You could play even more games with a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse and dongle.
Still happy with my AMD E350-based HTPC built in 2011. It doesn’t have the grunt of an i3 but as I don’t game on it I can’t say I’ve ever* needed any more power.
With a modest 60GB SSD and 5TB of network storage it’s all the HTPC I reckon I’ll ever need. Completely silent and it only draws something like 18W at idle.
I may look into that picoPSU you’ve used though, a bit smaller than the one I have and I’d wager more efficient too.
*Only fly in the ointment is the fact that Netflix’ Silverlight player uses codecs that cannot be accelerated by the AMD Fusion platform, meaning some videos lag horribly in HD. All this will hopefully be solved when Silverlight eventually dies a horrible, painful death and Netflix migrates to something more becoming.
Color me intrigued. What specifically do you use your HTPC for?
The obvious (perfectly reasonable) cases are BitTorrent, web version of Hulu, Pandora, Spotify, YouTube, and home video. Along with the usual things supported by lesser boxen (Netflix, iTunes, Amazon Prime). Are there others? Sorry if you covered this in a prior post, I checked the first one and you didn’t mention the impetus.
Dmitry Pashkevich: I agree about the desired footprint. I use a Roku for most of my home media, including watching video off of a Plex server.
For my gaming computer (which also handles video I can’t see on the Roku, like HBO Go), I’ve set up a 6-core, 2-GPU powerhouse in a server rack in my basement, so there’s no noise when using it in the living room. It turns on using Wake on Lan and peripherals are connected via wall-mounted USB ports on either side of the couch. There’s a wireless keyboard/airmouse combo for navigating menus and for point-and-click games, and I can put in a mouse and keyboard for everything else.
It is always nice to read about your HTPC hardware setup. I would love to read about you HTPC software setup. What Media Center are you using on HTPC? Do you have multiple clients? How do you distribute the audio/video content across your clients? What do you use on your mobile devices to access your content? What media formats works best across your devices (MKV, MP4, AVI)? Do you manage to have Live TV embedded in your HTPC?
Do you achieve a simple setup so that babysitter and mother-in-law can use it?
@Nrichardson, the difference between the 4130 and the T model is a 500 MHz speed reduction (and a 150Mhz GPU speed reduction) offset by a TDP drop from 54 to 35W.
Add to my build above another $50 for some quieter fans. The ones in the Lian Li case aren’t Xbox loud, but not quiet enough. Also, blu-ray software since the drive didn’t come w/any…
You reminded me it’s time to upgrade my Mini-ITX box too…
All I use my HTPC for is playing recorded over the air recordings from my basement server. Things that can be done well enough with a 1W Raspberry Pi. Total price around $50 if you have peripherals already sitting around.
What do you guys think a the intel NUC as an HTPC?
Hello,
I am wondering how 90W picoPSu can handle this system with 3 drives ?
I am planning to build similiar configuration, I have choosen Antec ISK case as well, because of its dimmensions and the available space in my room. I was however considering to use the included PSU (150W), after I calculated the power consumption with some online calc.
Hi, looks great… Can’t wait to use your input for my next htpc build.
Upgrading from core2Qaud to the new 4th gen i3 + passive water cooling with something like this:
http://assets.overclock.net.s3.amazonaws.com/d/db/dbd29487_vbattach34133.jpeg
How confident do you feel about HD 4k support once that format becomes readily available?
Do you expect your build to be “future proof” enough to support that?
Nice article, thank you for writing.
Do you have suggestions about wi-fi connectivity for this box?
I’m really curious about the software side of things too. I went back and forth with a few ‘media center’ software, but I still find that at the end of the day, I still end up going back to MPH-HC just like I would on a desktop. Media center software usually doesn’t let me change subs or languages as easily, or have lots of overhead with their fancy indexing and trying to
One can’t help but wonder, why bother. When Apple TV is $100 and movie rentals are $5, why would one want to put a giant ugly box under their TV and upgrade it every two years (and install software updates every two weeks, too). Don’t you have anything better to do with your time, Jeff?
Prompted by this article, I’ve just asked on Arqade (gaming.stackexchange) how people deal with multiple users of a gaming HTPC, specifically using Steam. This seems like something people who build this box for use with Steam might want to know the answer to.
I’m looking at building a similar project to this one, however, I’m looking to cut some costs. Would 4GB of RAM be enough instead of 8GB? I don’t plan on running games.
Does your HTPC support 3D Blue Ray (running from an ISO file)? Is the Pico-PSU powerful enough for this?
Do you run Windows on Linux on this box?
Thanks!
NAS for media storage.
RaspberryPi for streaming off the NAS.
Plug the Pi in the back of the NAS and it boots whenever the NAS powers on.
Add the Yatse Android app for remote control, call notifications, texts on screen and play pausing during calls, and you have a slick media center that is minimal on hardware and noise, but maxed on storage and functionality.
(And if you’re reading CodingHorror, you’re likely not one of the “I can’t set my stuff up!” peeps.)
I am starting to research to build my own HTPC. I want to run Windows 8.1 and XBMC, but I can’t imagine this little box runs it perfectly. Can you confirm it does, with no lag, hesitation, everything running super fast?
I am looking at the Silverstone SG05, but if I could squeeze real power into a box this size, that would be fantastic.
Leaving some notes here for the next build, as I move from Haswell to Skylake:
Looks like what I want is the Core i3-6100T:
- Same 35w TDP
- Much better integrated graphics
- ~15% better performance overall
HD 4400 on Haswell
HD 530 on Skylake
Roughly 2x faster graphics for sure.
edit: order placed, one vendor on Amazon says they’ll have it in stock in late November. We’ll see… and yes, it is built! Short blog post to come.
Here is a funny comparison of very low end CPUs, including the i3-6100 and the i3-4130 (not the low power T variants, though) paired with a high end video card. In many cases the difference in game perf is tiny.
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