[newoski]

Hi Guys,

My A6-3500 build just got knocked out by a freak power surge via HDMI. Long story short, I need to replace the entire build. Insurance covered the damage, so my budget is roughly $650, though I can increase as needed if there are significiant performance gains.

My sole uses will be XBMC / BluRay ripping BluRay to h.264 MKV via DVDFab and HandBrake. I'm fine with Intel or AMD, but I'm reading that the Intel QuickSync has quality loss issues. Can I turn off QuickSync with Intel while ripping content?

What would everyone recommend for a powerful system for the tasks above?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,

Owen

[Dougie Fresh]

Something in an i5 can keep you under 150W (my line for when you go from mini-ITX to SFX/ATX PSU) easily and not run too hot. I actually just did an i7-4790S system for someone that could top the 150W mark briefly so it'd say go with something more like the i5-4690S. I used the Noctua NH-L9i and the Wesena ITX-4 case. Temperatures stayed nice and cool.

Do you need a lot of local storage for rips or just enough temp space before you move it to a NAS?

I am guessing you need:

Haswell i5 CPU
H97 mini-ITX motherboard
8GB RAM
Mini-ITX case, power supply, low-profile cooler
BD drive
240-256GB SSD
?

[voip-ninja]

Hi Guys,

My A6-3500 build just got knocked out by a freak power surge via HDMI. Long story short, I need to replace the entire build. Insurance covered the damage, so my budget is roughly $650, though I can increase as needed if there are significiant performance gains.

My sole uses will be XBMC / BluRay ripping BluRay to h.264 MKV via DVDFab and HandBrake. I'm fine with Intel or AMD, but I'm reading that the Intel QuickSync has quality loss issues. Can I turn off QuickSync with Intel while ripping content?

What would everyone recommend for a powerful system for the tasks above?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,

Owen

The sole advantage of a faster CPU is faster encode times. With your budget you should be able to build an i7 based system which will do encodes quite quickly.

Now, if you're also using this box for media playback then I would definitely recommend that you get a setup with Haswell graphics, since they are the best Intel has yet offered for playback of BD media at the original frame-rate.