My first HTPC - opinions and suggestion are welcome

igor123 · Post by **igor123** » Sat Dec 08, 2007 5:29 am

Hi,
This is my first HTPC build. It will be used for playing HD mkv's, music and browsing family photos, connected to LCD TV. Small size, silence and low power consumption are a requirement. So I have come up with following specs:

Case: Lian-Li PC-C35 (with 300W PSU included) (http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/lian_li35/)
MB: Gigabyte GA-G33M-S2H (http://tw.giga-byte.com/Products/Mother ... uctID=2600)
CPU: Intel E4500
Mem: 2GB of any DDR2 800MHz
HDD: 160GB HITACHI Travelstar 5K160 notebook drive (or perhaps 120GB cheaper version...)
Cooling: Thermaltake Golden Orb II
Optical drive: Any DVD RW will do for now
Remote: imon or microsoft mce?
Software: No clue. XP MCE, Vista MC or MediaPortal maybe?

As you can see, there is no separate graphic card - the beautiful Lian Li case is not expandable with additional PCI-E or PCI cards

But I can live with that. There is no room for several hard discs, either. This shouldn't be a problem since most of my media is on separate machine in another room. I'll just hook HTPC in my LAN and it is good to go.

E4500 combined with CoreAVC should play even 1080p mkv's without problem, I hope.
What about memory modules? I don't plan on overclocking, so I guess any DDR2 should be ok?

So, what do you guys think?

mimwdv · Post by **mimwdv** » Sat Dec 08, 2007 10:40 pm

Think hard whether you want to change out that Mobo. I've got the S2H, and used it in my HTPC for a while. But its onboard video driver is hopeless, you've got almost no scope for adjusting anything. I ended up putting it in my server, and buying the ASUS 2A-VM HDMI for my HTPC instead - works much better.

igor123 · Post by **igor123** » Sun Dec 09, 2007 12:46 am

Thanks for suggestion.
But I'd prefer intel's processor, so I choose the board accordingly. Please tell me, this board you're suggesting, has integrated ATI Radeon X1250-based graphics. Is this the main reason you find this mobo better? If so, there are some boards with the same graphics for intel platform too that I can look into.

The main reason I went with Intel's GMA is that they apparently CAN be made (although it's not easy) to support custom resolutions (1360x768 for example), but I wasn't sure if Radeon X1250 can do the same (using powerstrip, I guess)?

Regards.

mimwdv · Post by **mimwdv** » Sun Dec 09, 2007 1:05 am

I didn't know that you could manipulate the intel GMA to do other resolutions. If you can, maybe it'll do what you need it to or else, as you said, look for an intel board thats got a more flexible graphics chip. I might add - the intel chip had no problem outputting 1920x1080p - I just couldn't adjust it for overscan on my TV.

For me, I decided I wanted the better graphics in my HTPC, and the better processor in my server (which does all the recording and processing of video) - so it was an easy decision to swap the two over.