[_RT_]

Been lurking and asking question occasionally, but it's finally time to dump comcast and put together a HTPC that can provide the family with a better experience then we currently have.

Goals (stolen from eskro's thread):
* HDTV possess HDMI ports
* wants to play SD movies (DivX, XviD)
* wants to play DVD movies
* wants to play 720P movies
* wants to play 1080P movies
* wants to stream 1080P Hulu content
* wants to stream 1080P Netflix movies (Windows only)
* wants to Bistream HD-Audio

Additionally:
* wants to surf the internet.
* wants to be able to download and handle torrents and newsgroups (preferrable without impacting a movie playing - but not a deal breaker).
* possibly run emulators? (NES or SNES) Should be pretty straightforward.
* quiet system. I assume this means I am going the pico route which is fine.
* wants the ability to use my Harmony 880 for general use. Web surfing would be done with a keyboard that I'll buy at a later date.
* wants the ability to add a TV tuner eventually. Right now I have my cable box wired into my receiver. When I ditch cable, I'd still like the ability to pick up channels OTA using an antennae. I could route the antennae to the TV, but then I have to use my TV speakers. I'd prefer the ability to use my receiver for all sound. **Unless someone has a solution they have seen that makes this easier!!**

Thanks for all the help gang-
_RT_

Do to a change in timeline, I'm going to change up the build a bit.

ASRock MB-A75M
AMD A6-3500 APU
Silverstone ML03B
Antec EarthWatts Green EA-380D Green 380W
Kingston HyperX 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM
Scythe Big Shuriken 2100

The two remaining questions:
I assume I should pick up a case fan. Suggestions?
Am I way overkill on 8 gigs of ram? I'm happy to drop to 4 and save the money.
I've already ordered a SSD from Amazon:
Kingston SSDNow V+200 120GB SATA III 6Gb/s 2.5" Solid State Drive SVP200S3/120G

At a later date, I may pick up something like this for the OTA signals. I want to be able to run the audio and video through my receiver and I am not in a position to pull more cable through the walls to run an antennae to the tv and then an audio cable from tv to receiver.
TV Tuner

Lastly, I'll be picking up one of the HP IR receiver from ebay to use with my Harmony remote.

[jangjong]

People have been liking my build

[_RT_]

People have been liking my build

Can it do the things outlined in my post? (I don't see what you use it for - other than play 1080p)

[Beer40oz]

Hey RT ... thanx for checking out my build.

There are so many choices too choose from.... CPU's etc....

If you don't care about size of the case lets choose something that will fit your other equipment?

The ML03B as you mentioned... it's cool. Maybe spend a little more on the case? remember you always are looking at it...

you will get help here.... a lot of knowledge people.

[Mick1152]

I have that case and love it. Good ventilation plus I have 4 drives in it (2 HDDs, 1 SSD, 1 Bluray). Only issue I have that I just discovered is the case is a little too large for the cabinet in my RV. I built the system to be able to store media on its HDDs for travel in the RV and use it in the home the rest of the time. Its perfect for the home but RV may get some cabinet work when I get home.

[Beer40oz]

I have that case and love it. Good ventilation plus I have 4 drives in it (2 HDDs, 1 SSD, 1 Bluray). Only issue I have that I just discovered is the case is a little too large for the cabinet in my RV. I built the system to be able to store media on its HDDs for travel in the RV and use it in the home the rest of the time. Its perfect for the home but RV may get some cabinet work when I get home.

Yes your's is a good one! The A8 should do what he needs....

I love kingstone... I had that RAM...

But now I am hooked on Crucial Ballistix
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6820148559

I found out that the Crucials are PLUg and Play... as only thing to change in bios was from 1333 to 1866 and everything else was set correctly to spec.

[_RT_]

I have that case and love it. Good ventilation plus I have 4 drives in it (2 HDDs, 1 SSD, 1 Bluray). Only issue I have that I just discovered is the case is a little too large for the cabinet in my RV. I built the system to be able to store media on its HDDs for travel in the RV and use it in the home the rest of the time. Its perfect for the home but RV may get some cabinet work when I get home.

