Comments on proposed HTPC

[sushikofgan]

Here are the specs for the HTPC I will be building:

Case - Silverstone LC-16m (includes VFD, IR receiver and remote control)
Power Supply - Advice on a minimum 350W reliable, low noise ATX 24-pin power supply would be great
CPU - AMD Athlon64 X2 3800+
Motherboard - Gigabyte GA-K8N51PVMT-9
RAM - 2 x 1GB DDR400 - Advice on whether lower timings matter for a HTPC, etc would be nice
Hard Disk Drive - Maxtor 250 (or 300) GB 16mb SATA
Optical Drive - Pioneer DVR-110
Video Card - onboard (will upgrade in future)
Sound Card - onboard (will upgrade in future)
Analog Tuner - Hauppauge WinTV PVR-500 MCE
Digital Tuner - DigitalNow TinyUSB2 DVB-T dual tuner
Wireless - USB wireless G 108 mbps dongle
Other - SPDIF bracket (Gigabyte code 12CR1-1SPINO-11)

Hopefully Vista MCE will be able to mix analog and digital tuners, but for now, I will be using MediaPortal or one of the other pieces of HTPC software that are around. Suggestions would be good.

Any advice or suggestions about software or hardware issues would be great, especially if anyone has some of the above hardware and can detail their experience with it. Extremely important to me is reliable hardware and that all components will work together without issue. If you can foresee any (potential) problems with my proposed config, please speak up and give me your opinion.

[sushikofgan]

Also, any advice on where to get the Gigabyte 12CR1-1SPINO-11 SPDIF bracket would be great. I've only seen it in stores in NZ and they don't ship overseas.

[Sambooka]

Originally Posted by sushikofgan

Also, any advice on where to get the Gigabyte 12CR1-1SPINO-11 SPDIF bracket would be great. I've only seen it in stores in NZ and they don't ship overseas.

Would this do?

Cheers

Sambooka

[eepunk]

Hi,

For my money, unless your gonna be doing some heavy video encoding with even heavier deadlines, your processor is complete overkill.

How about trimming that one back a bit and purchasing a video card. Onboard video bites.

If you're using onboard spdif then there is not much point in adding a sound card to what you've already got there.

E.E.

[sushikofgan]

Originally Posted by Sambooka

Would this do?

Thanks for the suggestion but I also need optical SPDIF in, which has been the main problem finding.

Originally Posted by eepunk

For my money, unless your gonna be doing some heavy video encoding with even heavier deadlines, your processor is complete overkill.

Well, I figured like this:
- 2 x analog tuners @ 5% each = 10% of one core.
- 2 x digital tuners @ 5% each = 10% of one core.
- Viewing TV = 40% of one core.
This alone would be sufficient on one core, but I also factored in my DV camera which will be connected via firewire, and I will need to encode from uncompressed to MPEG2 to copy to DVD. That will take a fair chunk of CPU. I also plan to convert all my cassettes and vinyl records to CD so, again, more CPU power is needed. Given I do not want to be upgrading this PC (apart from what I listed in the first post), and I want it to be very responsive, I went with the X2.

Of course, if you have any suggestions or can see where I'm going wrong I'd love to hear your opinion. This will be my first HTPC.

Originally Posted by eepunk

How about trimming that one back a bit and purchasing a video card. Onboard video bites.

For now, the onboard video will be connected to an analog PAL TV so it should be fine. When I get my plasma, new video cards will be out and I will have a better idea whether I want to go ATI (AVIVO and its encoding acceleration looks good) or nVidia, especially for H.264 decoding.

Originally Posted by eepunk

If you're using onboard spdif then there is not much point in adding a sound card to what you've already got there.

It depends on whether I can get bit-perfect SPDIF out, which is where I am a bit unsure with the onboard sound, but I would prefer not having to add a separate soundcard.

[aeon]

Originally Posted by sushikofgan

Here are the specs for the HTPC I will be building:

Case - Silverstone LC-16m (includes VFD, IR receiver and remote control)
Power Supply - Advice on a minimum 350W reliable, low noise ATX 24-pin power supply would be great

My recommendation would be a Seasonic S12 430W (AFAIK you can only get it from www.pccasegear.com.au), the quietest PSU around (excluding fanless models) and high quality and 24pin.

CPU - AMD Athlon64 X2 3800+

I'd stick with this.

Motherboard - Gigabyte GA-K8N51PVMT-9
RAM - 2 x 1GB DDR400 - Advice on whether lower timings matter for a HTPC, etc would be nice

Lower timings will make no difference whatsoever in the real world. Just get some "Value" RAM from someone like Corsair, OCZ, Kingston etc.

Hard Disk Drive - Maxtor 250 (or 300) GB 16mb SATA

I'd put in another 80GB or so drive in as a system drive as it makes thing much nicer when you are trying to do something on the disk at the same time you are recording as otherwise the drive heads have to jump all over the place and slow things down.

