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kb0501 · (This post was last modified: 2010-09-23, 07:07 by kb0501.)

im a bit of a novice and after some searching i came up with the attached to use as a mid price htpc. didnt want to go nuts on money, but just want thoughts on if it is up to scratch to run xbmc, output to a full hd plasma playing 1080 hd movies. thoughts?changes?

antec fusion remote black case
antec 380 atx 12v 80mm fan low noise
MSI-G41M-E43 motherboard
Intel Pentium E6500 Dual Core 2.93Ghz LGA775, 2MB L2 cache, ATX
Kingston 4GB DDR3 RAM 1066MHz

poofyhairguy · 2010-09-23, 07:14

That will do the job, as that CPU is enough for 1080p.

I would recommend this setup if you are doing things outside XBMC such as Hulu or Netflix. If this is a dedicated mkv box ION will play them just as well for less power, space and money....

Thekay · (This post was last modified: 2010-09-26, 22:15 by Thekay.)

Im looking at something like this to for my HTCP.
Sorry for hj:ing the thread but how important is the motherboard and ram when running this with windows 7?
Im looking for the cheapest solution that kan play 1080p flash (like youtube) as well as all mkv's Smile

Some 30$-something mobo with a E5400 and a passively cooled GT220 1gb DDR2 would do, right?

christsim · 2010-09-26, 22:23

kb0501 Wrote:antec fusion remote black case
antec 380 atx 12v 80mm fan low noise
MSI-G41M-E43 motherboard
Intel Pentium E6500 Dual Core 2.93Ghz LGA775, 2MB L2 cache, ATX
Kingston 4GB DDR3 RAM 1066MHz

That's almost identical to my system. I added a MSI Nvidia GT210 (no fan) to do hardware acceleration cause the intel graphics card was pretty crap. It's nice and quiet, haven't managed to get the IMON LCD screen to work with XBMC yet, but I haven't tried too hard as the screen is too small and has a bad viewing angle.

kb0501 · (This post was last modified: 2010-09-27, 02:39 by kb0501.)

thanks for all the help - much appreciated

a couple questions
1) is 4GB too much RAM, would 2 GB be enough?
2) is there any overkill? anything i can owngrade?
3) is it worth getting a smaller hdd just for the o/s- will that make xbmc run faster? is a ssd worth the cost?
4) would an ION box run xbmc using windows 7 as smoothly?
5) do i need a graphics card - if so any ideas?

i want to play any files effortlessly and xbmc menus and libraries run smoothly - like aeon with fanart etc

- thanks so much for the help

poofyhairguy · 2010-09-27, 07:46

2GB is enough. Put the money towards a SSD. Best move you can make.