[ShakenNotStured]

Thank you for all of you for answering my questions earlier today in the other post.

Here is what I have in my shopping cart. I plan to buy the parts in about an hour... it's hard to wait at all but I figured I'd ask for any last minute opinions.

The Parts:

[CPU] AMD A6-3500
[MOBO] ASRock A75M-MINI ITX
[RAM 2x2GB] Crucial Ballistix DDR3 1866
[SSD] Intel 330 60GB SSD
[ODD] Sony slim slot Blu Ray
[Case] OrigenAE M10
[REMOTE] Logitech Harmony One - I already own this
[FANS x2] Silenx 60mm

Let me know what you think. Only thing maybe that's off could be the ram... i went for fast speed.

Can't wait to buy and get this thing together!!!

[ShakenNotStured]

ordered!

[chickensoup]

Wow that's a tidy little case.

I hope you have small hands

[EazyVG]

I see that your mobo is micro-ATX while the case is for mini-ITX! Is it gonna fit in there, be sure to check this out. Love the looks of the case, but quite an expensive one for one I was building recently - http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=136778

[PatrickVogeli]

Yeah, James Bond would sure be proud if you fit a Micro-ATX motherboard into that mini-ITX case without breaking anything! :-D

As EazyVG has stated, you go the wrong case + mobo combo... change either the case to a micro-atx one or exchange the mobo for a mini-itx.

FYI: ATX > micro-ATX > mini-ITX

[GortWillSaveUs]

Wow, that case is expensive,..but it sure does look mighty cool!
Once you finish your build, you must give a write up on how the display on that case works.
Take some pix or a video showing what it can do.

Good luck on the mobo thing,...but once it's done,..I'm sure you'll be beaming.

[ShakenNotStured]

I woke up this morning and you guys (well more myself actually) almost gave me a heart attack. LOL. Luckily, everything is fine however. As you can imagine, I was pretty excited to buy the parts for my first htpc.. in doing so I had liek 30 tabs open in chrome to research different parts for different cases. I was looking at other cases incase I really wanted to use a after market heat sink on my cpu and just linked the wrong mobo to the forum... phew!

Anyways, I have updated the link in my initial post with the actual board that I bought. Thanks for catching the error tho!


I will be sure to take photos and maybe a timelapse video of the build. Ill add pic of all the parts when they arrive.

[GortWillSaveUs]

I was pretty excited to buy the parts for my first htpc.. in doing so I had liek 30 tabs open in chrome to research different parts for different cases.

That is EXACTLY what I do when researching a new purchase! Very funny!

[EazyVG]

BTW, you gonna opt for Windows or Linux for the XBMC platform?

[ShakenNotStured]

Well I have always had the idea of xbmcbuntu with a nice fast, set top feel... More like an actual blu ray player. I bought a big enough SSD to put windows 7 on incase Ubuntu is giving me trouble.. I'm worried about the amd drivers, and being able to controll my fan speeds in Linux. I can always have windows boot right to xbmc, which would probably work better with my server, but more likely a longer boot time.

I run whs2011 with the my movies add on, and I use the my movies database scrapper in xbmc instead of the imdb scrapper... So maybe just sticking with windows will be less hastle.

I'll try them both, as all my media is on the server, reformatting to the other platform is quick and painless. I just want the fastest, cleanest setup.

I'll try xbmcbuntu... If I'm struggling I'll go to windows... How do you install drivers in xbmcbuntu? I haven't tried it yet but have run Ubuntu before.

[EazyVG]

Understood, just a precautionary note, for some strange #$%@!$ reason I am unable to install Win7 x64 on my system - http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid...pid1155399. I have same combo of APU/Mobo as you, please keep the thread updated with your progress. I have seen many reviews/comments on this with people running Win7 w/o problems, somehow I got unlicky.

[ShakenNotStured]

I plan to give updates as I build. As for the windows issue only 2 things come to mind... Ram you obviously need a min of 4 gigs of the same speed ram channeled correctly, but I'm sure you have that covered.

I had a corrupt windows install once that would just freeze in the same spot of the set up. Try deleting the partition and doing a fresh install... Or install Linux, then delete the whole partition and install your 64bit win7.

Thanks for the heads up on your issue. I'll let you know if I run into anything similar

[bumperjeep]

How well does ATI GPUs work for Linux these days?

[Nitrogen_Widget]

How well does ATI GPUs work for Linux these days?

I have an E-350 based system which is an APU.
The only single problem I had with it was Hulu Desktop & HD Flash.
I just couldn't get smooth playback.

I'm guessing it's because of the lack of hardware acceleration for Flash under linux.
The CPU is only a 1.6 ghz cpu & even with dual core it just wasn't enough.

I used to have an HD4650 with a dual core 3ghz P4.
I don't recall any major issues under Linux.

[bluray]

Understood, just a precautionary note, for some strange #$%@!$ reason I am unable to install Win7 x64 on my system - http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid...pid1155399. I have same combo of APU/Mobo as you, please keep the thread updated with your progress. I have seen many reviews/comments on this with people running Win7 w/o problems, somehow I got unlicky.

I never heard of any user cannot install Windows 7 on Asrock/APU. I have Asrock/APU, and I installed Windows 7 several times on it. I never encounter any problem installing Windows 7 with any mobo/CPU either.

If you want to surf the net, streaming Netflix HD, streaming Vudu HD, bitstreaming HD audio, etc, Windows 7/8 is your best choice.......