[Steven994]

Hi,

New member, long time lurker. Trying to decide on htpc requirements and components, starting to go crazy. Some helpful guidance is needed.

My Current A/V Setup

50” LG PK550 Plasma
Kenwood 5.1 VR309 Receiver (this will need upgrading in the near future)
Rogers HDPVR Box
Pioneer DVD player

HTPC

Needs:

• Beautiful front end, was leaning towards XBMC
• Play 1080p videos locally, flawlessly.
• Output 5.1 DD/DTS (receiver accepts optical or rca(digital), will be upgrading this receiver to HDMI)
• Family photos
• Music server
• Controlled by Harmony remote
• Fit in cradenza (no tower cases)
• Small form factor (no need to be acer revo small)
• Quiet (no need to be absolutely silent)
• WAF

Would like, but may compromise;

• Play emulated games, most likely SNES.
• Play some PC Games, nothing too fancy, although in the future Stracraft II and Diablo 3 would be nice. No Crysis or hardware intense stuff like that.
• Web Browse
• Blu-ray reader

Things I don’t need;

• Hulu/Netflix (I live in Canada)

What route should I take?

• Pre-built Atom/ion nettops (Acer Revo1600 or 3600, Zotac Mag, Asrock Ion330) (Prices haven’t really dropped since release, and I’d feel like I would be overpaying if I were to buy them now)
• Building an atom/ion setup
• Building a core i3 or core2duo setup
• Waiting for ion 2 (Zbox hd-id11 etc)?

Budget is $350

[Steven994]

What do you guys think of this Mini-ITX build?

• Apex MI-008, $40
• Intel Celeron E3300 2.50GHz, $50
• Silverstone NT07-775, $20
• Zotac GF9300-G-E, $120
• 2x1GB DDR2 800, $50
• 1TB HDD, $75
• Total: $355

[ion_man]

Sounds good buy why not an ION since you don't need the cpu for Hulu/Netflix?

[Steven994]

I was thinking that the Celeron E3300 2.50GHz would give me a lot more power for the same price, and I could do some light gaming with it.

[wittaker25]

Sounds good buy why not an ION since you don't need the cpu for Hulu/Netflix?

He wants to do some gaming. Ion might be able to handle starcraft 2 on low settings at 800x600. If he wants respectable settings and resolution, he'll need a bit more power.

I'm not sure if the celeron will cut it for gaming. I would bump it up to a dual core just to be safe. The athlon ii 240 is nearly the same price, though I've heard the selection of mini-itx socket AM3 motherboards is quiet poor.

You may want to take a close look at the core i3. It has very low idle power consumption, only being bested by the 45 W TDP AMD Sempron I think. It also has a very quiet, low profile stock cpu cooler. It will fall outside your budget however.

[wittaker25]

Also, I'm not sure I'd recommend the apex mi-008 if you're going to be using a video card. Inserting either a full sized or low profile one severly impedes the airflow in the case. There's a case by Athenatech that has similar dimensions, but a more effective internal layout.

[Steven994]

He wants to do some gaming. Ion might be able to handle starcraft 2 on low settings at 800x600. If he wants respectable settings and resolution, he'll need a bit more power.

I'm not sure if the celeron will cut it for gaming. I would bump it up to a dual core just to be safe. The athlon ii 240 is nearly the same price, though I've heard the selection of mini-itx socket AM3 motherboards is quiet poor.

You may want to take a close look at the core i3. It has very low idle power consumption, only being bested by the 45 W TDP AMD Sempron I think. It also has a very quiet, low profile stock cpu cooler. It will fall outside your budget however.

Thanks for the suggestion, I just found a good benchmark comparing the x4500 , i3-540 integrated graphic and Nvidia 9400



Also the celeron that was mentioned is a dual-core and based on the new 45 nm die, its supposed to be a great performer for the price

[Steven994]

Maybe if instead of a mini-itx build I should go with a micro-atx build. I think I can get more power in the case at a lower price this way. I dont mind the case being as wide as a standard a/v component, just needs to be 5" or less in height to fit in my tv stand.


Micro-ATX build

• hec 7k09 Black htpc case, $54
• Intel Celeron E3300 2.50GHz, $50
• Foxconn G41, $38
• 2x1GB DDR2 800, $50
• 1TB HDD, $75
• IR Receiver $20

• Radeon HD 5450 (bitstream pap, no linux gpu support) $56
or
• Nvidia SI N94GT-MD512 GeForce 9400 GT (VDPAU, no bitstream) $56

• Total: $343

What do you guys think, which video card should I go with? Any different suggestions?

I guess another option is to ditch the celeron+videocard and go i3 and let the cpu do the 1080p decoding and have hd audio bitstream. Extra $150 though.

[Atamido]

It looks like you're basically building the same system I'm planning on here. I'll be using Windows 7, so the Radeon 5450 makes more sense as it's newer, uses little power, and is fanless. I'm also restricted to under 4.5" height, but I'm going with an Antec case I can get locally as the power supply appears to be decent and standard. I was a little concerned about the powersupply on the 7k09, but I do like the design a little better. I'm going with a motherboard that has the ICH10 instead of the ICH7 on that Foxconn as it is newer and hopefully better, but I honestly can't find any solid evidence of it being better.

I'm currently wondering about the CPU. For another $20 I could get the Pentium E5400 which is 200MHz more and doubles the L2 cache to 2MB. The 8% speed boost from the higher clock isn't worth much, but the extra L2 cache might be. I wish I could find out how important the L2 cache is for decoding and XBMC in general.