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Guide to Building a HTPC, Workstation and Server - Page 456

post #13651 of 18891
5/4/10 at 9:31am
I have a question. I'm getting ready to pull the trigger on a HTPC. An important feature I'll be looking for is the ability to connect this to 2 video outputs. One will be my projector setup and the other will run to my family room. I assume the setup will be similar to have dual displays on a regular computer. What would be the most effective way of doing this? HDMI connection to the projection and DVI to my Plasma or vise versa? The video out seems fairly straight forward, I'm trying to wrap my mind around the audio. I figured whichever is HDMI I could utilize the audio through that and connect the DVI for video and optical for the audio on the second? Will this work? Hopefully I've made clear the thoughts in my head. I'm not going to have a very complicated setup, just want to use the HTPC in 2 rooms. Any help, or direction is appreciated.

When it comes down to brass tacks this PC will end up being a simple file server for music and will play (up to 1080p) .mkv's on the theater and my family room plasma. I need the system to fully support the proper audio within the .mkv for full surround. Would a low end PC achieve this or should I go higher? I don't mind spending money where I need to but see no reason to overspend either.
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post #13652 of 18891
5/4/10 at 12:22pm
Thanks to the latest HTPC guide I'm looking at getting a Sapphire HD 5670 1GB. I just want to make sure it will be compatible with my existing motherboard, an ASUS P5QL Pro. Everything on my motherboard says it supports PCIe 2.0...but not 2.1, which is supposedly what the Sapphire card is. Will this card work in my motherboard assuming the documentation I've read on both is correct?

Trying to replace my BFG 9800GT that I have now because it doesn't have HDMI.
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post #13653 of 18891
5/4/10 at 7:54pm
Renethx-

I have bought all the stuff for the mid range intel-intel system you recommend. It had 2 graphics cards. I bought the nvidia, but now i read some more and it looks like people lean towards the sapphire hd 5670 for that build. Is there a reason for that? dOe sone have a feature the other doesnt?

For the 15 drive tower storage, i am having trouble finding the athena Power BP-SATA3051B. DO you know of a website wher ei cna order them?

Also, there are 5 HBA monoprice 2530 on your list and each of those has 2 SATA ports so isnt that only enough for 10 drives? Ok, i see now that this is to extend the SATA ports on the MB because the recommended ASUS mother board has 6 SATA ports.

This is my first build and i am not familiar with a bunch of this and is why i found your guide and am going directly off of it. Your answers are much appreciated and i will have more i am sure when i receive all of the parts and start putting it together. I am thinking windows 7 on the HTPC and WHS on the 15 drive tower. Is there a good way to have redundancy without doing RAID 1 mirrored? I know about RAID 5, but still heard bad things about that.
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post #13654 of 18891
5/4/10 at 8:21pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by klutch View Post

I have a question. I'm getting ready to pull the trigger on a HTPC. An important feature I'll be looking for is the ability to connect this to 2 video outputs. One will be my projector setup and the other will run to my family room. I assume the setup will be similar to have dual displays on a regular computer. What would be the most effective way of doing this? HDMI connection to the projection and DVI to my Plasma or vise versa? The video out seems fairly straight forward, I'm trying to wrap my mind around the audio. I figured whichever is HDMI I could utilize the audio through that and connect the DVI for video and optical for the audio on the second? Will this work? Hopefully I've made clear the thoughts in my head. I'm not going to have a very complicated setup, just want to use the HTPC in 2 rooms. Any help, or direction is appreciated.

When it comes down to brass tacks this PC will end up being a simple file server for music and will play (up to 1080p) .mkv's on the theater and my family room plasma. I need the system to fully support the proper audio within the .mkv for full surround. Would a low end PC achieve this or should I go higher? I don't mind spending money where I need to but see no reason to overspend either.

Here are quick specs of each GPU about dual video/audio streams:

  Dual Video with DXVA Dual Audio
Radeon HD 4xxx/5xxx (iGPU or dGPU) Y N
GeForce 210, GT 220/240 (dGPU) Y Y
Intel Core i3/i5 (Clarkdale) (iGPU) Y Y

But dual 1080p video streams with DXVA (hardware acceleration) is supported properly only by Radeon HD 5670 1GB or higher (and perhaps GeForce GT 240).

Please look here for audio formats supported by each GPU.

