Guide to Building a HTPC, Workstation and Server - Page 451

Went to Frys yesterday and picked up some sale items to assemble a HTPC, being my first build can you guys give me some feedback on the pros and cons of these choices and if I should return and use different items in lieu of these selections? Thanks very much in advance.

Intel Core I3 530 & Gigabyte GA-H55M-S2H $89 after rebate
Corsair 4GB DDR3 1600MHZ $89 after rebate
XFX ATI Radeon HD5450 1024 MB DDR2 PCI-Express video Card $39.99 after rebate
(2) AVerMedia AVerTVHD Duet - PCTV Tuner (A188 - White Box) MTVHDDUWB PCI-Express x1 Interface - OEM $124
CORSAIR CMPSU-450VX 450W ATX12V V2.2 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Compatible with Core i7 Power Supply $55

Still need a recomendation on a HTPC case, would like to go for a full ATX as I want to RAID multiple drives since I dont have a WMS....any suggestions?

My main purpose of the HTPC is to cut cable and use my HD Antenna to record two shows while being able to watch two, and rip DVD's to my HD's as well.

Thanks in advance for all you rinput and thoughts!!

You really need 2 TV tuner cards? That's 4 tuners total. You say you wanna record 2 and watch 2, but how do you watch 2 simultaneously? you may be able to record 3 and watch 1.

Looks like you got lucky with both the ram and cpu combo deals still available. Which Fry's did you visit? Most places im aware of are sold out.

Well using a spacious ATX case isn't what I think of when I imagine my possible future HTPC player. Given the same size case, however, I can't help but think that noise has a positive correlation with fan numbers and speed which is also positively correlated with heat.

Now perhaps you will tell me that there is very little significant difference between the heat produced by a Core i5 (i7?) compared to a Core i3. Or maybe aftermarket CPU coolers make whatever differences there may be immaterial. If the differences are indeed small and completely covered by quiet CPU and/or case cooling, then I'm going to build one of your high end configurations (except maybe with the quietest fans available, if they aren't already.)

Maybe I should do some research on liquid cooling.

liquid cooling is generally a bad idea if you can avoid it. there are almost always air solutions that require far less long-term maintenance.

That makes me feel better. So I just built a PC for a friend that had a plastic cap over the left 4 pins of the 8 pin socket. I took the cap off to plug in both 4 pin cables. This was only an i3-540, so should we disconnect that 2nd cable and put the cap back on? I'd never seen two 4 pin cables before. The manual said to make sure to connect the 8pin connector, so I just did both. I have a power supply with a single 8pin, and and older one with just the 4pin.

My EVGA 750i board has an 8pin socket as well. Would it be possible to just plug into the right 4 pins with my 4pin PS connector like the other board had? I looked around and there are some 4pin to 8pin adapters for about $5, should I get one of those? I've seen some mixed stories about just plugging in one (melting the cable).

Well, I'm finally putting together an HTPC. I bought a Core i5 650 @ microcenter today. I decided to go with that over the i3 as they use just about the same amount of power at idle/movie viewing and the 650 is more powerful.

Here are the rest of the components I was thinking of:

Motherboard:GIGABYTE GA-H57M-USB3

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128430

Memory: G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820231193

Case: Antec Black Fusion

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811129054

Heatsink Fan: COOLER MASTER Intel Core i5 compatible GeminII S RR-CCH-PBU1-GP

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835103046

Power Supply: SeaSonic X650 Gold 650W

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817151088

Now, the i5 has onboard video. I'm outputting LPCM to a Denon 2807 and 1080i in W7 MC. I have a 5570 passively cooled ATI card in my shopping card as my understanding is the video from the i5 isn't right, even for 60i (i.e. it outputs at 60 rather than 59.97). Is that correct?

I'm also trying to make this machine as quiet as possible. Do I need to change out any of the stock fans?

Last but not least, I need some hard drive solutions. I'm going to go with the Ceton card, where encrypted recordings will be linked to that installation of windows. Therefore, I want to go with a RAID1 for system drive. I'm either thinking a couple of small SSDs and then a Samsung 500GB F3 for data or two Samsung 500GB F3's in a RAID1.

Any comments or suggestions are welcome.

Thanks,
Chris

Interesting that card has 400 sp. I thought 5570 only has 320sp and 5670 has 400sp.

Nevermind, musta been thinking the 5550.

Ah, I didn't realize the card may not fit in the case. I'd rather not be the test candidate so maybe I'll go with a 5450. Does 512 or 1GB of memory matter?

