Budget HTPC build '09, seeking h/w-s/w advice

You are welcome!
I have no experience with the case you have chosen so I can't comment on that, but the cpu you have chosen is an old generation 65nm cpu, which is slower and much less power efficient (gets hotter) than current generation 45nm AMD cpus.
Therefore I'd recommend you to get a AMD Athlon II X2 240 cpu instead (as recommened in the article you mention) which also only costs 60$ at newegg.
Everything else looks good to me.

The IR remote is known to work out of the box with XBMC (which likely means boxee too), it will work with other apps in Mandriva too with the correct lirc configuration.

IMHO currently JFS is the best filesystem for a HTPC, some people prefer XFS, which is good too, but XFS has a slight risk of losing data in case of a power outage.

Generally speaking you certainly can use the same machine also as a media server, although it might need some tweaking to get it to stream 1080p and also play back 1080p locally at the same time without any stuttering, but it should be powerful enough to handle that.

I don't use 3D desktop effects, so can't answer the last question.

Just to add, XBMC and Boxee are not available as Mandriva packages from the official repositories, but you can get XBMC from the unofficial Mandriva Italia Backports repository.
You can add this repository with the following commands (as root in a terminal/console):

This was what I built for ~$320 http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1149026 .

My only change would be to get an Intel E6300 instead of the E5200 for ~$15 more (yes, I'm partial to Intel procs) (see the CPU chart at http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php) , altho I bought the E5200 knowing it was reputed to have massive OC'ing potential if needed (so far I have not). Personally, I find the jump to quad core to not be worth the cost delta.

With patience you can cut ~$30-$40 off your RAM and DVD price, and/or get 4G for ~$40 (keep an eye on dealnews.com)

In general I think most people still turn off desktop 3D effects as they did (and may be still do) interact poorly with full-screen video applications (in particular they did (do?) not play well with Flash)

zim2dive, have you checked RAM prices lately? I just checked the other day and found it has gone up quite a bit in the last 3 months.
I wanted to add 4GB more to my desktop PC as I want to run a few VMs, but at current prices I changed my mind...

I agree the deals seem to be (much) less frequent than when I did my build, but I did say patience .. if you look at this search

http://slickdeals.net/sdsearch.php?m...earch=pc2+6400

you'll see that there are still occasional deals to get 4G for ~ the price you are paying for 2G, but you may have to watch for a few weeks.

Keep in mind, 1 month from now is Black Friday.. should be some good deals.. do your research now, get several options lined up, and wait to see what you can score.

AM3 cpus run fine on AM2+ boards too, as long as the BIOS supports them, which is the case for the board I recommend (which is better than the one you have chosen as it uses the 8300 chipset and has more durable all-solid capacitors) and also for the board you chose, check here:
http://support.asus.com.tw/cpusuppor...Language=en-us
Remember, the first thing you should do in any case is update the BIOS to the latest one available.


Well then there should be no issues at all.

There are ways to do it with FreeDOS off a USB stick, I don't have the procedure handy, but if you google for it you will find solutions.


Yeah, I know I can't help that all the best boards are being discontinued (the Gigabyte GA-E7AUM-DS2H too), but the Asus M3N78-EM is still the better board.
(you could pay less for it if you look at the superbiiz ad next to my article, there is a voucher code that makes it cheaper)

Interesting setup, similar to what I'm looking at doing. I'm leaving the HD and DVD drive out, however, as I plan on running a network booting frontend with my server providing the drive. Additionally, I want to be able to play Blu-ray's etc. If you are going to run through a tv/monitor/projector, you could do the same build I am without the extra videocard, which would save $35 as the onboard 8200 should do VDPAU just fine.

Also, seeking recs on this setup and whether good/bad allocation of money and whether or not all hardware will be compatible (especially if anyone knows for sure about the lcd/IR receiver in the case).