Mick1152-
I didn't see that build before. I really like it.
How is the sound level? Is that power supply loud?

[jangjong]

People have been liking my build

Can it do the things outlined in my post? (I don't see what you use it for - other than play 1080p)

A6-3500 is enough to handle your needs in my opinion.

Beer40oz's and my build are very similar. I saw you were interested in his build so I thought you can look at mine too.

I only use it to play 1080p because.. that's all I got. Not becuase it's not able to handle it

[Mick1152]

I have that case and love it. Good ventilation plus I have 4 drives in it (2 HDDs, 1 SSD, 1 Bluray). Only issue I have that I just discovered is the case is a little too large for the cabinet in my RV. I built the system to be able to store media on its HDDs for travel in the RV and use it in the home the rest of the time. Its perfect for the home but RV may get some cabinet work when I get home.

Mick1152-
I didn't see that build before. I really like it.
How is the sound level? Is that power supply loud?

Power supply is dead silent, system doesn't draw enough power to need the PSU fan to ever get going to a speed where it is noticeable. The CPU fan can be noticeable when really working the system while transcoding bluray rips or running prime95. Other than than the fan speed stays low at level 1 and isn't noticeable. I did add a case fan as well, I must have gotten a bad fan cause it was loud compared to everything else. Swapped it out with another one once I finally admitted something wasn't right and its all quiet again.

System has been a joy to have with us on our trip. Kids played video games most of the driving time via the from collection browser. Then we had our entire movie collection with us when we retired to the RV in the evenings ,instead of being stuck with the DVD wallet of old crappy movies we happened to pick out for the trip that it always turned out nobody was interested in.... now I have almost 600 movies for everybody to not be interested in!!!!

Beer's system is what inspired me to finally pull the trigger and order my parts. I also have a Beer 6 pack clone for my bedroom system (different case and power supply though) and can tell you it is a good little system. In fact it may be redone into a dedicated RV system when I get back home since I need a smaller case in my RV cabinet.

[Dougie Fresh]

What have you found to be out-of-stock in Beer40oz's build?

A few of us have built similar recently but in a different case, the E-i5. If you need an optical drive it has a big brother the E-i7.

If you want to go micro-ATX and want something that looks like an AVR, is good quality but not expensive look at the nMediaPC line of cases.

[_RT_]

Are there any thoughts on routing OTA signals through the system to my receiver?

[_RT_]

Went through a number of builds on the site and I think I've settled on this one:
aptalca's build

Still not sure how I am going to address the sound for TV signals received OTA.
But I'm closer to pulling the trigger.

[aptalca]

Your tv must have sound outputs.

My tv has both optical and regular stereo (red and white rca)

You should be able to hook up the tv output to a receiver input

If your receiver only has one input, you can either consider using a splitter, or hook up the tv output to the computer's mic input, and set it in windows to route mic input to speaker output

[_RT_]

Your tv must have sound outputs.

My tv has both optical and regular stereo (red and white rca)

You should be able to hook up the tv output to a receiver input

If your receiver only has one input, you can either consider using a splitter, or hook up the tv output to the computer's mic input, and set it in windows to route mic input to speaker output

That was the solution I didn't want someone to suggest. lol
My tv is on one wall (near a corner) and the entertainment system is on the rear wall (opposite corner). Right now I have my HDMI and speaker wires run behind the wall. I'm hoping that I don't have to pull and run more wires. At least it is one option though.

Thanks-
Looks like your build is going to be the winner. Still enjoying it? Anything you would do differently?

[aptalca]

Looks like your build is going to be the winner. Still enjoying it? Anything you would do differently?

To be honest, I still love it, and I don't think there is anything I would change. The only annoyance was the power LED flashing in suspend mode, but enabling the "Goodnight LED" option in bios fixed that.

Temps are good, very quiet and very snappy. I wasn't sure if 32GB would be enough for win 7, but I installed antivirus, browser and such, not to mention gigs of thumbnails but I still have over 10GB free.

So no, I wouldn't really do anything differently. I highly recommend it.