Proposed HTPC Build

stuart.cookson · Post by **stuart.cookson** » Fri Jan 05, 2007 6:40 am

Going to move into the current age and build myself a HTPC or have one built. I have largely finalised my specs. Can anyone please tell me if I have overlooked anything or if I have specced any non-compatible components...

Case: Antec Fusion - Â£120
(PSU: Antec Neo HE550 - Â£70)*
MB: Asus P5V-VM - Â£50
CPU: Intel Core2Duo E6300 - Â£125
CPU Cooler: Silverstone NT01 v2.0 - Â£25
RAM: DDR2 533 (1x 1GB sticks) - Â£70
G/Card: Asus EN7600GS Top Silent/HTD/512M - Â£85
HDD: Samsung Spinpoint 500GB - Â£120
TV Card: Hauppauge WinTV-NOVA-T-500 - Â£55
(Sound Card: M-Audio Revolution 5.1 - Â£45)*
OS: Windows MCE2005 (Vista Upgrade when avail) - Â£80
Keybd/ Mouse: Microsoft Media Centre Wireless Keyboard - Â£30
Remote: Microsort Media Cantre Remote - Â£20

Total component cost - Â£780 *(Â£895 with optional items)

At the moment my TV is nothing special. My plan would be to add another 1GB RAM to this and replace the Graphics Card with a HDCP one at the same time as upgrading my TV. I'd like to wait until 1080i LCDs are more sensible prices before buying a new TV, which is why I'm thinking of sorting the rest of the system now.

I'll be outputting the audio from this system through a Denon AVR 1803 Amp to my Bose AM6 speaker system.

Thoughts/ advice/ crit would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks, Stuart

derekva · Post by **derekva** » Fri Jan 05, 2007 10:28 am

You'd get better results with an ATI Theater 550 chipset-based tuner card (unfortunately, it is not dual-tuner like the Hauppauge). The image quality differences between the Hauppauge and the Theater 550 are not trivial. The nice thing is that Powercolor makes a PCIe 1x version, so you would have sufficient slots for two tuners (one PCIe, one PCI) and the M-Audio sound card (PCI) since the Asus EN7600GS doesn't take up an additional slot space.

Of course, if you are running digital-out for your sound card to your Denon amp, then there really isn't a reason to have a sound card since you are just doing digital pass-through. Instead, you can just use the SP/DIF header on the system board (of course, Asus doesn't include that on the I/O shield area and you have to burn a PCI slot with a ribbon-cable connected SP/DIF jackpack, damn them). That would save you 45 pounds.

I'd also budget some money to replace the stock TriCool fan(s) in the Fusion with Nexus 120mm fan(s). Not sure if you are using just one or both. But either way, the TriCools are noisy in the NSK2400 and the Fusion is just a pimped NSK2400. Besides, the black & white Nexus fans look much nicer than the standard fans.

Other than that, looks like a killer rig for MCE2005 or Vista media center.

-Derek

stromgald · Post by **stromgald** » Fri Jan 05, 2007 10:36 am

Everything looks good to me except for a few things.

You can downgrade your PSU down to 350W PSU and still be safe enough for a GeForce 8800GTX in the future. Unless you're running SLI or several drives, there's usually no reason to go past 400W. I would stick with the stock PSU and if its too noisy, I'd get a 380W Seasonic S12 or M12.

I'm not too familiar with that CPU cooler, but looking at some pictures online, the design might be good for Fusion/NSK2400 if it fits correctly. I'm also assuming that you'll be running CPU cooler passively and using the case exhaust fans for cooling? Since its all copper its performance should be fine, but due to its design, it will torque the motherboard. I'll be building my own HTPC in a few months, and have a Thermalright SI-128 planned for it.

Also, do you really need a sound card? There's a few mATX motherboards with SP/DIF jack. I don't think the ASUS one you have listed does, but it might be easier to find a motherboard that has it than get a separate sound card.

autoboy · Post by **autoboy** » Fri Jan 05, 2007 11:26 am

Everyone already said what I was going to say but i'll do it anyway. Try the stock power supply first. Try the stock fans first. You might be perfectly happy with them. Some people have a higher noise floor or noise tolerance than others. The tricools work fine if you are putting it in a cabinet or live near a noisy road. The stock psu is a high quality unit and has more than enough juice for anything you can stuff in there...even if you overclock. If it proves too loud for you get a low wattage seasonic, or if you are feeling brave, try a fan swap.

