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HTPC My HTPC Review

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by ashchap, 8 Jan 2010.

  1. ashchap

    ashchap Minimodder

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    I've been using my main PC as a media pc since I moved into my flat, but it's been slowly dying and is pretty ugly so I decided to build an HTPC to do the job properly. Below is my experience.

    I spent a while reading around and waiting for an article to appear on Bit. There's a lot of decisions to make:

    What case?
    ATX / mATX?
    processor?
    Graphics?

    All of which are dependent on each other!

    I decided the best place to start was to look for cases. The antec fusion seemed popular, but reviews are actually quite mixed. One of the main features on this case is the LCD which is expensive and apparently very bright. This put me off as it seems pretty pointless anyway. The selection of HTPC cases on ebuyer was pretty poor so I checked scan - they had quite a wide range. I didn't want to spend much over £100, and there were a number of Silverstone cases around this mark. There are some very nice cases, but they almost all have some kind of downside - too big, too small, requires a laptop dvd drive etc.

    Eventually I reaslised I should actually check how much space I have in my TV stand - 33cm depth. This ruled out almost every case, except one - the Silverstone SST-GD04B (it had to be black too). It's not the flashiest case but it's certainly not bad looking with it's brushed black aluminum, minimalist design and stealthed DVD drive. This case only takes mATX boards but does take full ATX power supplies, and fits perfectly in my stand, so I was pretty much sold.

    The way the GD04 is laid out is to have the PSU on the left (when looking at the front of the case from the outside) and DVD drive over the ram and CPU. This limits the CPU coolers that can be used to about two: intel stock cooler or Silverstone NT01-E. I went with the silverstone cooler.

    The rest of the components were relatively easy to choose. Here's the final list:

    Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-73PVM-S2H - £47.01 ebuyer
    CPU: Intel E7600 - £91.72 scan (the cooler only supports 65W CPUs)
    Case: Silverstone GD04 - £83.71 scan
    Cooler: Silverstone NT01-E - £29.84 scan
    HD: Samsung F2 (1.5TB) - £75.87 Scan
    Blu Ray: LG CH08LS10 - £80.00 ebuyer
    RAM: Crucial (2X2GB) 800MHz Ballistix - £62.99 ebuyer
    PSU: Corsair CX400 (400W seems to be the lowest power you can buy these days) - £36.78 scan
    Wireless media touchpad keyboard - £19.99 ebuyer
    TV Card: KWorld PE355-2T V2 - £47.93 scan
    Delivery: ebuyer free, scan £9.99
    Total: £585.83

    I was intending to get the Hauppauge Nova-TD 500 but despite scan saying they had it in stock, shortly after I submitted my order they told me they didnt actually have any and didn't know when it would be back in stock. I changed the order to the KWorld card and waited for my delivery, which was due on 31/12. It didn't come so I checked the city link website - it was still "in our network" whatever that means. 01/01 was a bank holiday, and on 02/01 it was loaded onto a van for delivery that day. Nothing came, no note, no nothing. 03/01 was a sunday. On 04/01 it was loaded on a van for delivery that day. Nothing came... again. I called their office and the woman said she couldn't contact the driver and didn't know why it hadn't come. She said she would put it out for delivery before 12:00 on 05/01. Nothing came on 05/01. I called up again and the woman couldn't get through to my local depot, so couldnt find out where my parcel was. At this point I realised that I would probably never get my parcel unless I colected it myself, especially with the impending snow, and my old PC wouldn't even boot so I'd have nothing to entertain me during the inevitable days off work unless I got this delivery! I decided to make the 2 hour round trip to rescue my parcel from the incompetent hands of city link.

    When I got to the depot I had to wait for about 30 minutes with all the other disillusioned customers in their tiny waiting room, but eventually I got my parcel and travelled safely home just in time for the snow to start pouring down - Phew!

    Putting the system together was quite pleasant, with the snow falling quietly outside and the prospect of not having to go to work the next day becoming more and more real. The instructions for the silverstone GD04 case were very clear and the case is extremely well put together. There's 3x12cm fans pre installed with dust guards and cables can be easily tidied using the supplied cable ties and fastening points built into the case. The silverstone NT01-E struck me as quite small, compared to most modern heat sinks, and considering I was planning to use it in fanless mode (no fans are supplied) I was a little bit nervous. It was pretty easy to install and comes with backplates for 775 or AMD boards. The instructions were pretty poor (unlike the case instructions which were perfect) but not impossible to understand.

