About to buy this lot. What do you think?

Got a shopping cart of parts that you want opinions on? Get advice from members on your planned or existing system (or upgrade).

Moderators: NeilBlanchard, Ralf Hutter, sthayashi, Lawrence Lee

Post Reply
discopanda
Posts: 15
Joined: Wed Aug 20, 2008 2:52 am
Location: Scotland

About to buy this lot. What do you think?

Post by discopanda » Wed Aug 20, 2008 3:06 am

Hi guys,

New to this and after weeks of research am about to pull the trigger on this lot for my HTPC. It must be quiet!

Zalman 160+ case
Asus P5Q Deluxe
4GB RAM (2x2GB)
Intel Q9550 or Q9450 with scythe mini-ninja
2x WD7500AAKS hard disks
Nvidia 8600GTS with Zalman vf-900 cooler
Auzentech sound card of some description - maybe the new HDMI one out next month
Hauppauge HVR-4000 or Blackgold 6 in 1 card
LG GGC-H20L Blu-Ray/HD-DVD drive

Any comments? Any glaring problems? I've posted in the 'power supply' section for advice on that so if anyone is up to date on quiet ones please post there too.

Thanks in advance for any help.

FartingBob
Patron of SPCR
Posts: 744
Joined: Tue Mar 04, 2008 4:05 am
Location: London
Contact:

Post by FartingBob » Wed Aug 20, 2008 4:20 am

Is it just for HTPC and light work? If so you have gone majorly overkill. But then if your gaming on it, your GPU seems underpowered, so im trying to work out what you intend to use this for...

discopanda
Posts: 15
Joined: Wed Aug 20, 2008 2:52 am
Location: Scotland

Post by discopanda » Wed Aug 20, 2008 5:14 am

No gaming. Ever. Its for home theatre, HD video editing, HD playback and recording (maybe record one, watch one or record two and edit something else). Whilst doing that I may be streaming video/audio elsewhere.

4GB purely because its cheap and Vista is hungry.

The 8600gts as its considered one of the best for handling HD video. Plus its pretty cheap now.

I chose that board to keep me up to date for the future to a degree and the arrangement of the PCI-e slots makes sense for what I'll be putting in there.

Overkill on the processor? I agree, but I figured I'd buy what I could afford. What would you recommend?

jhhoffma
Posts: 2131
Joined: Mon Apr 25, 2005 10:00 am
Location: Grand Rapids, MI

Post by jhhoffma » Wed Aug 20, 2008 6:25 am

A quad is overkill for just about anything...a higher clocked Core2 Duo will give you better return for your money and power. If you ever record two channels, while watching another, and edit something, along with streaming somewhere else, it's not an HTPC anymore, it's a media server...and a whole 'nother hill of beans.

4GB is fine if you run x64, otherwise you'll just get 3.5GB, but like you said, it's cheap.

If your using the GPU for playback (limits your media player and front-end options), then CPU speed is almost irrelevant. If you're going to be CPU bound, a lower powered, more capable card might be better.

discopanda
Posts: 15
Joined: Wed Aug 20, 2008 2:52 am
Location: Scotland

Post by discopanda » Wed Aug 20, 2008 7:04 am

jhhoffma wrote:If your using the GPU for playback (limits your media player and front-end options)...
Can you clarify what you mean by this?

jhhoffma wrote:If you're going to be CPU bound, a lower powered, more capable card might be better.
Can you define 'more capable'? What would you recommend?

tuz
Posts: 24
Joined: Tue Aug 12, 2008 4:51 am
Location: Melbourne

Post by tuz » Wed Aug 20, 2008 7:24 am

Well, with hardware decoding on your GPU you have to be running certain media player apps that are set up to recognize that a) you have a GPU that can decode the video stream and b) you have the necessary filter (i.e. the codec) installed and it knows to use the filter for hardware acceleration instead of software acceleration (CPU) - not every media player can do that. Media Player Classic HomeCinema can be set up for hardware acceleration, at least for quicktime files, I haven't gone any further with it though or other apps though.

Others might know better but I was under the impression a faster C2D would be able to decode HD streams fine without GPU acceleration anyway, though that'd be a lot tougher if the same computer is streaming/recording/whatever at the same time.

Elvellon
Posts: 104
Joined: Sun Dec 09, 2007 1:19 am
Location: Moscow, Russia
Contact:

Post by Elvellon » Wed Aug 20, 2008 7:27 am

For GPU acceleration to work, you need specific codecs/players. For instance, I don't know how I managed to set things up to decode H264 in MKV container on the GPU after the Nth try, or is it a trick of Task Manager :).
That all applies to "custom" stuff like rips and trailers from the Internet encoded with hell knows what settings. AFAIK, Blu-Ray movies work fine.

protellect
Posts: 312
Joined: Tue Jul 24, 2007 3:57 pm
Location: Minnesota

Post by protellect » Wed Aug 20, 2008 7:38 am

jhhoffma wrote:A quad is overkill for just about anything...a higher clocked Core2 Duo will give you better return for your money and power. If you ever record two channels, while watching another, and edit something, along with streaming somewhere else, it's not an HTPC anymore, it's a media server...and a whole 'nother hill of beans..
I'd argue that a quad-core isn't overkill for encoding DVD's. It goes twice as fast =)

discopanda
Posts: 15
Joined: Wed Aug 20, 2008 2:52 am
Location: Scotland

Post by discopanda » Wed Aug 20, 2008 7:49 am

Excellent info guys.

