View Full Version : My New HTPC Build
Decided to build myself a dedicated HTPC as my main rig has been sat in my lounge since I bought this house and moved in last August... It's hard to use properly as I'm sat on a dining room chair crouched over a little cabinet it's sitting on... Not good for my back, and my office is all set up.. just needs a PC in it. :)
I have a very limited budget, so I decided to reuse some old parts from old PC's and upgrade as I go.
Went for the following in the end, don't need the latest and greatest as it's never gonna be taxed to it's full potential.
Item: ASUS M4A78-VM 780G Socket AM2+ HDMI DVI VGA 8 Channel Audio MATX Motherboard
Qty: 1 Cost: 40.46
Item: Extra Value 2GB Kit (2x1GB) DDR2 800MHz PC2-6400 240pin Extra Value Ram
Qty: 1 Cost: 28.36
Item: AMD Athlon II X2 250 Socket AM3 3.0GHz 2MB L2 Cache Retail Box Processor
Qty: 1 Cost: 42.49
Inc VAT and free delivery, £130.81.
I salvaged a 350w PSU from an old P4 based tower, decided to use 2x 160 Hitachi SATA drives in raid for the OS and reuse the DVDRW I had spare... and it's all going in an iCute iBox.
Parts arrived today, so I started building and immediately ran into a few issues.
The PSU is a 20+4 pin, and the ASUS board is 24+4... wasn't that bothered as I knew the Asus could still run on the 20+4 pin... but didn't realise that's only if the 12+ rail can supply 15A... and my PSU is rated at 13A.
So it looks like my plan to keep costs down backfired, and I'll need a new PSU too. Just about to order one of the Be Quiet 350W ones, they're smaller and virtually silent... sadly Aria don't sell them, in fact they don't seem to sell much at all for small cases.
Will take some pics later and upload them.
One question... the iCute iBox has a display on the front, and a temp sensor... not quite sure where I should place the sensor. Obviously it can't go underneath the heatsink as it would interfere with cooling... where else would be a good place for it?
On the back of the board? Aslong as it's somewhere inside the case near the CPU it should measure ambient temps which is the only issue tbh the stock cooler will have no problem keeping the CPU cool at < 30C
wonderlust
04-02-10, 16:45
I have built a similar, if slightly inferior set up for a friend.
M3n78-EM board
2x2Gb Pc6400
Athlon II x2 240
Runs fine as a Win7 HTPC.
As for the PSU I assum you are saying that it doesn't have an P4 12v connector?
If it has then you should be able to get away with running it on the 20 pin connector in the 24 pin socket, whilst waiting for your new PSU to arrive.
As for the sensor I soul place it inbetween the fins of the CPU cooler near the base.
i would try and stick it in the nb heatsink, hte cpu will have a sensor as will the mb but the chances are the nb wont.
The Asus manual states that you can run it on a 20 pin connector providing the PSU can supply 15A on the +12v rail... the PSU I have is rated at 13A on the +12v rail. So I am going to err on the side of caution and assume it's not powerful enough.
The PSU came from my brothers old tower, was powering a 3ghz P4 until a few capacitors started leaking on the MB.
The Be Quiet one looks rather nice, and has gotten good reviews... it's more than powerful enough and is supposed to be virtually silent.
Here's a few pics... not good quality, low light levels that meant a flash was too overpowering, and even adjusting the ISO level on my camera leaves it grainy with no flash.
That case is gonna be a bugger to keep clean, shows up every finger print and spec of dust on the glossy front.
Took the advice on the sensor, put a little bit of thermal paste on it and slid it into the heatsink fins as near to the base as I could. The thermal paste was to help it stick to the fins and should give better thermal conductivity and protect the sensor from direct airflow of the fan.
http://i132.photobucket.com/albums/q6/HecklerUK/Misc/HTPC%20Build/IMG_0004.jpg
http://i132.photobucket.com/albums/q6/HecklerUK/Misc/HTPC%20Build/IMG_0005.jpg
http://i132.photobucket.com/albums/q6/HecklerUK/Misc/HTPC%20Build/IMG_0009.jpg
http://i132.photobucket.com/albums/q6/HecklerUK/Misc/HTPC%20Build/IMG_0010.jpg
http://i132.photobucket.com/albums/q6/HecklerUK/Misc/HTPC%20Build/IMG_0013.jpg
It's a budget build, nothing fancy on this one... It's there to do a simple job... Will be running Win 7 64bit (premium), kinda looking forward to playing with the Win 7 version of media centre as I'm currently using Vista 64 (Premium)... Not looking forward to the days of tweaking MC to get it working as I have my other one. Gotta setup media browser, customise the interface, get shoutcast and tunerfreemce sorted... and then look at other mods available for 7MC that aren't for VMC.
wonderlust
04-02-10, 17:33
depending what you are planning to play back you may wish to look at win 7 x32!