If you want HD audio bitstreams in both rooms (simultaneously), adding two Radeon HD 5xxx cards is the only way (and your mb has to have two PCI Express x16 slots [1.x x4 is enough for video playback]).
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post #13655 of 18891
5/4/10 at 8:25pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by thor79 View Post

Thanks to the latest HTPC guide I'm looking at getting a Sapphire HD 5670 1GB. I just want to make sure it will be compatible with my existing motherboard, an ASUS P5QL Pro. Everything on my motherboard says it supports PCIe 2.0...but not 2.1, which is supposedly what the Sapphire card is. Will this card work in my motherboard assuming the documentation I've read on both is correct?

Should work.
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post #13656 of 18891
5/4/10 at 8:35pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by islander84 View Post

Renethx-

I have bought all the stuff for the mid range intel-intel system you recommend. It had 2 graphics cards. I bought the nvidia, but now i read some more and it looks like people lean towards the sapphire hd 5670 for that build. Is there a reason for that? dOe sone have a feature the other doesnt?

For the 15 drive tower storage, i am having trouble finding the athena Power BP-SATA3051B. DO you know of a website wher ei cna order them?

Also, there are 5 HBA monoprice 2530 on your list and each of those has 2 SATA ports so isnt that only enough for 10 drives? dont know what these are for.


This is my first build and i am not familiar with a bunch of this and is why i found your guide and am going directly off of it. Your answers are much appreciated and i will have more i am sure when i receive all of the parts and start putting it together. I am thinking windows 7 on the HTPC and WHS on the 15 drive tower. Is there a good way to have redundancy without doing RAID 1 mirrored? I know about RAID 5, but still heard bad things about that.

The main difference between GeForce GT 220/240 and Radeon HD 5xxx is the supported audio formats (look here).

I realized that Athena Power is not available. Use SuperMicro CSE-M35T-1B instead (will be updated in May edition).

MonoPrice: 10 ports + onboard SATA: 6 ports = 16 ports.

Check FlexRAID on WHS, that gives simple fault tolerance.
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post #13657 of 18891
5/4/10 at 8:39pm
Has anyone heard anything about the Seagate Barracuda LP ST32000542AS 2TB 5900 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drives? I have read mixed reviews. Some say these have been failing with "clicks of death" and other sites say they are good for media storage.

Any input from people who have used them?
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post #13658 of 18891
5/5/10 at 3:30am
Hi folks,

Is it possible to turn off the Caviar green drive spin-down feature? When I bought the drive (1.5TB) I figured I would appreciate the energy and noise savings, but the drive is quiet and a few watts here or there doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things in my system.

I find I'm annoyed by waiting for it to spin up when I try to copy something over to it or do other operations that use it after it has spun-down.

Is there a utility or something I can use to change the settings? It's a WD15EADS.

Thanks
Marc
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post #13659 of 18891
5/5/10 at 5:16am
Mark, it's in windows power settings. Under advanced options.
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post #13660 of 18891
5/5/10 at 5:17am
Quote:
Originally Posted by renethx View Post

Here are quick specs of each GPU about dual video/audio streams:

  Dual Video with DXVA Dual Audio
Radeon HD 4xxx/5xxx (iGPU or dGPU) Y N
GeForce 210, GT 220/240 (dGPU) Y Y
Intel Core i3/i5 (Clarkdale) (iGPU) Y Y

But dual 1080p video streams with DXVA (hardware acceleration) is supported properly only by Radeon HD 5670 1GB or higher (and perhaps GeForce GT 240).

Please look here for audio formats supported by each GPU.

If you want HD audio bitstreams in both rooms (simultaneously), adding two Radeon HD 5xxx cards is the only way (and your mb has to have two PCI Express x16 slots [1.x x4 is enough for video playback]).

Thanks Renethx, I guess I should have stated correctly. Only one TV will be viewed at a time
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post #13661 of 18891
5/5/10 at 5:35am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by klutch View Post

Thanks Renethx, I guess I should have stated correctly. Only one TV will be viewed at a time

Then a single Radeon HD 5xxx card is enough. Connect the HDMI port to a receiver. Connect the DVI port with this dongle to another receiver.
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post #13662 of 18891
5/5/10 at 5:42am
Quote:
Originally Posted by renethx View Post

Then a single Radeon HD 5xxx card is enough. Connect the HDMI port to a receiver. Connect the DVI port with this dongle to another receiver.

Would the iGPU on one of your recommended Intel i3/i5 boards achieve the same result?
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post #13663 of 18891
5/5/10 at 6:16am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by klutch View Post

Would the iGPU on one of your recommended Intel i3/i5 boards achieve the same result?

