Hi all!!
I thought I would just go through the budget HTPC I built for those looking to put together a cheap rig from scratch. I could have shaved more dollars off here and there but sometimes the absolute cheapest just doesn't work! I thought I would write this as this is the kind of information I would have liked to have read when I ws looking to put together mine.
Case: Antec Overture II Piano Black Desktop Case 2X5.25 2X3.5 2X3.5INT 450W W/ Front IO Port
Motherboard: MSI RS482M-IL mATX S754 ATI RS482M
CPU: AMD Sempron 64BIT 2800+ Processor S754
Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda 300GB 7200.9
Video: Onboard (ATI 200 Express Crossfire) / VGA + S-Video & Composite Out Plate (connectd to header on MB)
Audio: Onboard 5.1 RealTek ALC655
DVD Burner: LG GSA-4167B 16X DVD+-RW
TV Tuner: HAUPPAUGE WIN TV PVR 500 TV Tuner
Memory: Kingston ValueRAM PC3200 2 x 512MB DDR400 CL3
Keyboard/Mouse: BTC 9019 URF Wireless Keyboard w/ Dual Mode Joystick Mouse
Remote: Microsoft Remote Control w/Receiver (A9O-00009)
Review
I build all my systems from scratch after researching every component for speed, reliability and future flexibility. I already have a high end rig that I use for gaming so my goal was to come up with a basic system that would work as a PVR box and allow internet browsing and emailing.
Due to the fact that all the "good" TV Tuner cards do hardware MPEG2 encoding, I came to the conclusion that using a S939 MB with a high end dual core AMD processor would be complete overkill since I wouldn't be using any CPU cycles except to watch TV. Had I wanted to do some sort of high end gaming and more importantly, video editing, I would have opted for a solution similar to what I used for my main gaming rig. Knowing that my old PII450 FTP server could playback (decode) DivX and MPEG2 movies without any problems, I settled on a S754 solution with the cheapest processor available.
Next came the video card solution which was the hardest thing for me decide on. Today's video cards without "good" aftermarket cooling are for the most part noisy (or at least from my stand point they are). That being said, there are many good solutions that have quiet cooling but cost a lot of money. I wanted a PC that was quiet or shall I say, I didn't want to know I had a PC running in the living room. I decided the best way to get around that was to either go onboard or buy a PCI-E card that didn't require any cooling. I settled on the onboard ATI 200 Express in the end as it was the least expensive and gave me the 3D performance of a regular ATI 9600 which will be sufficient for Microsoft Vista (eye candy turned off) when it comes out next year.
The hard drive selection came next. Originally I had settled on going RAID 0 with 2 250gig drives as I thought I would need striping performance in order to record 2 and watch a pre-recorded show. During my storage investigation I came across several people who ran a single higher end drive and were able to record 2 shows and watch one. So I decide I'd go with one drive and see how it went as I could always add another drive later. Again I wanted a very quiet PC so having 2 drives would have increased noise levels. From what I found, the Seagate drives, although not the best performers overall, scored very high when dealing with large files (2 gig +) compared to the competition. Although I never owned a Seagate drive I decided to go with the 300 Gig 7200.9 which would give me about 100 hours of highest quality recordings based on MS DVR format.
Next was the case. I had looked at several and decided I wanted a full ATX desktop case rather than one of the "cube" style ones. It was just personal preference in the end. My short list included The Thermaltake Mozzart, Bach and Tenor along with the Antec Oveture II. I found the Thermaltake offerings to be fancier looking but didn't offer any huge advantages as far as cooling or fit and finish. They also didn't come with a power supply so that would have added to the bill. I run a Antec Sonata II and found it to be the best case I had ever had so I knew would I would be getting if I purchased the Overture II. The Overture II came with a 450Watt Quiet True Power Supply so that helped keep the costs down.
The TV Tuner was also tough to decode on. The ATI Theater Pro 550 is supposed to have the best image quality out there but I couldn't find any dual tuner options as of writing this. I was using a m-ATX board so I wanted to keep the PCI cards to a minimum. I ended up with the Hauppauge PVR 500 even though I knew I wouldn't get the absolute best image quality had a I gone with 2 Theater Pro 550s.
Putting everything together was a breeze and I'm not going to go into detail. The one thing I will note is that the hard drive bay blower fans on the Overture II are noisy and I have disconnected them as a result. I found that they were not really moving that much air anyway and my case temperature stayed the same anyway. I bumped the 120mm rear exaust fan to medium speed to compensate for disconnecting those two fans. Also, the Overture II is long. 19 inches in depth to be exact so with cables coming out the back your at 20" pretty much. my 5.1 receiver is 15" in depth so it's not terrible but something to take into consideration of your media shelving is solid at the back or up against a wall!
Installing and setting up MCE2005 went as well as could be expected. Since I have just one set top box, hacking the registry to get one tuner to use analog and the other to use the STB was painful. You can find some good instructions
here on how to do that. BE sure to have s3 Standby mode enabled in the BIOS before you install MCE2005 as from what I read, this can make or break getting the S3 standby mode to work correctly in MCE2005.
The onboard video on the MSI motherboard automatically detects if your using VGA or Composite/S-Video output. I thought that was pretty damn cool as I always had issues getting that to work with other video cards I had.
Image quality of Live TV was fantastic! My analog direct cable looked so much better than before. I'm assuming the hardware MPEG2 encoder is doing some noise filtering because I couldn't get over how nice it looked. My STB signal looked as good as it did before so I suppose I should be happy about that as well. Recorded TV looked as good as the LiveTV (well it's the same thing so it should!). I haven't played with the different quality settings yet but a 100 hours (270 gigs free on HD)at best quality is more than enough for me! The single hard drive has no issues at all recording two shows and watching either a pre-recorded show or watching a DVD movie.
The system runs very quiet except for two things. The Seagate is a noisy seeker and the stock Sempron Heat Sink and Fan isn't quiet enough although I have to admit AMD has done a good job with the stock coolers. My future plans will be to buy the Arctic Cooling Freezer and buy one of the mainly internal HD enclosures. This should obtain my goal of a completely quiet HTPC.
Anyway, I hope this helps out some people who are currently researching to build a media PC. It's not a fast box but it gets the job done. MCE2005 UI passed the wife test as well. She loves that she can record two TV shows and watch one recorded. She even commented that being able to fire up email and MSN Messenger in the living room is great. No more packing our 5 month old downstairs to use the main PC!
