[newtothis]

Hi all,
These Forums have a great help with my revo,but now i want to make a little hptc build myself i was thinking of this

Wesena Mini ITX7-2 Case (http://www.wesena.co.uk/product.php/6/0/)
With the psu adaptor so i can use a power brick,would 120w be enough for the following?

ZOTAC IONITX-P-E Celeron SU2300 Dual Core (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/236956)
with 4gb of ram,and ocz ssd drive, would it be advisable to add a graphics card too?
Any advice would be lovely
thank you!

[toolpunk]

120 watts should enough for this system.
The ION GPU is capable of playing back 1080p media just fine, so you won't have to add a dedicated graphics card.

[newtothis]

120 watts should enough for this system.
The ION GPU is capable of playing back 1080p media just fine, so you won't have to add a dedicated graphics card.

Excellent,thank you!

Would i be better off buying the Zbox celeron barebones?
also would this sdd drive be ok?
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B001N...ROKL5A1OLE

many thanks

[eskro]

well you can go with these since u like the Celeron SU2300


[MOBO+CPU+GPU] ZOTAC IONITX-P-E Intel Celeron 1.2GHz Dual-Core ION1 Mini-ITX ($200 + $0)
[CASE+PSU] Apex MI-100 Black mini-ITX 250W ($53 + $0)
[FAN] Scythe Slipstream 120mm 800RPM 40.17CFM 10.70dBA ($13 + $0)
TOTAL: ($266)

Possibility to add a BD-ROM and a GT430 video card later on if needed!
WiFi Built-in!!

[toolpunk]

The SSD you linked to is good enough.
It's kinda slow in terms of write speed, but since XBMC doesn't create any huge files this shouldn't have much impact.

If you're looking for even more performance I'd recommend you to have a look at the Vertex 2 series.
They are a bit more expensive but offer greatly enhanced write speeds and slightly better read speeds.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/OCZ-Vertex-Solid...12&sr=8-13

[eskro]

many still use a mechanical hard drive with their XBMC box...

by going with any available SSD you already in better hands...

[newtothis]

many still use a mechanical hard drive with their XBMC box...

by going with any available SSD you already in better hands...

One last question!
would getting a motheboard without the cpu like this one
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/228933
and adding
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/234797

be better than my orignal post? would 120watts still be ok for this?
Thank you in advance!
ordering tonight hopefully

[finish.06]

Sir newtothis,

I recently purchased the Zotac ZBOX ND22-U from http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6856173012 ... & I gotta say, it is amazing! I through in a SSD drive along with 2GB of RAM, and this bad boys connects to my media server perfectly. I am running windows7 on it, because I also use netflix, though the machine has no problem playing Hulu, Netflix, or XBMC on my 40in 720p TV.

If you have any questions, let me know.

[eskro]

oh yeah!
i agree that the Zotac ZBOX ND22-U makes a sweet HTPC!

but if you need your HTPC to play 3D movies
or play commercial BD-Discs, your outta luck with that Zotac...

and thats mainly why i prefer building my own HTPC...
the control i get by doing so is priceLess

@newtothis, my mini-ITX build suggestion is Here! (USA Pricing)

[maxinc]

The SSD you linked to is good enough.
It's kinda slow in terms of write speed, but since XBMC doesn't create any huge files this shouldn't have much impact.

If you're looking for even more performance I'd recommend you to have a look at the Vertex 2 series.
They are a bit more expensive but offer greatly enhanced write speeds and slightly better read speeds.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/OCZ-Vertex-Solid...12&sr=8-13

There is one aspect in SSDs that often gets left out and which is probably the single important factor for which SSDs should be considered.

It is the access time not the read / write speeds. When dealing with such small files, an SSD's read/write speed is only marginally faster than a hard drive at, some are even slower. BUT, the access time of your average 2.5 HDD is somewhere around 15ms whereas an SSD is pretty much instant at 0.1 - 0.3 ms which is 50-100 times quicker.

Is the access time that mechanical hard drives can't do anything about and it is for this single reason we experience the slow boots and slow system responsivness.

With this being said, any SSD will perform pretty much the same inside a XBMC box so personally I would go with the cheapest one but from a reputable brand such as OCZ or Corsair etc.

[newtothis]

So in the end i went for

Wesena Mini ITX7-2 Case (http://www.wesena.co.uk/product.php/6/0/

ZOTAC IONITX-P-E Celeron SU2300 Dual Core (
with 4gb of ram,and ocz ssd drive,

this forum was such a help so thank you! and one last question,i want to run xbmc,couchpoato and sabnzbd,would i best doing a ubuntu install and having xbmc etc as start up app? or is windows 7 best? would using 64 bit ubuntu be a problem?
With much thanks

[PatrickVogeli]

I use 32 bit ubuntu, where xbmc starts automatically as a standalone session (meaning I don't load gnome and then load xbmc, I only load xbmc, which is faster) and start both sabnzbd and amule as a service automatically at startup. I don't know how couchpotato works.

Why I use 32bit ubuntu? In 64 bits there is (maybe was) a bug which, with vdpau enabled, it would sometimes crash xbmc when starting a movie. This bug wasn't present in 32 bit ubuntu, so I made the switch. I haven't noticed any speed difference, so I'm fine.