Yup, Clarkdale works (with a generic DVD-HDMI adapter for video+audio).
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post #13664 of 18891
5/5/10 at 6:55am
Quote:
Originally Posted by renethx View Post

Should work.

Good to have double confirmations...also got one back from Sapphire tech support. They responded back quicker than I thought they would. (then again I'm sure they would like another customer)

Pulled the trigger this morning on the card...will be here tomorrow. (love amazon prime)

I'm kicking myself a bit for this as I should have gotten a card with HDMI when I rebuilt this system to serve as a HTPC. I replaced everything in the case including the graphics card, but I didn't pay attention to what kind of graphics card to get. Now I'm going to have a perfectly good BFG 9800GT sitting around gathering dust. Then again, I might just use it to build another system, so it could come in handy.
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post #13665 of 18891
5/5/10 at 7:19am
I just found this thread and ... THIS IS FREAKING AWESOME!!!!

RENETHX, you are a bada$$.

Only question, and please don't pelt me with rocks, why isn't there any love for a hackintosh or Linux based system. I can only assume that the Linux based systems can follow the same builds as the windows systems but I know that the Apple OS is pickier. Maybe one middle of the road system and one top of the line build. That would be cool.

Just a suggestion.
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post #13666 of 18891
5/5/10 at 7:24am
Quote:
Originally Posted by mrwizard93 View Post

I just found this thread and ... THIS IS FREAKING AWESOME!!!!

RENETHX, you are a bada$$.

Only question, and please don't pelt me with rocks, why isn't there any love for a hackintosh or Linux based system. I can only assume that the Linux based systems can follow the same builds as the windows systems but I know that the Apple OS is pickier. Maybe one middle of the road system and one top of the line build. That would be cool.

Just a suggestion.

There is a separate sub forum for Apple and Linux in the Home Theater Computers forum
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post #13667 of 18891
5/5/10 at 7:29am
Sorry, didn't know there was one. I tried a search and couldn't find a straight forward one line renethx has set up here.

Actually, I found this one by luck to be honest with you.
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post #13668 of 18891
5/5/10 at 7:31am
Quote:
Originally Posted by mrwizard93 View Post

Sorry, didn't know there was one. I tried a search and couldn't find a straight forward one line renethx has set up here.

Actually, I found this one by luck to be honest with you.

If you go into the main Home Theater Computers forum towards the top you will see links for the Linux and Apple subforums. I doubt there is anything anywhere as close to what Renethx provides here though.
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post #13669 of 18891
5/5/10 at 7:35am
The reason i asked was because I saw the Plex app for Mac and thought it was awesome looking ... is there a similar or better app out there comparable to Plex?

And as you can probably tell, I have just started looking into building my own HTPC for my home theater system. There is a lot of catching up i need to do.

Thanks
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post #13670 of 18891
5/5/10 at 7:46am
Quote:
Originally Posted by mrwizard93 View Post

There is a lot of catching up i need to do.

Join the club... I usually feel like the Red Queen: "It takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place".

Mind you, Renethx's work has helped enormously. It's a superb information resource.
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post #13671 of 18891
5/5/10 at 7:49am
Quote:
Originally Posted by mrwizard93 View Post

The reason i asked was because I saw the Plex app for Mac and thought it was awesome looking ... is there a similar or better app out there comparable to Plex?

And as you can probably tell, I have just started looking into building my own HTPC for my home theater system. There is a lot of catching up i need to do.

Thanks

For Mac or Linux you can also look at XBMC. For Windows there are many front ends (i.e. Media Browser, MyMovies, Media Portal, XBMC, etc...)

One thing that it seems more and more members who are looking at HTPCs want is the ability to bitstream HD audio, which can only be done via Windows (to my knowledge, someone correct me if I am wrong).
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post #13672 of 18891
5/5/10 at 9:53am
Quote:
Originally Posted by renethx View Post

Yup, Clarkdale works (with a generic DVD-HDMI adapter for video+audio).

Thanks again Renethx, just to confirm the Clarksdale is capable of carrying the audio and video through the integrated DVI port? I'm looking at the Gigabyte GA-H57M-USB3 off your mention of it in several of your builds (I like the USB 3.0). I'm only double checking because most of the info I'm finding about audio+video over DVItoHDMI is old and really only talks about the Radeon stuff and/or people saying it can't be done. Plus I can't find any sort of DVItoHDMI adapters on Newegg other than the ATI ones.