Not everything plays back so nice on x64.
http://thegreenbutton.com/ good source of info and config info especially the codec bible I posted before.
I've got Vista Media Centre working flawlessly on my current rig, and 7MC is slightly upgraded from that... but from what I have read, the tweaks and upgrades I use on VMC will work on 7MC, and there's more mods and tweaks available too.
Been a member of the green button for a year or two now, also over on the av forums and the Australian media centre community... lots of advice and help about... got me through more than a few hair pulling days. :)
With Vista they defaulted the media player to 32 bit, but forced VMC to use the 64bit version... which causes all sorts of problems when identifying driver/codec issues. Took me a week to discover that and once I forced Vista to use the 64bit WMP, I cold then duplicate the errors in WMP a& VMC and then it was simply a case of the right codecs, a few reg tweaks and then customising VMC to how I like it.
The only major problem I have is that all my dvd rips I did, all my TV shows now look crap on a 40" TV... they looked great on a 19" monitor and a 26" tv... not so on larger screens. So I might have to start ripping stuff at a much higher quality now to get rid of the artefacts from the codec compression.
mkv, h264, divx, xvid, mp4 and so forth... and when I install a tuner card it might get used as a pvr also.
wonderlust
04-02-10, 17:43
Lol I went to MKVs after I got a Full HD TV! 720p looks ok 1080p looks stunning! xvids/Divx can look ok but some look very blocky.
Suggest you upgrade the DVD drive in the near future to aid cable management
Yeah.. even though I own the DVD's, the videos, even the old laserdics.... there's nothing that can match a full 1080 rip of the star wars movies. :)
Batman, Ironman, Transformers... what a difference.
I get all me US tv shows in 720p now as well... could be months, years or never before we get some of them over here.
wonderlust
04-02-10, 19:27
Hmmm Castle comes to mind :D
Castle is one of them... Better of Ted is another.
Then there's shows like 'How I Met Your Mother'... E4 seem to show it randomly, but only earlier seasons... whilst I'm watching season 5 each week...
There must be 20 shows I watch on a regular basis that aren't shown in the UK for weeks/months.. or ever on terrestrial or freeview TV.
And as for those that are... unless you pay sky for their overpriced HD channels you have to watch them in SD... with adverts ruining them because UK ad breaks differ from US ones... and US shows are filmed so that the breaks flow with the action on screen... whilst here in the UK you get an ad break right in the middle of an important scene... and Sky are the worst for that.
Watching live tv just no longer appeals to me... in fact my TV isn't even hooked up to the aerial, just the sky+ box... and I don't often watch that.
wonderlust
04-02-10, 20:29
I grab the BBC stuff in HD to watch on my office TV, as the SKy plus looks poor on it via coax (and no stereo)
Been doing a little testing, and if I half the compression rate on dvd rips... the quality becomes much better... not as much banding of colours on dark scenes and far fewer artefacts.
However... with 47 TV shows stored on my media centre... each with multiple seasons and something like 3800 episodes in total and 470 movies... I'm not about to start redoing the lot of them... I'd be at it for years. :)
looks a neat little system i have a shuttle for my media system very reliable and very fast..
It's the way you can tilt the top half out of the way that appealed to me, makes access to the bottom very easy and it was only £40.
Its a tidy piece of kit but...
Why oh why does everything come with an i at the front?
I know... it bugs the crap out of me... it's as bad as when everything started getting a little LCD screen on it, and it was then called 'digital'.
Ordered a 'Be Quiet' 350w mATX 2.2 PSU today... Really wished I had an extra £100 as aria were doing 2TB drives for £102 inc delivery today.
Have to hope they repeat that, or better it next month.
The new PSU arrived very early this morning, already fitted it and found that one of the 2 160GB drives appears faulty.... Well, they have been sitting in a drawer for the better part of 2yrs and probably got rattled around when I moved.