Oh, and that keyboard sucks because the little joystick mouse is a PITA to use. Get one of the gyro units. I wish I had.

Use onboard S/PDIF if possible. Adding a sound card does nothing to an already digital signal. The only time I would recomend a sound card is if you wanted to encode everything to Dolby Digital on the fly with Dolby Digital Live or you used the analog ports. Even then, the HD audio nowdays is decent.

I can't comment on the cpu cooler.

1GB of ram is enough for HTPC duties unless you play games.

You want a 1080p LCD, not a 1080i. 1080i resolutions are for analog CRT TVs. Most LCDs support 1080i but are still only 720p TVs.

chiahaochang · Post by **chiahaochang** » Fri Jan 05, 2007 5:39 pm

As autoboy said, if you're using the digital outs you may as well use the onboard sound/digital out.

That being said, I have a Revo 5.1 which sounds much better than my old SB Audigy 2 when using the analog outs. You may also want to check if m-Audio intends to write Vista drivers for the Revo 5.1, their support for the card seems to be lacking. I'm using my new mobo's onboard sound now due to that reason.

stuart.cookson · Post by **stuart.cookson** » Sat Jan 06, 2007 7:36 am

Thank you for all your comments - most helpful reading.

I was already wondering if I should stick with some stock items first, and considering these comments I think that is the best way forward. Then, as recommended, if it's too noisy I can always upgrade particular components. On that same basis, what's the stock Core2Duo cooler like? Worth trying that first before upgrading it to the Silverstone?

Sound Card or No Sound Card seems to be the question! I have tried to research this subject as much as I can, and I can't find a definitive answer. I have read about other people having issues like you, chiahaochang, where the onboard sound quality isn't great, despite it supposedly just 'passing through'. I don't want to encode to DD on the fly, so the only reason for considering a sound card was to make sure I had good quality where it mattered. Perhaps this is another one to try onboard before possibly upgrading at a later date?

derekva, I wonder if you could clarify something. When you say "...you can just use the SP/DIF header on the system board (of course, Asus doesn't include that on the I/O shield area and you have to burn a PCI slot with a ribbon-cable connected SP/DIF jackpack, damn them)...", I'm afraid I don't follow. Looking at the Asus website, this board does include SP/DIF output: http://uk.asus.com/products4.aspx?l1=3& ... odelmenu=1. Are you saying that you can't actually see the jack from outside the case? Or have I misunderstood?

If this is likely to cause me headaches, can anyone reccommend a good MoBo around the same price range that offers SPDIF out easily?

As far as keyboards are concerned, after some research I might go down the Saturn RF keyboard route - around Â£50. Its trackball sounds like it works much better than Microsoft's nipple.

Lastly, the Blackgold Dual DVB-T card seems to be highly regarded - does anyone know if it's a dual-height card or single? And does anyone have any experience with it?

Sorry for the long post, but thanks for all your advice.

binary visions · Post by **binary visions** » Mon Jan 08, 2007 9:25 am

AFAIK, digital outs or analogue outs, the sound card still makes a difference. Just because it outputs in digital doesn't mean it's not processed before the output, right? Especially by Windows' built-in sound mixer. Whether or it outputs in digital or analogue shouldn't matter.

It's true that some sound cards will do bit-perfect digital output but I don't think that's native to all sound cards.

Again, I might be wrong about this but I did a lot of research on sound cards a year or so ago when deciding on my audio system and found nothing that would indicate that all digital outputs are equally good.

autoboy · Post by **autoboy** » Mon Jan 08, 2007 11:18 am

The digital outs are not touched by the sound cards's D/A converters or processing. s/pdif is a simple digital passthrough. At no time does the sound card quality play a role here.

If you are outputing a digital stream from a non AC3 source then the windows PCM takes over. This is where my knowledge of the system breaks down. There are some settings in the AC3 decoder properties that deal with PCM but I am unsure about how they work or what kind of sound quality you get. I set mine to stereo 32 bit from the default stereo 16bit. I can confirm that my audio sounds very good from the PCM stream on my simple 5 channel AC'97 non-HD onboard soundcard and my Axiom Audio M60v2 towers and B&W 12" sub and Sony receiver. Full DTS or Dolby Digital sound awesome. Using the analog output the sound is strained, lacks clarity, and lacks full dynamic range.

stuart.cookson · Post by **stuart.cookson** » Tue Jan 09, 2007 5:57 am

So to clarify about the digital outs:

1. If I'm playing a DVD with Dolby Digital sound straight from the DVD drive, or from the hard drive, it should pass the digital signal straight out of the digital output, whether onboard or on the sound card?

