And since it is from ATI, hopefully it works better with the 790G chipset’s graphics… perhaps wishful thinking.
I am going to be undertaking an HTPC build based mostly on Jeff’s specs as soon as Uncle Sam gives me my Gubmint tax rebate check. I am going with the AMD Athlon X2 4400+ as opposed to the new 45W Athlon 4050e CPU. Tom’s Hardware recently showed that there isn’t a hell of a lot of difference between the two processors in terms of power used and since it is my understanding that Cool n’ Quiet disables itself as soon as you start overclocking I thought I would go with a 10% faster CPU that costs $11 less.
Thank you for the build list for your HTPC. I’ve wanted to build one for ages, and I’m only now starting to acquire the parts that’ll eventually make their way into a standalone HTPC. For example, I’ve been playing with a Hauppauge 150 tuner card, but it’s full-height. So, if/when I finally build a standalone HTPC, I’d like a full-height case. (I also think it’d make upgrades easier.) Do you have any particular recommendations or would you not even consider full-height? What do you think of the Antec New Solution NSK2480? No eSATA, but it’s got 120mm fans.
Any of the low-power Athlon X2s are fine; I would choose one of the newer models (4850e, 4450e, 4050e) to make sure you get the latest and greatest, but the X2 BE-2350 and X2 BE-2300 are fine as well, they’re 65nm and designated “low power” too.
I have since removed the ATA interface 2.5" HDD, since it was a major performance bottleneck on this board. With the 2.5" SATA drive, the disk score went from 3.8 to 5.3 as a result. (I updated the WEI screenshot in the post.)
The stock AMD OEM fan is fine – the temperature control works a treat. But I couldn’t resist the siren’s call of the Scythe Ninja Mini, which fits by bare millimeters in the case. But the advantage is one less fan, and the CPU runs cooler fanless than it did with the low-RPM fan.
I love Antec cases, and the Fusion is THE case to get for HTPC applications (http://www.antec.com/us/productDetails.php?ProdID=15739). 120mm fans, great looks, VFD, quality power supply. It’s a little more expensive than the Minuet and a bit bigger, but fits right in the AV stack.
I would highly recommend checking out XBMC.org it’s a great media center application that is supported under windows, linux, xbox and in beta for mac currently.
So at this point, you cannot build an HTPC to decrypt digital cable signals, correct?
But is there a way to watch the digital channels (well specifically the HD channels) if you keep the cable box and feed the output of the box into the computer? I guess my main question is can you get true HD onto your HTPC this way?
@Lauren. You can receive unencrypted digital cable into Vista Media Center and other HTPC systems using a SiliconDust tuner for instance. This will also support over the air ATSC HD as well. Premium Cable is heavily DRMd so you have to buy speciffic, blessed Vista systems from HP, Sony and Dell.
It is certainly TrueHD.
“On the software front, as I mentioned at the top, I’ve been a fan of Windows Media Center since the first version; it’s one of the best products to come out of Redmond in years, and the version of Media Center bundled with Vista (well, Ultimate and Home Premium, anyway) is the best yet.”
Jeff, should you include a wireless keyboard and maybe a mouse in your build list? Or is the remote sufficient for everything you need to do with MCE? Do you ever game on your HTPC?
Jeff,
My 2 year old XP MCE is in need of a tune up and I am happy that I found your site. I would like to use your setup, however I have a few questions that do not look like they have been answered thus far.
I have a SDTV. It sounds like you are hooking up your VGA directly to your EDTV. My Tv has only svideo or composite connectors. Any suggestions? VGA to svideo? (I know I should get a new TV, but the upgrade of the Media Center is setting that back a while)
Do you have any recommendations for an OTA HD tuner? Could I store the program to disk and then convert it for play on my SDTV (I usually use DIVX for compression)
@Erds: That’s a good question. Not everyone wants to throw away a perfectly good 36" SD TV when they build an HTPC (including me). I was planning to buy a tuner card that included some kind of TV-out port. Since it’s SDTV, S-Video or even composite will be good enough. The Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-500 MCE is a good example.
So I did this, and have been using my new HTPC for a few days. One thing is driving me crazy. Hopefully I’m not too late to the party to get a reply.
I opted to use VGA to connect to my TV since the HDMI ports on the TV were already in use. I want to output 720p WXGA, which should be 1366x768. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WXGA
However, the onboard ATI drivers only let me output 1280x768, which leaves vertical bars on both sides.
Any idea if I can force the ATI to pick a 1366x768 resolution?
Other than that, great post, and thanks for inspiring me. This is now the second PC I’ve built thanks to Coding Horror (I also shamelessly stole the Hanselrig).
Yes, I have done this – with a high quality SD set and some intense TV-out video driver setting tweaks it is possible to make 800x600 look … uh … tolerable is maybe the best word. It’s not going to look very good even when compared to my outdated EDTV set.
So yes, it is possible to use a SDTV set in a HTPC build, but it’s not going to look or feel very good. For video playback and the media center UI it’ll probably be fine. But being able to use Windows / web browser at usable resolutions is one of the biggest reasons to build a HTPC – lots of flexibility.
Any idea if I can force the ATI to pick a 1366x768 resolution?
This is the reason to use PowerStrip, which lets you set up arbitrary video output resolutions. It also has a TON of presets for most TVs so that res is likely already available, just have to select it and add it to Windows:
Thanks so much for the great post, very informative! I am looking to build my own htpc, was wondering if your setup that you describe here would be appropriate for what we are trying to do.
We do not want to record live tv, we get that with our satellite box, and taking my wife off of that is going to be like robbing as crack hound of their fix.
We want to be able to rip all our dvd’s to a hard drive, rip all of our cd’s to the hard drive, get rid of those two players and use the htpc to play those, as well as web browsing, using the new TV for image displays and the such. We want to be able to access the HTPC from our mac in our bedroom to watch movies over the network.
Would the htpc you have described here do the trick? We will be getting a high def flat screen, and a new hdmi capable receiver as well. Thanks for your help in advance, I look forward to reading your response.
Please forgive another newb question, but is there a comparable mobo that comes in the ATX form factor? I am purchasing a silverstone lc20m case, and not sure if this micro atx will fit. Again, I may be asking a really dumb question and I apologize for that.