Optical Drive - Pioneer DVR-110

If you want a quiet drive I would get the Pioneer A10XL as it's a fair bit quieter than the 110, it's more expensive though so it depends how much you are wanting to spend and how important quietness is.

Hopefully Vista MCE will be able to mix analog and digital tuners, but for now, I will be using MediaPortal or one of the other pieces of HTPC software that are around. Suggestions would be good.

I've been trying Get all Media - http://www.gallm.com/default.aspx - recently and it appears to have a lot of promise, it has been crashing on me a bit but I still haven't really sorted out the config. Worth a look.

[veritas]

Just curious but why would anyone want analog AND digital? All the analog channels are on digital aren't they? I thought you'd only want analog if you can't get digital?

[sushikofgan]

Originally Posted by aeon

My recommendation would be a Seasonic S12 430W (AFAIK you can only get it from www.pccasegear.com.au), the quietest PSU around (excluding fanless models) and high quality and 24pin.

It does look good but is also pricey at $145. I've been considering the Coolermaster RS-450-ACLX which appears to offer a lot of the same features but for almost half the price. The Silverstone PSUs I have also considered but they appear to be 20-pin models.

Originally Posted by aeon

I'd put in another 80GB or so drive in as a system drive as it makes thing much nicer when you are trying to do something on the disk at the same time you are recording as otherwise the drive heads have to jump all over the place and slow things down.

Would an old Seagate 60GB IDE drive be OK or do you think it would slow the system down too much?

Originally Posted by aeon

If you want a quiet drive I would get the Pioneer A10XL as it's a fair bit quieter than the 110, it's more expensive though so it depends how much you are wanting to spend and how important quietness is.

From A10XL page - http://www.pioneer.com.au/computer/d...xl/index.html:

Write-strategy setting to automatically set the write strategy for each of used discs by selecting from the optimum write-strategy data stored in the writers.
Multi-Effect Liquid Crystal Tilt Compensator to improve the recording and playback characteristics by adding astigmatism correction to the existing tilt correction and spherical aberration correction.

Various original technologies to improve quality and reliability in recording
Ultra Dynamic Resonance Absorber
Buffer Under-run Protection
Precision Recording Technology

High-speed recording and low noise operation
Pioneer's original honey comb structure and other improvements to the internal structure have drastically reduced operation noise during high speed rotation.
Performance Adjusting Firmware automatically optimizes the disc's rotation speed depending on user's requirements and keeps operation noise at the minimum in the write and read modes.

Are these all extras over the DVR-110, as they are not mentioned on the DVR-110 page? Or is loudness the only difference? Have you heard a DVR-110 in operation and did you consider it annoying or would it not be audible if watching TV/a movie? I currently have an NEC ND-2500A and I find that to be very quiet.

Originally Posted by aeon

I've been trying Get all Media - http://www.gallm.com/default.aspx - recently and it appears to have a lot of promise, it has been crashing on me a bit but I still haven't really sorted out the config. Worth a look.

This software does look interesting. Thanks for the heads up.

Originally Posted by veritas

Just curious but why would anyone want analog AND digital? All the analog channels are on digital aren't they? I thought you'd only want analog if you can't get digital?

1 analog tuner for Foxtel Digital;
1 analog tuner for VCR to convert videotapes to DVD.

[aeon]

Originally Posted by sushikofgan

It does look good but is also pricey at $145. I've been considering the Coolermaster RS-450-ACLX which appears to offer a lot of the same features but for almost half the price. The Silverstone PSUs I have also considered but they appear to be 20-pin models.

Personally I would find the extra to get the Seasonic if you really want an almost silent system. Have a look at the review of the Coolermaster here - http://www.silentpcreview.com/article205-page1.html - (it's actually a slightly different model but the same with regards to noise) and the Seasonic one here - http://www.silentpcreview.com/article226-page1.html

The Seasonic is a lot quieter and I think it's worth it if low noise is a priority. If it isn't then the Coolermaster would be fine.

Would an old Seagate 60GB IDE drive be OK or do you think it would slow the system down too much?

Would be fine IMO, you could always try it out and if you think it's too slow just put it all on the new disk or buy another new one.

Are these all extras over the DVR-110, as they are not mentioned on the DVR-110 page? Or is loudness the only difference? Have you heard a DVR-110 in operation and did you consider it annoying or would it not be audible if watching TV/a movie? I currently have an NEC ND-2500A and I find that to be very quiet.

The main differences are the noise and the software that comes with it. The 110 does support the Pioneer Speedtools program meaning that it should be fine when watching DVDs etc as you can set it to use a low speed.

If you want to keep the whole thing quiet I would also put on an aftermarket CPU cooler like the Zalman 7000B AlCu and maybe undervolt the case fans to 5 or 7V.

[eepunk]

Originally Posted by aeon

...Zalman 7000B AlCu and maybe undervolt the case fans to 5 or 7V.

Exactly what I do with my LC17. The Zalman is virtually inaudable and the case fans perform more than adequately at half voltage.

E.E.