Hi Guys, I was hoping for a little help with a spec for a decent HTPC. I don't really have any experience with small form factor stuff, and tbh havn't made a pc in a year so i am way behind on current hardware. I want to make the case myself, so i want to know what components would make a decent htpc for around the £200 mark. One of my main requirements is keeping the size down (surprise surprise). So far what i have seen is : mini itx form factor (tho there seems to be a lack of mobo's where i have looked) some kind of external power to keep case size down (saw the pico power supplies but no idea if they would put out enough power for this) Main uses for it that the spec needs to cover: - obviously, playing movies to a tv, pref through hdmi (for future proofing- atm, just dvd/xvid, not switched to blu-ray yet) - playing music (mp3) - currently through pc speakers, but in time i want to get a proper speaker setup - downloading - it would be good (since its gonna be small and quiet) to be able to use it for downloads so i can leave things running overnight without keeping myself awake with the noise. Guess this is more to do with the OS i go with than anything else. - Remote control - i am not bothered about having an LCD panel, think they are a bit pointless, but i would like a remote control with it. Again, i guess this is fairly tied into which OS i choose. Any help would be gratefully appreciated. Either a full spec, or some ideas on how much cpu power this would need, how little memory i could get away with etc Thanks in advance!
ok, done a bit more looking around and think i have found roughly what i am looking for: mobo: J&W MINIX-780G-SP128MB cpu: Athlon 64 X2 4850e ram: 2gig (2x1gig) ddr2 800mhz - whatever brand, probably corsair. hdd: was looking at the 30gig ocz ssd's to keep the noise down, then using e-sata for external storage. optical: for now would probably just get a dvd drive, probably something slimline (assuming these work ok with non-laptop motherboards, dont really know). As far as i can see, that should give me everything i need. Whats still got me twisted is powering it though...as i said above i'd like to do external power, but i dont know if a pico would power all that. Anyone got any advice they can offer on that? Of course, comments on the other stuff also welcome.
Hi, Ive been doing a lot of research into Mini-ITX for myself recently and the one thing that comes up time and time again is the performance of those SSDs. Look up OCZ Jmicron to see what I mean. Where I am, the 30GB core is £99 and the 30GB Vertex (which performs perfectly) is £120. I'm using the Vertex in my build. The spec you've laid out looks great. Im doing Jetway JNC81/AMD 5050e myself but I have more of a fully-fledged server planned.
^^Agreed w/ ShakeyJake - go with the Vertex. ANY SSD using the jMicron 602 controllers will have nasty "stuttering" issues - and so far, almost every SSD on the market uses it. The Vertex is one of the few that doesn't, and it works beautifully. A 30GB Vertex as a system drive and a large hard drive over eSATA sounds like a beautiful plan. The motherboard you're looking at is a great choice, and a PicoPSU should be able to handle whatever you need. Here will be the primary problem with the slimline optical drive: Laptop interfaces are physically (though not electrically) different from desktop interfaces. IDE is worse off than SATA, but even SATA is slightly different. The data connection is the same, but the power connection is only seven pins long, as opposed to the desktop fifteen. So if you get a SATA slimline optical drive, get something like this with it. I would particularly recommend that cable specifically because it adapts the power to molex instead of standard SATA, which would be a huge help to you, given that the PicoPSU (at least this one) has one Molex and one SATA connection. That would allow you to connect the optical drive over the Molex connection and the SSD over the SATA connection, without having to purchase any extra adapter cables. Also - have you considered what you'll be doing for the CPU fan/heatsink? There are some decent third-party low-profile coolers around, if you're looking to cut down on the noise a little... - Diosjenin -
a good place for all the low down on the vertex http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=186 some of the tweaks are worth reading
hey, I ended up getting a laptop dvd drive with an adaptor - this worked out really well for use with the pico psu as the one i got has a molex, sata and a 4-pin mini connector, and the adaptor uses the 4-pin. http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=36947 This ended up being very important as the J&W mobo has an additional "P4" power connector, so i needed to get another adaptor there to use the molex for the motherboard. Obviously the last power connector (sata) on the pico psu was used for the SSD. http://www.itx-warehouse.co.uk/Product.aspx?ProductID=758 I looked at alot of low profile coolers, and in the end i went with the zalman CNPS7000C - not the smallest out there but given i am making the case myself, i can work around it. http://www.ebuyer.com/product/153203 The motherboard has been very good - makes life so much easier with everything on board the fact its gigabit ethernet has also come in handy, as i ended up buying a DNS-323 NAS to store all my movies and music. One thing i would reccomend on the controller front is the philips srm7500, it has an lcd display on it which is media centre sideshow compatible, allows me to browse and control my music without needing to turn the tv on, has come in very handy.
