Hi all, I'm planning to build a small form factor media pc for the living room, to play videos of my various networked hard drives, and the tinterwebz. It doesn't need to be amazing, and my criteria are thus: *Cheap *Play 1080p movies smoothly *Support a decent sound card like an Asus Xonar D2 or D2X, or possibly HDAV1.3 Deluxe, I'm still unsure *Be completely passively cooled I'm new to media pcs, atom, ion, fusion, etc, and will gratefully lap up any advice that comes my way. Muchos gratsias amigos.
Hi, If you could define cheap for me that'd be a great start please. Is something like this (link) what you were thinking of? only passively cooled? http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-249-OK&groupid=43&catid=1509&subcat= If you can wait until AMD's fusion CPU's come out in Q1 2011 then personally I would do so. If you can't wait then the i3 (the pre-built overclockers one comes out at the same price as building it yourself btw) or the atom are probably the way to go, zotac do a decent atom board with ION graphics allowing the expansion slot to be used for a good sound card. But if you could provide a rough price range then it'd make it much easier
HI for cheap this is a pretty good spec: http://www.easypc-uk.com/htpc-media...alcore-hdmi-media-centre-htpc-full-1080p.html I would stay clear of Atom ,and Ion, they just have not got the grunt for HD playback. And if you want a dedicated soundcard you will need a PC with at least half height PCI slots if not full height so you may as well use standrad Micro ATX motherboard and a low power AMD CPU. Just my thoughts :=)
Scan have a number of bare bones systems on their Today Only page today for good prices, have a look, about half way down the page. Some of these would be perfect.
When you say completely passively cooled, there will still have to some air flow going through the case, so total silence is not on the cards, but with the right fans you can get close enough to it to not notice them.
Bump. Suprisingly little interest surely there must be more quality advice on this ere forum, for what is a large segment of the pc market!
You have had a few responses, the most important one being "But if you could provide a rough price range then it'd make it much easier". Without a budget we don't know whether to spec cheap and cheerful or top of the line kit. For your purposes you could start at an Atom and go all the way to an i3 with all the steps in between. Are you re-using any existing hardware? I don't mean to be patronising to an experienced forum member but have a read of this and let us help you some more: http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=182284.
Hi fingers66, Indeed I have I'm unsure what price, it depends on the performance gains, I'll probably decide how much to spend after seeing the options and their various pros and cons. Something perhaps like this http://beerpla.net/2008/11/08/building-the-perfect-htpc-media-pc-capable-of-playing-1080p-h264/ Essentially I'm wondering if it's worth going for Atom/Fusion which is designed for low power, low cost media pc's, or an i3 or core 2 duo. Also, which mobo standard to go for (atx, mini, micro, pico) Hi TheNox, yeh that does look pretty good. It looks like it doesn't have any PCI slots though? I quite fancy a tasty sound card so my speakers don't amplify poor sound Hi rob the bank, I've long had a distaste with amd for obvious reasons ^^ but I can be persuaded on the low-power, low cost end. I've read a couple of sights that say the dual core atom can play 1080p smoothly, what puts you off atom? Hi bulldogjeff, I'm tempted to say it is possible completely passively cooling a PC, although I would be ok with a single low rpm fan at the back. I've seen passive psu's around, and surely a tiny cpu and gpy would only need a decently beefy copper cooler?
I would stay well clear of the atom. Look at the i3 or an AMD II 250. I have a system with an overclocked 250 and a 4850 and have ever have any bother with it. Just go for a case with quite fans you wont hear them, The loudest part of you PC is probably going to be the HDD. Try give us a budget other wise it is kind of pointless.
For arguments sake, maybe £500? Yeh I'd wondered about the hard disk noise, thinking I'll put OS and programs on an SSD and use seperate networked hard disks (already owned) for storage. And yeh, the SSD might push the cost up