So bit the bullet and ordered 2x 1.5TB from aria this morning, which coupled with the 1TB drive I am transferring over from my main PC, will give me 4TB in total in the HTPC and still leave me almost 1.75TB in my main PC just in case.
I can then sell my 2 external drives (400GB and 500GB) to recoup some of the extra money I've spent.
Looks like my overdraft is gonna be huge this month... I was hoping to build this for under £200... but added PSU and a couple of HD's to that and it's costing me about £360 instead.
Still need to get a bluetooth keyboard, seen the ones with touch pad for about £35-40 so might get one of those next month.
Hopefully the HD's will be here by tomorrow or Weds and it will be up and running by the end of the week.
I keep looking into making an htpc myself. With all the parts I have all I need is a case. How has the ibox worked out for you, any problems?
It's all up and running now.. just a question of tweaking it.
The iBox is brilliant... the 120mm fan at the front is very, very quiet and so is the 'be quiet' PSU. Whilst there's not a huge amount of room in the case there was still room for 2 1.5TB drives in the HD caddy in the top right, and another 500GB where the floppy would go. It's got two 5 1/4 bays, so you could even add another drive there too if needed... or have a DVDRW & BD Rom.
Oh.. and the iCute logo is simply stuck on and does peel off :)
There are no side vents in the case, just two at the front and several at the rear. My CPU temps (Athlon X2 250 (3ghz) running at stock speeds/v-core on retail heatsink/fan are low 30's and the system temps are a few degrees lower than that. The built in thermo probe in the case for the front display which is inserted at the base of the heatsink with some thermal paste, shows anywhere between 28-32º depending on ambient temps.
All in all.. I'd give it a big thumbs up and for £40 inc free delivery (from maplins), I can't complain. :)
a couple of new pics taken this evening.
http://i132.photobucket.com/albums/q6/HecklerUK/Misc/HTPC%20Build/IMG_0015.jpg
The two fans rotate with activity and the blue swish across the screen does the same. But the screen isn't too bright to be a distractions, the power LED on the other hand is a very, very bright blue and could be.
http://i132.photobucket.com/albums/q6/HecklerUK/Misc/HTPC%20Build/IMG_0020.jpg
Thanks Heckler I might get one myself.
I had a fright today, was running media centre and tweaking media browser, and I looked across at the box and saw the temp was reading 47º... which means the actual temp of the CPU had to be into the low 50's.
Then I realised that it was the first time running media browser and it was building the cache for my entire collection of tv shows and movies... which is around 2.5TB (over 3800 tv's episode alone... and just under 500 movies... Plus there were other programs running in the background cataloguing music libraries and so forth.
Once it settled back down after being taxed hard the temps dropped back down to low 30's again.
But it does indicate that with such a small case, the temps can rise rapidly when you push the CPU to 100% for a period of time.
Now I have to do some testing as my office is set up and the main PC has been moved upstairs... which means it's back on the wireless connection... not sure how that's gonna affect streaming of HD content from the HTPC, and would I be better of duplicating my music onto both machines.
Streaming over wireless can be a bit iffy. From my understanding every 60 seconds most wireless cards perform a background scan which causes a brief lag spike... for real time streaming that can mean a brief disruption.
I got around this by using a modified driver that allowed me to disable the background scan. I had a dwa-547 which uses an atheros chipset. If u have something similar I highly recommend http://forums.laptopvideo2go.com/topic/15297-latest-atheros-modded-driver-for-windws-7-vista-and-winxp/.
I don't know much about audio streaming though, is there a buffer size? If the buffer is large enough it probably wouldn't be a problem.
Yeah, I found this out last night.
Using a Netgear WG111v2 dongle with a Sky router (rebadged Netgear).
Did a little research and found this little program
http://www.martin-majowski.de/wlanoptimizer/index.php?option=com_rokdownloads&view=file&Itemid=2&lang=en
Appears to work quite well so far, and has allowed me to watch a couple of HD tv shows without interruption.
It apparently works with most wireless connections, and might eliminate the need for a modified driver... and it only uses 540k in resources.
I tried an older version of that a while back and found that although the background scan stopped, after a while the connection would just drop.