2. What then if i'm watching TV? Or listening to music? I'm not bothered about these things being encoded into Dolby Digital - as long as they sound ok. I presume no matter where the sound is coming from (DVD drive, TV card, etc) it will all come through the same output anyway?

jimmyfergus · Post by **jimmyfergus** » Tue Jan 09, 2007 7:33 am

A soundcard may make a difference. From browsing around audio forums over the years, it's pretty clear that the sound card (integrated or otherwise), which passes bit-perfect output is the exception rather than the rule. There are lots of guys out there looping audio through systems and doing bit comparisons.

e.g. lots of cards always resample everything to a particular bitrate internally (e.g. 48k) before outputting it again at whatever bitrate selected.

I know our first assumption is that there's no reason for the binary data to be modified, but it often is - quite frequently with measurable and audible artifacts introduced. It's a bit like the introduction of CDs, when we were told it was digital, perfect, and unchanging - that turned out to be a crock, most especially because CD audio doesn't have foolproof error correction, nor does S/PDIF.

Whether this matters to you or not, or is audible (often 2 diffferent things

), is another matter.

binary visions · Post by **binary visions** » Tue Jan 09, 2007 2:22 pm

In theory, and probably in practice, Dolby Digital sound should indeed remain untouched through from the source through the digital output.

However, that's only good if the only thing you're using your sound card for is Dolby Digital sound. The minute you're using S/PDIF as a stereo output and not a Dolby Digital pass-through, the rule that your sound is untouched gets tossed. At that point, some cards process it and some cards don't.

stuart.cookson · Post by **stuart.cookson** » Tue Jan 09, 2007 3:26 pm

binary visions wrote:...The minute you're using S/PDIF as a stereo output and not a Dolby Digital pass-through, the rule that your sound is untouched gets tossed. At that point, some cards process it and some cards don't...

And am I right in thinking that's exactly what i'll be doing when I try to play music/ tv/ etc through the S/PDIF output? even if I don't necessarily want it to try and convert the signal to 5.1?

If this is so, considering that around 75% of the time this HTPC will be playing tv, I guess something that will process a stereo signal and spit out a good quality sound through S/PDIF is important.

This leads me back to thinking the sound card may be a good idea after all. Unless i'm still not getting it?!

autoboy · Post by **autoboy** » Tue Jan 09, 2007 6:06 pm

Are you sure those guys who are doing the bit comparisons have their software set up right. There are a lot of options in the AC3 configuration that would force a resample to 48khz or something. It is my asumption that windows software called PCM handles the stereo output over s/pidf. All I can tell you is that mine sounds great using the onboard audio on my Biostar Tforce S754 board.

binary visions · Post by **binary visions** » Wed Jan 10, 2007 8:13 am

stuart.cookson wrote:
binary visions wrote:...The minute you're using S/PDIF as a stereo output and not a Dolby Digital pass-through, the rule that your sound is untouched gets tossed. At that point, some cards process it and some cards don't...
And am I right in thinking that's exactly what i'll be doing when I try to play music/ tv/ etc through the S/PDIF output? even if I don't necessarily want it to try and convert the signal to 5.1?

Yes, in that case your sound card (depending on the card, of course) may be processing and/or resampling your sound.

I have an M-Audio Transit external USB card that does S/PDIF in and out and does bit-perfect output. It's about $80 which isn't all that cheap but on the other hand, I wanted something external so I could use it on my laptop or whatever.

PPGMD · Post by **PPGMD** » Sun Jan 21, 2007 7:50 pm

What exactly are you looking for from your audio, both the Transit and the M-audio PCI cards allow DTS/AC-3 pass through. They both also allow bit perfect audio from ASIO sources.

One problem with the Transit is that it requires you to switch on the driver control panel one mode to another. I am hoping the newer PCI cards because they are full sound cards don't require that driver switch. I will probably find out if this is true in a day or two.

Proposed HTPC Build

Proposed HTPC Build

You need a better tuner...