Two notes:
1) The motherboard uses ddr2 instead of ddr3. Bad long term investment and not taking full advantage of AM3, but it's only $35 after rebate. Just not sure if it is too risky.
2) The case is disproportionately expensive for this kind of build, but a) it should save $30 (shipped) on a remote, b) it will have an lcd which is nice for music without turning on the display and c) it currently comes with a free videocard which I think I might be able to hock on ebay for ~$20, 4) any decent case + power supply + shipping will come out to at least $40, so with the combination of savings on remote and savings on free VGA card, comes out ok.


MoBo - ZOTAC GF8200-D-E AM2+/AM3 NVIDIA GeForce 8200 Micro ATX $55, $35 after rebate + $7.00 shipping
CPU - AMD Athlon II X2 240 Regor $60
Ram - why so expensive right now? Looking at $20 for one Gb, pick up anywhere (anyone know where I can get more cheap?)
VGA - MSI N210-MD512H GeForce 210 512MB $45, $35 after rebate
Case/Remote/LCD - Antec Black M FusionRemote 350 $100

Total (before rebates/ebay action) - $287
Total (after rebates/ebay action) - $237

I just received this MB and it looks promising. The price is certainly right. Might get to it this weekend.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813153156

For anybody else reading the M3N78VM/EM are both excellent boards (I own one of each), SPDIF on the VM can be difficult to get working.

I saw that review and it is part of the reason I posted on here before buying. I've read some people reporting that they have gotten the LCDs/IR receivers in the antec fusion cases, but it might be a bit of work. I was hoping somebody would come through and say "It will work like magic the first time!" Maybe I'm just trying to justify getting a more HTPC-ish case

If you need optical out, the motherboard I picked is probably bad news. I just liked it because it was so very inexpensive, but maybe I should look through Tux99's article. Thanks for the suggestion!

HTPCish case? I have the Grandia GD02 with 4" LCD, and it's not magic, but it works beautifully.

I just spent all day putting together my htpc in that case..
it's pretty much the only case that i can find that will fit a full atx board(I reused a p35 board for my build) it has quite a few sharp edges so be careful
and also reading reviews on the psu on newegg you might want to change that out too http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817148038

I replaced it only because I wanted a more effecient/quieter psu in there (it's going to be on a good chunk of the day) 70%~ Efficiency vs 80%+

if your not really psuhing the psu it might be fine

The case is great (the paint is kinda weak tho) and your not really going to find a case with a psu that fits a atx in the 50 ish pricerange shipped

32bit to avoid hassle.

Flash videos are an issue on many windows machines too. On my Linux box flash is clean, but on windows it's choppy. Ive even tried swapping hardware between the 2 machines and have same results.

*Beware of trying to setup a Linux HTPC, it's difficult unless you are an advanced Linux user. Windows 7 basically "just works", although Windows has it's issues also.

Having not run windows regularly since win98, I could easily reverse that statement. It's what you are used to do doing. You are used to Windows so you easily solve issues while it would be a major PITA for me.

The pain I feel when I have to help family members deal with windows problems is just as great as yours as you learn Linux.

1) yes but Linux can now read/write NTFS so the shared data partition can be NTFS.
2) no
3) swap 2GB is way too much, at most 2.1GB in case you want to do suspend-to-disk (I don't recommend that, it takes the same time as a reboot anyway), else 1GB is more than enough already.
4) no, not anymore

Is dual boot worth the hassle? If you ask me then of course not!

That rule was valid when memory was scarce (32MB, 64MB, 128MB etc), 2GB RAM is enough not to need any swap at all, in fact i have a Linux netbook with 2GB RAM and no swap and it never runs out of memory.
Think of it this way, if you overload your system that much that it needs to use more than 1GB of swap, it will slow to a crawl anyway due to the huge amounts of memory being swapped (reading/writing 1GB or more to hard disk takes quite some time!).


The scheme you suggested (minus the windows partition if you do linux-only) is fine: swap, root, home, data. Sizes depend on your planned use, but the sizes you mention seem reasonable to me.

FAT32 can't handle large files (> 4GB) that are common in HTPC systems, so you should use a different FS that both OS's can read/write.