little importance to me. Popular cases like lian li and nmediapc include fans that you can simply wire to your psu. My thermaltake tower is the largest collection of fans I've ever had in any build, and it came with psu fan connections. Most mobo fan headers aren't PWM anyway, so I fail to see any benefit to finding a mobo with a bunch of fan headers. Unless your doing some super tower build there aren't going to be that many fans needed

I find myself never using USB3 ever, with the exception of my rMBP

This thread speaks to exactly why I've been putzing about the HTPC forums for the past month. I'm trying to make sure that the machine I end up with (whether I build or purchase off the shelf) is able to do the things I need it to do the first time. I want to leave a little wiggle-room for increased performance demands, but I don't want to overshoot the mark so much that I am using a .50 caliber Desert Eagle when a lady's clutch .22 Beretta would have done everything just as nicely.

I now know I am best off making my HTPC and my server separate machines, something I originally was not going to do in order to save money on the second machine (which it turns out can be rather inexpensive). I now know that, despite many claims to the contrary, that those i3 PCs I was looking at really aren't going to handle everything I need them to. Coming here, I have actually found many places where I was clearly over-spending (like investing in a high-end vid-card), meanwhile, I have found a few places where I would be wise to invest a bit more.
Why do you "know" you are best off making your HTPC and server separate machines? i3 will transcode all day long no sweat, just depends on how many simultaneous transcodes you want at a time

To me this gets right to the heart of what I consider wrong with the opposite end of the spectrum

This forum was what I'd consider the best I've found thanks largely in part to highly knowledgable, high value posters who truly know the answer to "can this build do this?"

In a lot of other forums, I see a lot more people who don't actually know the answers to that answering the questions with hand-wave responses like "might as well just get an i7." There are a lot of those type of answers polluting this forum recently

In almost all cases, if you *think* you need an i7 or xeon then you most likely *don't* need it. You know if you need it. Also, let's not pretend an extra $60+ for an i7 over and i5 doesn't add up along with someone *advising* you to also spring for an 850 pro, ddr3-2400 ram, z9X mobo, etc. You'll end up with a miscellaneous extra $150 or so spent. For someone coming in thinking that a $100 firetv was going to hit the mark, advising in this direction just pushes more people out of the community since they think the entry cost is too high for a single htpc. What's worse is all that advise tackles a strange subset of usage - what if you want to transcode (and not build a separate server) or run svp or madvr. There's a lot of people like myself who think 24p looks good all on it's own and their tv can handle it just fine. SVP tackles a strange scenario where people use a poor tv display with an overpriced cpu to manufacturer 60 frames from 24 since their tv can't handle 24 properly
 
#45 ·
This seems to happen every 3 months

The op either suffers from amnesia or just continually enjoys testing the waters, but it always comes about

"It seems like everyone is focused on high end servers these days"
"The low end was taken over by roku"
"Nobody wants to just build a low end HTPC anymore"
"Everybody seems to be interested in madvr or other high end video processing these days"

"etc"
 
#46 ·
There's also a crowd here that really only focus on making a whole home DVR

I half-fit that crowd at first because my goals were

  • Do everything media center
  • Whole home dvr (part of that media center)
  • Retro and PC games (part of media center)

They were those goals in that order, so when the whole home DVR portion requires WMC for HBO, Cinemax, etc. I just ignored those stations. I've reached a point now that the dvr goal is the lowest priority. We never use it. I switched to OTA to save money.

When DVR is your top goal and you don't have a lot of ripped dvds/blurays and don't feel comfortable setting up something like sickrage, then your outlook is different entirely. You probably aren't interested in transcoding or madvr at all if you spend a majority of your time watching copy one cable in wmc
 
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