Thanks for the idea on the fans!

Chris

Sorry for the Long post. I just wanted to make sure that people "Somewhat" knew what I was referring to!

Anyone Wanting smooth playback on HDTV's/ Monitors with 120Hz + "Processing" DO NOT, I repeat DO NOT USE POWER DVD at all OR WMP With the CCCP CODECS!!! You WILL Have stuttering!!!!

Instead, use TOTAL MEDIA THEATER for Blu-Ray Disks and SPLASH LITE for Blu-Ray MKV Files!

GIGABYTE GA-H57M-USB3
or
ASUS P7H55D-M EVO

I wish to use it with G.Skill 1600MHz, CL7, ECO memory, is this memory work with Asus m/b ?

Great - thanks again. One last thought: it seems the HIS 4670 silence may fit in the Fusion (not sure if anyone has tried it). Since I can't bitstream to my Denon 2807 (LPCM only), would the 4670 be a better option? I'm not sure of the video changes made from the 4xxx series to the 5xxx series but I know the 4670 supports all of the video stuff whereas the 5450 is a bit short in a few places.

Thanks,
Chris

Finished my HTPC and am having problems getting good OTA signals to my HDHomerun. I had a HDTV rabbit ears (not powered) antenna, that picked up 2 through 13 before my HTPC. So I bought a amplified OTA antenna from monoprice thinking it would be stronger and better for the HTPC. I get bad strength with the monoprice one and can get medium to good strength on the unpowered one.

The problem is even though I get 4 to 6 bars on the channels in Win7 media center, I still get bad pixelization and skipping, especially on the 4 bars. I have RG 6 cable from the correct splitter (according to HDHomerun) to the HDHomerun, but the cable from the splitter to the unpowered antenna is built in and I assume not RG 6.

Any idea on how to fix this? Is there a better antenna to use or should I look at putting one on the roof? This will be replacing Directv. Any chance I could disconnect cable from satellite and plug into splitter. Would the dish work as an antenna? (wishful thinking)

I spent a lot of money on this to get rid of Directv and am getting frustrated.

Tim

I have attached the approved memory list for the ASUS P7H55D-M EVO.

Here's the memory list for the GIGABYTE GA-H57M-USB3

 

P7H55D-M EVO QVL-Clarkdale.pdf 159.1015625k . file

 

P7H55D-M EVO QVL-Lynnfield.pdf 67.8203125k . file

Have you tried to plug the antenna directly into the TV to see what comes out? If it's the same, then it's the antenna.

Tim,

I can't comment on your RG6 cable problem, but I also cancelled my satellite and switched to OTA only TV, as you have done. My house also has builtin cable, and like you, I wasn't sure if it was RG6 or not. But instead of buying an antenna, I decided to build my own. I built this unpowered antenna at www dot tvantennaplans dot com (sorry for the "dots", I can't post links yet). If you have some metal coat hangars and a piece of wood and a few other commonly available things (i.e. screws, washers, etc.) then it's trivial to build. You'll also need something called a balun. The trickiest parts of the project was finding a balun -- though, I happened to have one that came with my rabbit ear antenna that worked just fine. I've read the Radio Shack sells baluns for a few bucks. I was truly amazed at how well this antenna worked.

Note, I did have a problem pulling in one channel with this antenna after the digital transition in 2009. Though my problem was the fact that a local channel switched from high a UHF channel to a low VHF channel during the transition. My understanding was that only a few channels in the country did this, and those that did, had customers who could no longer receive their signal after the transition. What I did to solve my problem was build a second antenna (called a folded dipole antenna, which is different from the first type above), which was tuned specifically for the channel I was having problems with. After that, I just combined the signals from the two antennas with a combiner.

Edit: Oh, and I have the hdhomerun too. These two antennas work fine with it.

Delete

After waiting several years for a commercial BluRay recorder to be available, I gave up and decided to build my own HTPC. For my needs and wishes I wanted to be able to archive a few TV programs. I wanted to be able to move recorded over the air programs off the PVR and record to a BluRay disc. I can do that now. CyberLink's Power2Go is a simple application to record to the BluRay disc. It takes just a few minutes to copy a hour program from PVR to BD. Windows Media Center seems to be the best application to record TV programs and play back and also play back DVDs and BD movies. PowerDVD9 did not allow playing a DVD saying the country code was not correct. It played OK with WMC. I still need to make sure I'm getting a high quality HD recording. Sometimes the quality seems slightly degraded. Also I need to figure out how to use the remote that comes with the case. I get a message to upgrade the firmware, but it always fails.



