Ideal HTPC

[Alan]

Claritas 260M aluminium case.
Aopen i915 mATX motherboard for Pentium 'M' CPUs with 533MHz fsb
2GHz Pentium 'M' with 533MHZ fsb (due in July)
1Gb OCZ RAM
Ati X850XT with silencing solution.
2 x Samsung 160Gb SATA Drives
Pioneer 109 DVD Writer.
TV/Recording card of your choice.
On the basis that quiet is more important than out and out speed, discuss....

[Sparky__H]

I would personally separate the tasks of a powerful home HTPC system. Use the HTPC for capture and playback, fileserver for end data file storage and then using a duel Xeon system to convert the video format into something useable.

On the basis that quiet is more important than out and out speed, discuss....

Then what’s the point of a £300 graphics card lol

[Alan]

Ati X850XT with silencing solution.

I had an arctic silencer on a 9800 Pro previously and it was great - really quiet.

I would also consider the card one step slower than the XT.

[Sparky__H]

Would defiantly make a top end rig HTPC rig although more budget parts could offer more affordable performance.

Could try a completely silent cpu cooling by gutting something like an Asus Star Ice and connecting the heatpipes to a huge passive heat sink on the top. Although in the past such systems have been heavily affected by room temperatures so would be hard to maintain a stable system I think.

Heat, the unholy enemy of the HTPC owner :(

p.s. The AIW 9600 are ment to be extreamly good in a HTPC system.

[conan]

I think that the spec is a bit over the top Alan for an HTPC unless you have other things planned for it? If its just TV capture/playback and watching movies & playing MP3's then you don't need a CPU or VGA card that powerful.

I've only just upgraded my Epia to a new rig (HTPC in my sig) and to be honest its a bit of overkill. I used those components because I already had them. The MX440 passive is plenty for playback and general use, the most strenous thing it does is play MAMe emulations. The CPU is overkill but I had it and it runs very cool so very quiet with my Zalman CU7000 at its lowest fan speed.

I would suggest saving £200 on the VGA card, the CPU I can understand because it will run cool and quiet but a 1600 would be plenty powerful enough and considerably cheaper?

The case is personal preference so each to their own, but the Silverstone LC02 I have is a great size (I wanted something small on height),that can take a full size ATX board. The drawback (if any) is that it needs to use a laptop optical drive.

[Sparky__H]

Conan your HTPC system is near identical to what I’m planning, The A7N8X makes a cracking choice due to the passive heat sink.

I plan to have 1GB of 3200 and a WD 250 caviar and a ATI AIW 9600 in mine, still deciding on a case, but that will do anything i could possibly ask of it. :)

[flid]

depends completely what software you're going to be running on it. For mythtv running on linux it's complete overkill and a waste of money. For MCE on windows you'd benefit from a higher spec, but why bother with an expensive gfx card? I assume you're not using an htpc for games, so all you need is something that can play divx, mpeg4 and mpeg2 (dvb/dvd). I've got a geforce2 mx on mine, it works perfect, is passive and cost under a tenner on ebay (mine was free).

I think you need to really analyse what you're going to be running on it now and in the near future. Lots of memory (over 512mb) and CPU (over 1Ghz) are only needed if you're either running windows or will be transcoding video/ripping dvd on it. Aswell as more expense, more CPU mhz generally means more heat, and most htpc users want their rigs to be as silent as possible. I run my duron at about 70degrees, but have no fans in the entire system above 20db. Heat is a real issue if you're going to be running an HTPC in a cabinet under a TV and creating unnessecary heat by having over powered components is a pitfall not a feature.

[conan]

Sparky_H, A word of advice if your using the same mobo, you'll need a flexible PCI riser for the TV card due to the positioning of the PCI Slots when the mobo is in place. Even then it was a tight squeeze against the AGP riser but fit in OK.

[Alan]

Thanks for your comments gents but I missed out an important "but". It won't be part of a fancy theatre system but will still be expected to do work and the occasional game - hence the card. If the Aopen board had had an agp slot I would have kept my passive Sapphire 9600XT as it does for me, gaming wise. Burt since I will have to buy a new card anyway - might as well get a good one.