Assuming I want the best of both worlds then with hardware encoding by the 8600GTS but having the CPU potentially able to handle it too in case I have strangely encoded media that the 8600 doesn't know what to do with, is there a C2D speed I shouldn't go below? what's 'the' C2D to get?

I have the option of getting this Q9550 for much cheapness but if I can get more oomf from a C2D then so be it.

i.e. for a HTPC assuming I'm recording 2 HD channels and playing back a third simultaneously, would an E8600 outperform the Q9550?

protellect
Posts: 312
Joined: Tue Jul 24, 2007 3:57 pm
Location: Minnesota

Post by protellect » Wed Aug 20, 2008 7:57 am

discopanda wrote:Excellent info guys.

Assuming I want the best of both worlds then with hardware encoding by the 8600GTS but having the CPU potentially able to handle it too in case I have strangely encoded media that the 8600 doesn't know what to do with, is there a C2D speed I shouldn't go below? what's 'the' C2D to get?

I have the option of getting this Q9550 for much cheapness but if I can get more oomf from a C2D then so be it.

i.e. for a HTPC assuming I'm recording 2 HD channels and playing back a third simultaneously, would an E8600 outperform the Q9550?
It depends how good at multi-threading your encoder is. Core for core, an E8X00 is as fast as a Q9XXX core, but say 2x2.83ghz cores would outperform a single 3.33ghz core by a lot, at least for encoding, assuming your encoder can utilize multiple cores.

Speaking from personal experience, I use handbrake to do DVD's a lot, and it fully utilizes all 4 cores, and going from a X2 5600 amd chip to a Q9450, it was a tremendous speed increase, more than twice as fast.

It makes me want a skulltrail system. har.

In your case, I'm speculating each HD stream getting its own core, the playback getting the third core, and everything else on the 4th core.

discopanda
Posts: 15
Joined: Wed Aug 20, 2008 2:52 am
Location: Scotland

Post by discopanda » Wed Aug 20, 2008 8:04 am

See that was my thinking behind getting the Q9550. Yes its overkill for 10% of the time but when I will need to do a few things at once it will cope better than a higher C2D.

Its pretty much going to do all I will ever need it to do and many programs now do take advantage of multiple cores. I guess I am just looking for someone to say "its overkill but it will do all you need" :roll: :D
Last edited by discopanda on Wed Aug 20, 2008 8:04 am, edited 1 time in total.

thejamppa
Posts: 3142
Joined: Mon Feb 26, 2007 9:20 am
Location: Missing in Finnish wilderness, howling to moon with wolf brethren and walking with brother bears
Contact:

Post by thejamppa » Wed Aug 20, 2008 8:04 am

For HTPC there is always AMD X2 4850e + 780G motherboard which is sufficient combo as it is and many times cheaper than Intel combinations. It would be sufficient for anykinds of things except heavy gaming.

P5Q + Quad or E8x00 sounds more like game rig than HTPC... For intel set-up cheap P35 or G33/G35 board with E7200 or 7300 with Asus Passive GF 9600 GT would be quite killer and it would allow even medium level gaming.

protellect
Posts: 312
Joined: Tue Jul 24, 2007 3:57 pm
Location: Minnesota

Post by protellect » Wed Aug 20, 2008 8:08 am

discopanda wrote:See that was my thinking behind getting the Q9550. Yes its overkill for 10% of the time but when I will need to do a few things at once it will cope better than a higher C2D.

Its pretty much going to do all I will ever need it to do and many programs now do take advantage of multiple cores. I guess I am just looking for someone to say "its overkill but it will do all you need" :roll: :D
It's totally overkill for what you need, but should destroy anything that comes at it. I do playback with an AMD X2 3600 with onboard graphics. I don't think it would do blue-ray playback, but I have a PS3 anyways for that.

bonestonne
Posts: 1839
Joined: Mon Feb 05, 2007 2:10 pm
Location: Northern New Jersey
Contact:

Post by bonestonne » Wed Aug 20, 2008 2:02 pm

http://www.electronista.com/articles/08 ... 86.faulty/

you may want to think again about using the 8600 for such high expectations, with the playback and recording on and off, you may heat cycle faster/more than other desktops. while its not a burning issue, maybe take into consideration either better cooling (Accelero S1?) or a different core.

as for the CPU, maybe look into AMD, the chipsets are great, and getting better with greater onboard support (not to mention it may even be a little cheaper).

discopanda
Posts: 15
Joined: Wed Aug 20, 2008 2:52 am
Location: Scotland

Post by discopanda » Fri Aug 22, 2008 8:01 am

Unfortunately there's no way the accelero will fit in my Zalman 160+ case.

nici
Posts: 3011
Joined: Thu Dec 16, 2004 8:49 am
Location: Suomi Finland Perkele

Post by nici » Fri Aug 22, 2008 9:38 am

It should fit with some creative bending... :wink: Though im inclined to go for the HR03GT for my own HTPC with a HD4870. The thermalright TRAD would be perfect if it was available. Or i might go for the much cheaper but similar GFXChilla.

Post Reply