HTPC Equipment:
MB: ASUS P7H55D-M EVO
CPU: Intel Core i5 Quad 750 2 2.66GHz
RAM: C614-9A Corsai TW3X4G1333C9A 4GB (2x2GB)
HD: Western Digital WD-10EARS 1 TB SATA 3 Gbps
BD: LG WH10LS30 10X BluRay Disc R
Case: #AN64-Antec Fusion Remote Black
PS: Corsair CMPSU-450W ATX P
Graphics Card: Sapphire Radeon HD5670 1GB DDR5 PCI-E HDMI
Tuner: HDHomeRun
OS: Windows 7 Pro
Software: The BD drive comes with CyberLink PowerDVD8 including several applications for various DVD and BD functions.
Also have CyberLink PowerDVD9 Ultimate

How is the following specification for a HTPC laptop (Dell) which does 1080p@ 24fps and streams bitperfect HD audio to my YAMAHA RX V 863:

Intel® Core™ i3-350M Processor (2.26Ghz, 4 Threads, 3M cache)
4GB (2GBx2) 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM (Work at 1066MHz for Intel Arrandale CPU)
ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 5470 - 1GB

I just finished assembling the mid-range intel-intel microATX build, but when I power it on, all the lights on the LCD front-panel are lit and nothing else happens. I reseated the memory and double-checked the connections (both 24-pin and 4-pin power connections are attached). I'm thinking it's not the power supply since the front panel is lit. Is the motherboard the most likely issue, or should I try something else before replacing it? Thanks.

I'm sure this has been covered, by I've seen and been told conflicting things;

I have no sort of specialty speakers so I just want my to use my TVs audio. I want the audio to be carried from the HTPC to my TV over the 1 HDMI cord that also carries video...

Will all integrated graphics/gfx cards that have HDMI out be able to do this? Or will I have to look for something special?

Thanks in advance.

CPU - i3 530 (will OC it around 3.5-3.8)
MB - GIGABYTE H55M-S2H
Cooler - Stock or I will use my v8 from my 920 since I'm getting a different cooler for the 920
RAM - G.SKILL 4GB F3-12800CL9D-4GBNQ
PSU - CORSAIR 750TX or Similar (not sure how many HDDs that PSU can power up)
GPU - 5750 or 5770 I would like to be able to play some games on my Kuro Elite PRO 111FD would one of these cards work since it's only 1920 x 1080. I also just bought a 5850 for my i7 920 but going to return it and wait til I get some more money for new monitors and by that time hopefully the 5850 would have drop in price and Crysis 2 and StarCraft 2 should be out or just keep 5850 and use it in the i3 setup for now? I need the 5XXX to bitstream the Audio also so that's why I was looking at one of those.
Case - Antec 1200, Centurion 590, CHIEFTEC BRAVO Full Tower one of these

Since I only have 6 Sata Onboard I need the cheapest way to be able to to get to 12-16. Plus I might not be able to use 2 or 3 of the onboard with that Video Card.

So I was looking at this SUPERMICRO AOC-SAT2-MV8 that should work in the PCI slot correct?

Then if I can't use those onboards because of the GPU I was looking at MASSCOOL PCI-e 4 port SATA2 (SIL3132 Chip) Model XWT-PCIE10 would get me to 13 and then I gain the eSata I want too.

Not sure if I can do this with 1 PCI-E and 1 PCI slot open

1.5 TB x 10 HDDs (only have 6 right now so by the time I hit 10 I will be looking to do that upgrade)
1 500GB 2.5" 5400rpm OS HDD
1 BD ROM

Trying to make this a HTPC and a Media Storage Server right now until I separate them late this year or early next year. Don't have alot to spend right now to do all that. All Drives will be Plug and Play right now or I might do JBOD trying to get the most out of this board right now until later this year or next I will upgrade and go with RAID then plus buy then I will be adding more drives and getting some 5 in 3 cages too or a NORCO RPC-4220 for the Storage and then a nice HTPC for the i3. Plus then another CPU/MB etc for the Media Storage Server.

Renethx, in your earlier recommended builds you suggest an aftermarket cooler for the pentium dual-core builds (SilverStone NT07-775) while you recommend the stock cooler for the celeron and (m-itx) i3 builds. I was wondering why the silverstone over the stock pentium dual-core cooler? They look nearly identical.