Glad you found a solution that works for you though. :thumb:
I did wonder if that was the cause of a couple of drops around 1-2am this morning... But I've been getting outages at those times quite a bit recently even when using LAN. I think it's something the ISP are doing, like rebooting servers or working in the exchange... it's 'always' around the same times.
Since I logged back on this morning, I've not had a single drop out. I'm only turning the background scan off so far, not using the 'streaming' setting yet.
Been doing some monitoring with HWmonitor.
Core temps are 29º idle With overall CPU temps at 34º... but this is with the CPU fan set at 48% and the system fan at 58%.
When it goes into power saver mode, the CPU fan drops to 33% and the temps only rise a few degrees... but as this is when the system isn't being used, it's not an issue.
The MD temps and System temp are 45º and 37º although I'm not sure which one is which.
Hard Drive temps are 34º for the 500GB Hitachi and 31º for each of the 1.5TB Samsung Eco drives.
Windows rating is 4.1 (low because of the on board Radeon 3200 graphics)
uTorrent is installed and adding filters as I go to grab certain episodes of US broadcast TV. MCE Tuner Free, Media Browser, Win 7 MC studio, media monkey, metabrowser, firefox... and a few other programs installed... But that's just about it for software... no email, office or anything else.
Has anyone got any recommendations for other 7MC plugins? There isn't a TV/FM card installed yet, waiting for something to come out that will do HD freesat as I've got Sky+ and a quad band receiver with 2 channels unused.
I think I'm also going to run a cat5 cable upstairs... but it means going out of the lounge and up the outside of the house and along the front to the small bedroom (my office). Am thinking of installing a box to plug into rather than having a cable hanging through the wall. The wireless is ok, but It's not fast enough to handle multiple tasks at once... IE transferring data, monitoring files and streaming HD content whilst downloading. :)
The Asus manual states that you can run it on a 20 pin connector providing the PSU can supply 15A on the +12v rail... the PSU I have is rated at 13A on the +12v rail. So I am going to err on the side of caution and assume it's not powerful enough.
The PSU came from my brothers old tower, was powering a 3ghz P4 until a few capacitors started leaking on the MB.
The Be Quiet one looks rather nice, and has gotten good reviews... it's more than powerful enough and is supposed to be virtually silent.
Here's a few pics... not good quality, low light levels that meant a flash was too overpowering, and even adjusting the ISO level on my camera leaves it grainy with no flash.
That case is gonna be a bugger to keep clean, shows up every finger print and spec of dust on the glossy front.
Took the advice on the sensor, put a little bit of thermal paste on it and slid it into the heatsink fins as near to the base as I could. The thermal paste was to help it stick to the fins and should give better thermal conductivity and protect the sensor from direct airflow of the fan.
http://i132.photobucket.com/albums/q6/HecklerUK/Misc/HTPC%20Build/IMG_0004.jpg
http://i132.photobucket.com/albums/q6/HecklerUK/Misc/HTPC%20Build/IMG_0005.jpg
http://i132.photobucket.com/albums/q6/HecklerUK/Misc/HTPC%20Build/IMG_0009.jpg
http://i132.photobucket.com/albums/q6/HecklerUK/Misc/HTPC%20Build/IMG_0010.jpg
http://i132.photobucket.com/albums/q6/HecklerUK/Misc/HTPC%20Build/IMG_0013.jpg
It's a budget build, nothing fancy on this one... It's there to do a simple job... Will be running Win 7 64bit (premium), kinda looking forward to playing with the Win 7 version of media centre as I'm currently using Vista 64 (Premium)... Not looking forward to the days of tweaking MC to get it working as I have my other one. Gotta setup media browser, customise the interface, get shoutcast and tunerfreemce sorted... and then look at other mods available for 7MC that aren't for VMC.
nice looks gd, how much was that case and where from m8
All in all.. I'd give it a big thumbs up and for £40 inc free delivery (from maplins), I can't complain. :)
A few posts back
A few posts back
Thanks, missed tht
2x1GB ram is abit small? I am thinking to go for DDR3 directly as DDR2 price is rising up so quick these days.
wonderlust
15-04-10, 21:57
2x1GB ram is abit small? I am thinking to go for DDR3 directly as DDR2 price is rising up so quick these days.
In my case I have found the drivers for my TV card and the codecs I use work way better in 32bit than they do in 64 bit. So to have more than 2Gb would really be a waste. (
2x1GB ram is abit small? I am thinking to go for DDR3 directly as DDR2 price is rising up so quick these days.
