I thought about looking to the gaming world, but i am afraid that it will be a bit noisy.. I am quite new with all of this.
The media will be stored on a NAS, but i would like the possibility to play from a disc.
As for the available content, I just thought that when investing i a HTCP, i might as well do it right
It would be pretty cool if it could upscale.
I would definitely like if someone would take his time to maybe give a shot at a parts list.
I hope that the questions are not too stupid.
Gaming PCs
can be loud. The more expensive ones drop a good portion of the cost into
not being so. This is why having a better idea of what exactly you want to be able to do with the machine is important. Depending on the needs, you may or may not be able to eliminate some of the costlier (and also nosier) components.
Are you ripping the discs to a NAS using something like MakeMKV (or some other similar program)? If so, then your video card selection is fairly robust, if you are using protected media, then that is something else. Up front, the number of cards on the market that are going to be full 4K @ 60Hz with the HDCP 2.2 support you will be wanting for HTPC duties down the road is very limited (one or two I think). If you are looking for advice though, I would actually wait on investing in that particular department. This fall there will be more cards available, bringing the cost down. It's not like there will really be any material to watch before then anyway. Wanting to get the full 4K @ 60 will make more sense once the media is available, and that sort of "upgrade" can be done very easily later. Right now (and for the foreseeable future) full 4K @ 60 is going to require at the very least a mini-beast of a card, running from $200-600 or more.
The rest of your rig is very easy to accomplish. If you want quiet, that can be done fairly easily, even still using fans instead of passive cooling (which is what you will need if you are going to install a high end card later).
Is this machine going to be out in the open? Do you want it to look like an appliance, tucked away in a nice HTPC case that would be at home on an AV rack?
If you are going to be streaming from a NAS, and you are certain you are not going to use this machine for regular data storage duties, you can eliminate noise and heat, while also increasing performance by investing in a SSD for your OS and client program. Even if you are going to use the machine for occasional data storage, you may want to go that route and just add a traditional 1 TB drive as the secondary drive.
If you want to play discs, obviously you will need an optical drive. Without a video card, this might be the "loudest" part of your system, which would still be so quiet as to be difficult to hear over conversation or a movie.
Your ability to upscale will be limited until you do invest in a video card. Depending on what you are streaming though, this may not be much of a big deal. For instance, if you are streaming primarily ripped BDs, then, unless the have been highly compressed, the upscaling will be minimal at best anyway.
As for the available content, I just thought that when investing i a HTCP, i might as well do it right
You'll never be able to completely future-proof our machine. Decide what you want it to be able to do, then just build to that, maybe leaving a bit of headroom for modest growth. The vast majority of HTPC duties can be handled by a modern bargain PC. Putting any modern i3 processor on a motherboard with HDMI 2.0 ports will get you almost all of what you are looking for. These systems, without a video card, can be very small indeed, and even be passively cooled, making them entirely silent as there would be no moving parts.
