Videophile HTPC

knutinh · Post by **knutinh** » Fri Dec 08, 2006 4:13 am

A group of Norwegian A/V interested people are planning to commision a purpose-built HTPC. They want to spec a HTPC that will be easily upgradeable for HD-DVD/BR playback, FLAC high-quality audio playback, as well as live TV shifting/recording. In order of importance.

It is also important that this unit will blend in with regular hifi components, that the noise level is acceptable both at high and low load, of course stability and modularity for future upgrades.

Gaming performance, general "office" performance etc are only marginally considered, and should not be prioritised if in conflict with other basic needs such as noise.

I am trying to formulate more elaborate specs from those mentioned above, and Mikes HTPC fascinated me.

BASIC PRESUMPTIONS:
A pre-built HTPC will be built by a Norwegian computer manufacturer and a disk-image containing tested applications and functionality delivered. This PC will be under warranty, and users should be able to get full use of the without touching hardware or software.

CASING:
44cm full-width, room for at least one fullsize 5.25" drive and two 3.5" harddrives, good airflow and generally good design for low noise.

Zalman HD160
Several Silverstone casings are debated, among them the LC17

PSU:
medium power output (350W ought to be enough), good temperature controlled fan that will aid in removing case hot air,

Seasonic s12 330W is high on the list

CPU:
The intel Core2 in some price/performance variant seems to be the most solid performer at present. I was stunned that Mike chose an AMD x2 for his project?

Core2 6300 is suggested

CPU COOLER:
Depending on casing, a "low & wide" cooler with good cooling capability and a low-noise fan is probably necessary. I have suggested something like my thermaltake XP120 with a low-noise 120mm fan, but I think that most people found that too expensive.

MOBO:
I am argueing that speedfan-capable fan headers is a necessity, others that asus built in fan control is just as good. Still others argue that fan-control is unnecessary as long as you use high-quality components that makes little noise in the first place.

Mike was relying solely on the Asus fan control?

Also, it is being argued that intel Viiv is very important as it allows accelerated startup/shutdown times. I have used suspend/S3 until recently, and cant really see the need for accelerating that? What is the pros and cons of Viiv accelerated start/shutdown vs S3 vs none?

Viiv seems to be available mostly on intel mobos, while many speedcontrollable fan headers is available mostly on expensive "afficionado" mobos?

MEMORY:
I dont have much to say here. Suffice to say that a single-application HTPC should be able to operate with as little as 512MB of ram even when decoding high-bandwidth HD-video, as long as you still get full memory bandwidth.

STORAGE:
I think that regular, low-noise 3.5" 7200rpm drives are the way to go, but that it should be possible to order with 2.5" laptop drives for those that desire it. Storage space may be important for some, while hd speed will probably be less important than in many regular PCs. HD video isnt more than ~30mbit/s after-all.

As the PC is going to be pre-built, I doubt that the manu will want to do any "DIY" harddrive suspension, but there should be space and plans for anyone deciding to modding this themselves. Perhaps AACM should be enabled as default?

Also, a plain DVD-RW will be part of the package, speeded down by software. I am aware of anydvd and nero doing downspeeding but are there any freeware utilities that could be bundled with such a thing for free?

GRAPHICS:
The most likely candidate is a Nvidia 7600GT graphics card with ample video acceleration power, HDMI for protected video and passive cooling. I have found 7600GT with HDMI, and with pasive cooling, but not both at once?

Graphics cards are getting hotter and more power-hungry. The dilemma is that if a purely software-driven video processing achitecture is used (such as ffd-show), then the graphics card does not matter much for videoplayback. If nvidias purevideo or any other "hw-accelerated" decoder/postprocessor is used, the graphics card can have great importance.

Also, some cases may have problems with center-mounted optical drive confliciting with long graphics-cards.

SOUND:
A simple card that allows bit-perfect playback over spdif for external surround-decoder. Those that needs gaming or analog multiple outs should change themselves.

SOFTWARE PACKAGE:
In my view:
Windows XP
Media Portal
All codecs and utilities needed for audio/video playback pre-installed

UPDATES:
The hardware should be able to run Windows Vista if this is wanted as an upgrade. The audio-chain should be (hardware-) upgradable to HD-DVD/BR-standards once those possibilities are better understood on the PC platform (wether it is firewire, HDMI or analog audio outputs).

What do you think?

-k

Stereodude · Post by **Stereodude** » Fri Dec 08, 2006 1:47 pm

I'd replace that power supply with a Corsair HX520w.

I'd also suggest 1gig of RAM.

Also, take a look at this PDF. Since you're interested in HDCP (presumably for HD-DVD and Blu-Ray). One thing of note is that (at least in the US) HDCP 7900GS cards are cheaper than HDCP 7600GT cards.

jaganath · Post by **jaganath** » Fri Dec 08, 2006 1:55 pm

I'd replace that power supply with a Corsair HX520w.

Unnecessary. There is zero probability of this HTPC being asked to drive an 8800GTX or something like that. The low-power S12's are the right blend of value, quality and capacity.

jackylman · Post by **jackylman** » Fri Dec 08, 2006 4:01 pm

CPU:
The intel Core2 in some price/performance variant seems to be the most solid performer at present. I was stunned that Mike chose an AMD x2 for his project?

The X2's still have very good price/performance. They also draw less power at idle and are generally good undervolters.

A simple card that allows bit-perfect playback over spdif for external surround-decoder.

Chaintech AV-710

Stereodude · Post by **Stereodude** » Fri Dec 08, 2006 7:08 pm

jaganath wrote:Unnecessary. There is zero probability of this HTPC being asked to drive an 8800GTX or something like that. The low-power S12's are the right blend of value, quality and capacity.

However, the HX520w is a much quieter supply between above 150W. Those power levels could be seen playing back HD-DVD and Blu-Ray content with that system. Look at this article