I have 1GB of DDR2 533Mhz in my HTPC and it works perfect.
2x1GB ram is abit small? I am thinking to go for DDR3 directly as DDR2 price is rising up so quick these days.
That's a good upgrade path, logical too. I would go with 2x2GB as a min these days if you are going to keep your computer for a while.
2x1GB ram is abit small? I am thinking to go for DDR3 directly as DDR2 price is rising up so quick these days.
2GB is plenty for a htpc, tis all i use in mine and it runs fine, though i don't use it for anything other than as a media centre.
2GB has been fine so far... it was built to a very tight budget and other things meant that budget had to stretch further and further than I planned. So I had to cut back on the motherboard and CPU I originally wanted to use... and that meant dropping to DDR2 to save money in other areas (MB, CPU and such).
So far... after the bugs were sorted out, the onboard video dumped in favour of a dedicated card and spending more than I planned... it's been working really well.
Handles anything I throw at it, including a 1080p full rip of Avatar and looks spectacular... shame the story is a little weak.
The only issue that remains, is one that's software related rather than hardware... 7MC and the Media Browser plugin has a little bug that can crash it when you ahve some of the media located on another PC over wireless. Can cause a little stutter in playback after about 40-50mins and when the program/movie ends Media Browser has locked up.
Which is why I was posting up about hard wiring the LAN earlier.. That will solve the issue then.
All in all, it's been a very good build and does everything I want and more... constantly tweaking settings and upgrading the visuals in MC... but keeping it clear of 90% of the programs I would normally install on a system.
If I have one gripe, it's that the text is too small to see on some things. Got a bluetooth keyboard and with a 1920x1080 display (currently only a 32") some software simply cannot be adjusted to make the text bigger. 90% of the websites I visit via the HTPC are fine, and I've adjust the default settings in firefox so most are fine... but there's still a few websites that don't like it and other programs have no function for this at all.
Still... if I can afford a new TV in a few months.. a nice 42" should help with that issue. :)
wonderlust
02-05-10, 23:45
have you tried the accessibilty magnifyier?
Nope... is that one of the windows built in disability thingies?
I've tried making the windows fonts larger... but at 150% it screws up some programs where text is hidden on tabs and buttons... so you can't read what they say. 125% is readable but has the same issue on some things.
wonderlust
03-05-10, 13:39
yeah under accessories iirc
Just thought I'd update this as I made a few changes.
Resolved the issue with small text on certain programs that didn't support text scaling, as the current TV is a 32" 1080i/720p I dropped the screen res from 1920x1080 as the hz was too low and causing a slight fuzziness to text in websites and some programs... didn't affect media centre though and that's what it's used for. But dropping the screen res resolved the fuzziness and the text size issue, and I plan to upgrade the TV to an LED 40" 1080p one in the new year anyway.
I upgraded the onboard 3200 graphics card to a dedicated HD4350 with 512mb a few months ago and that helped a lot with processing HD content... eliminated some stuttering I would get within media browser due to shared memory use.
I'm going to upgrade it to 4GB in the near future as I am looking to build a new gaming rig for myself and a new desktop for my folks... they will be fine with 2gb as they just surf and email... so my current system will be part used to build theirs whilst I get the shiny new stuff. :)
I'll probably start a new thread for the new builds in time. :)
Does the motherboard able to decode 1080/Bluray disc or MKV files smoothly?!
No need to buy a dedicated nVidia card?
It was smooth if you played them back via a player like powerdvd, however using media centre with the media browser plugin was rather memory intensive. I have a very large media collection and the image cache alone runs to thousands of images. When you only have 2GB of ram and that's being shared with the onboard, win7 and a rather mem hungry media browser... It could get a little stuttering occasionally.
The onboard 3200 is about as low a card as you'd want, so I replaced it with the Radeon HD4350 as ATI just do that side of things better than anyone else.
Media browser itself has also been improved, I've fed back to the devs on issues and bugs in the past and new versions have resolved some of the issues.
Expanding the ram is simply because I will have 4GB going spare soon and the build for the folks can get along fine with 2GB whilst the HTPC will chug along even better with 4GB. :)
I've also done things like hardwire in some CAT6 and fit a network box next to the phone socket so I can drop the 11g wireless which just can't cope with streaming HD video.
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