    Once the system was all finished I booted it up and installed windows 7 without any hitches (except for having forgotten to plug in the 12V supply to the CPU the first time, which meant redoing all my neat cable tidying!). The first thing I noticed was that the system was incredibly quiet - even with all three fans at full speed there was only a gentle whoosh. I installed speedfan and had a look at the temperatures - The NT01-E was performing excellently! less than 10 degrees above ambient at idle and around 20 above under load! This meant I could set up speedfan such that no fans were running at all when the system was idle - Awesome. The PSU has its own intake in the bottom of the case which means it stays pretty much silent all the time too.

    After doing all the windows updates and installing drivers I started up windows media center. I've been using WMC for a while now and an extremely impressed with it - combined with TunerFree MCE it's almost perfect. If only it could play .mkv files - still have to use media player classic homecinema for that. Media center found the tv card and successfully scanned for channels, but when I started viewing a channel I discovered that they were all suffering from a huge amount of interference. This didn't surprise me that much as the card has no shielding on it at all, which is odd. I tried signal boosters and moving the card to the other PCIE slot but nothing helped so I decided to shield it myself. I put it in a sandwich bag and wrapped it in tin foil. This cured the problem and I can now watch all the channels happily. I'm a little bit nervous but i'm fairly confident that the sandwich bag won't melt... Anyway, I'm damned if I'm going to send it back after the trouble I went through to get it! Plus the remote is pretty nice, if a little plasticy (and it lights up!)

    I didn't buy a graphics card because I wanted to see what the onboard graphics could handle first - not a lot it turns out. Sometimes it struggles to play the media center transitions smoothly! Also, I think I do want to play games in my living room so I will have to buy a graphics card next... Not sure what at the moment.

    So now I have an almost completely silent, rather attractive fully working HTPC that fits under my TV :clap:

    Lessons to be learnt - Don't get anything delivered by city link, Don't buy an internal TV card (I had a worse interference with a hauppage card a while ago), Make sure you've plugged everything in before you put your PC back together!
     
    Last edited: 8 Jan 2010
    javaman likes this.
  2. javaman

    javaman May irritate Eyes

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    I recommend a passive 4850. May get abit toasty tho. +rep, great post and thanks for the info about the tv card. Never thought about interference. Hope you enjoy your new comp!

    P.S. any picts :thumb:
     
  3. ashchap

    ashchap Minimodder

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    I've still been having some interference problems with the TV card, even with the tin foil...

    I put my old 4850 in there last night (not passive, but not stock cooler). It's a bit noisy but not too bad. However, having all that pulsing electronics right next to the TV card was too much and it couldnt get any signal at all, even after adding more foil, so I've taken the graphics card back out.

    I think I will have to send the tv card back and get an external one because it just doesn't work - I don't know what they were thinking when they made this card... did they not test it at all?!
     
  4. javaman

    javaman May irritate Eyes

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    Haven't see a good HTPC article in a while but

    www.missingremote.com is a site dedecated to such endevours
     
  5. ashchap

    ashchap Minimodder

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    I don't have a decent camera, but phone pics are better than none I guess...

    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
     
  6. javaman

    javaman May irritate Eyes

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    looks well :thumb:

    Love the wee cooler too =D what keyboard is that?
     
  7. ashchap

    ashchap Minimodder

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    The keyboard is just called "Wireless media touchpad keyboard" from ebuyer. It's great for 20 quid, but sometimes loses the connection and fails to register the odd key, which can be frustrating.
     
  8. Splynncryth

    Splynncryth 0x665E3FF6,0x46CC,...

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    How hard was it to get the depth information? I'm looking into doing the same thing, and case size is a problem for me. but I'm after something with a flashy LCD and a volume knob if I can find it (I'd like it to look a bit like my AV receiver).
     
  9. 13eightyfour

    13eightyfour Formerly Titanium Angel

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    All the manufacturers will have a detailed dimension list for each product on their site. Unless you're going MITX, you're going to struggle will the depth like ash did imo. My HTPC case is huge, its over twice as tall as my Xbox360 laying horizontally about 1 1/2 times as wide and 1 1/2 times as deep. Infact its so big im thinking about going down the MATX route instead.
     
  10. Splynncryth

    Splynncryth 0x665E3FF6,0x46CC,...

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    Height isn't a problem, it's the depth. I need to have enough room for all the cables and connectors and not have the thing hanging out of my entertainment center so as not to break said cables. It's a problem with the old ATX system I'm using at the moment.
     
  11. ashchap

    ashchap Minimodder

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    I think mATX is the only real choice for HTPCs. It allows you to put it in a case that actually fits under a TV, and you're not really losing any functionality except a couple of unnecessary pci slots. Most sites will list the dimensions of the cases on the specifications tab or something.
     

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