My Sweet little Angel poured milk in the HTPC

[All-Or-Nothing]

My Sweet little Angel poured milk into the HTPC

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I posted this another forum to try and get more varied responses...



Well babies don't know any better. My little Angel must have wanted to share her milk with the HTPC. Time to upgrade I suppose.

I can't find that link where you list your requirements and other info for what I want so I will just list my requirements.

My requirements...

CHEAP.....
HDMI out
Full web browsing
Ability to play 1080p/MKV files without a hitch
USB 3.0
I am not against building it as I think that would be even better.


What I have to reuse

An external DVD/RW drive
2 internal DVD/RW drives
Various HDDs ranging from 1TB to 3TB
Couple full tower cases (would rather buy a new more "attractive" case)
3 different OS (Vista Ultimate 64bit, XP 64bit, and Windows 7 64bit)



I have been looking at those small units like the Foxconn and Intel Atom but have no experience with these to really make a good decision.

 

[lsiberian]

What is actually ruined?

obviously building get's you what you want.
HDMI motherboards are cheap these days. What form factor do you want?
You can still use a power supply in a different case.

 

[All-Or-Nothing]

What is actually ruined?

obviously building get's you what you want.
HDMI motherboards are cheap these days. What form factor do you want?
You can still use a power supply in a different case.

Don't know what exactly what died but smoke is not a good indication if I wanted to try and salvage anything.


I think I just want to start from scratch.

 

[ImcLoud]

What, no cookies? My son assembled a model car on my conference table a couple years back... My wife had him at the office, put him in the conference room with his "toy", do you know what it costs to strip glue and paint from and finish a 16' mahogany table top? I do, and it was more than a black friday Emptek 5.1 system would cost today!!!!

 

[Irvrobinson]

Any old PC motherboard with USB 3.0 will meet those requirements. ASUS makes AMD and Intel versions for cheap. I'd stick with Win 7.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

Intel cpus will have more power, but AMD's onchip video will run circles around intel's. Chose what more important to you. Even with "weak" 2500 Intel HD video "card" on ARK | Intel® Core is more than enough for 1080p video
It's also 22nm and TPD max is only 35W - you can build fast and quiet system around this cpu

 

[All-Or-Nothing]

Intel cpus will have more power, but AMD's onchip video will run circles around intel's. Chose what more important to you. Even with "weak" 2500 Intel HD video "card" on ARK | Intel® Core is more than enough for 1080p video
It's also 22nm and TPD max is only 35W - you can build fast and quiet system around this cpu

Nice choice. I was considering getting the AMD A10-5800K as a starting point to this build. Prices are similar but I hear that this AMD is killer for graphics and video.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

Nice choice. I was considering getting the AMD A10-5800K as a starting point to this build. Prices are similar but I hear that this AMD is killer for graphics and video.

like I said, AMD's graphics is stronger, but A10 is overkill for htpc - you don't want turbine level noise and/or huge cooler just to cool it

Playing 1080p doesn't take much anymore. Heck I did it with Atom/Ion machine

Plus single thread performance will much better with Intel at same mhz and besides running TONS of re-encodes I can't imagine you would ever need to max the cpu anyways

 

[All-Or-Nothing]

like I said, AMD's graphics is stronger, but A10 is overkill for htpc - you don't want turbine level noise and/or huge cooler just to cool it

Playing 1080p doesn't take much anymore. Heck I did it with Atom/Ion machine

Plus single thread performance will much better with Intel at same mhz and besides running TONS of re-encodes I can't imagine you would ever need to max the cpu anyways

Maybe a little Overkill but I never know what I might wind up doing with this in the future. I did some encoding with the DEAD computer but it's slow processor made it unbearably slow. With this I get great video and way better encoding speeds, although I have mostly just copied DVDs with MakeMKV lately.

I figure it is strong enough that it will be quite a while before I need to upgrade it. Hovering over buy as I type this.

 

[Lordhumungus]

If you are trying to actually encode video, the Intel is going to be better no matter which way you stack it. It will have faster software based encoding (slower in general, but much higher quality) as well as the option to use QuickSync video encoding if you choose to go that route (faster, but the quality is not up-to-par in my experience). The AMD has it's place, but I feel that it's more in entry level gaming rigs.

Here's some more general info if you are interested:
Benchmarks
Intel Quick Sync

As for cases, I am really big fan of this Antec Fusion Remote case if you can still find it in stock somewhere. Overall design is top notch (separated components to minimize heat, fully functional IR receiver with power on/off, front LCD, looks like a receiver etc.). My personal opinion is that this is the most overlooked HTPC case out there.

 

[All-Or-Nothing]

As for cases, I am really big fan of this Antec Fusion Remote case if you can still find it in stock somewhere. Overall design is top notch (separated components to minimize heat, fully functional IR receiver with power on/off, front LCD, looks like a receiver etc.). My personal opinion is that this is the most overlooked HTPC case out there.

Nice case but I couldn't find onw anywhere. I wound up buying a nMedia 2000B case. So right now I have the A10-5800K APU, GIGABYTE GA-F2A85X-UP4 AMD A Series Motherboard, and the nMedia case.


Any suggestions on a PSU???

 

[Lordhumungus]

It's a bit overpriced at the moment (I think less than $50 is reasonable), but I am partial to this PSU for HTPC builds. It's modular, reasonably efficient, and extremely quiet.

 

[All-Or-Nothing]

It's a bit overpriced at the moment (I think less than $50 is reasonable), but I am partial to this PSU for HTPC builds. It's modular, reasonably efficient, and extremely quiet.

Thanks for the suggestion. I am a total PC building noob so I assume I need to add up all the devices being plugged in and make sure the PSU comes with that many wires???



Never built a PC before so this will be a learning experience for me.

 

[Lordhumungus]

Generally speaking you don't need to worry about the number of connectors unless you are using either a very large quantity of devices, or have some specific need from the PSU. In the case of the Basiq, it has 6 SATA and 6 4-pin Molex connectors, which means you can easily have 12 devices (e.g. HDD, DVD/Blu-ray, etc) connected in addition to a single graphics card, floppy drive, and all the standard Motherboard connections. If you need more than that, you can use splitters, but it seems unlikely that you will even be using 6.

 

[All-Or-Nothing]

Thanks...I'm learning quite a bit. This should really be a fun experience.