Here is a DVI to HDMI adapter I found on monoprice but not sure it's capable of carrying the audio?

http://www.monoprice.com/products/pr...seq=1&format=2

Or I already have one of these cables, it doesn't talk about audio though so I'm not sure how to tell if it'll pass audio as long as the source supports it. Any thoughts?

http://www.monoprice.com/products/pr...seq=1&format=2
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post #13673 of 18891
5/5/10 at 11:00am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by klutch View Post

Thanks again Renethx, just to confirm the Clarksdale is capable of carrying the audio and video through the integrated DVI port? I'm looking at the Gigabyte GA-H57M-USB3 off your mention of it in several of your builds (I like the USB 3.0). I'm only double checking because most of the info I'm finding about audio+video over DVItoHDMI is old and really only talks about the Radeon stuff and/or people saying it can't be done. Plus I can't find any sort of DVItoHDMI adapters on Newegg other than the ATI ones.

Here is a DVI to HDMI adapter I found on monoprice but not sure it's capable of carrying the audio?

http://www.monoprice.com/products/pr...seq=1&format=2

Or I already have one of these cables, it doesn't talk about audio though so I'm not sure how to tell if it'll pass audio as long as the source supports it. Any thoughts?

http://www.monoprice.com/products/pr...seq=1&format=2

I tested with GIGABYTE GA-H55M-UD2H with a generic DVI-HDMI adapter (I don't remember where I bought it) and video+audio worked fine.
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post #13674 of 18891
5/5/10 at 12:30pm
wondering if these will work in place of monoprice 2530 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16816124009 also which one? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16816119014 or http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817995006


Thanks Mike
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post #13675 of 18891
5/5/10 at 12:54pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by miked5468 View Post

wondering if these will work in place of monoprice 2530 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16816124009 also which one? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16816119014 or http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817995006


Thanks Mike

The card's interface is PCI (MonoPrice 2530 is PCIe x1), and perhaps flashing BIOS to non-RAID one is necessary (this is true also for MonoPrice); otherwise it should work.

According to this page

BP-SATA3051B: SATA
BP-SAC3051B: SATA or SAS
BP-SAS3051B: SAS

You should choose BP-SAC3051B. I recommend SuperMicro CSE-M35T-1B, $95, instead.
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post #13676 of 18891
5/5/10 at 1:58pm
Renethx Thank you for the quick help... here is the build I put together with your guide, let me know if I should change anything.

COOLER MASTER Centurion 590

CORSAIR CMPSU-650TX

AMD Athlon II X2 240 Regor 2.8GHz

GIGABYTE GA-MA785GT-UD3H AM3

G.SKILL F3-12800CL9D-2GBNQ

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16816124018 qty 5

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817121405 qty 3


unless you think the MonoPrice 2530 is a better buy

Thanks Mike
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post #13677 of 18891
5/5/10 at 3:59pm
renethx,

Thanks for the guide, it is super helpful. One question, will you be updating your guide some time in May? If so, do you expect any major changes to mini ATX mid range Intel integrated GPU setup? Currently I am thinking i530 with GA-H57M-USB3 + LiteOn 104 BD drive and Ceton tuner card. Thanks.
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post #13678 of 18891
5/5/10 at 5:16pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by litster View Post

renethx,

Thanks for the guide, it is super helpful. One question, will you be updating your guide some time in May? If so, do you expect any major changes to mini ATX mid range Intel integrated GPU setup? Currently I am thinking i530 with GA-H57M-USB3 + LiteOn 104 BD drive and Ceton tuner card. Thanks.

That's too funny. I was just logging into the thread so that I could ask if Renethx was going to update the guide for May. Pretty please??
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post #13679 of 18891
5/5/10 at 5:23pm
Renethx, do you know if the CM GeminII cooler supports the 1156 socket? Newegg seems to suggest so but eWiz and many other etailers do not list it. Maybe it depends on newer stock?
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post #13680 of 18891
5/5/10 at 7:38pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by miked5468 View Post

Renethx Thank you for the quick help... here is the build I put together with your guide, let me know if I should change anything.

COOLER MASTER Centurion 590

CORSAIR CMPSU-650TX

AMD Athlon II X2 240 Regor 2.8GHz

GIGABYTE GA-MA785GT-UD3H AM3

G.SKILL F3-12800CL9D-2GBNQ

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16816124018 qty 5

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817121405 qty 3


unless you think the MonoPrice 2530 is a better buy

Thanks Mike

The number of PCI slots in GA-MA785GT-UD3H is only two, while that of PCI Express slots (x1 or higher) is five. That's the reason why I chose PCIe cards. (And PCI Express is better than PCI in performance.)
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