HTPC Build Part 1: The Stuff

[itschris]

A couple weeks ago, I jumped on this thread started by Cos (http://forums.audioholics.com/forums/home-theater-pc-htpc-media-servers/86946-my-htpc-build-have-questions.html ) and got all excited about building a new system. I had started one about two maybe three years ago, but abandoned the project because at the time, it just wasn't very fluent. There were still a lot of workarounds and fiddling to employ and it just want my jam at the time.

I gave up on the box, but then setup my PLEX Media Server system using my iPad and my AppleTV3 hooked up to my AVR. It works fantastic for music. I have a high end looking interface on my iPad which to control my music, my wife loves it, and it just flat out works. For video... it's okay... sort of. This setup has really changed things in our house. We use our stuff a lot more...simply because it's easy. It's just time for the next step.

 

[itschris]

Fellow user BoredSysAdmin got me looking into alternative solutions and XMBC. I started looking into the small box solutions using OpenElec and XMBC. Everything seemed really close, but it really just came down to me wanting to build a full blown HTPC again that could do everything I want today and hopefully down the road a bit.

I started doing all the research... again... and with a lot of help from Bored, AcuDefTechGuy, Aberkowitz, and others, I think I'm on my way. My bottom line goal is that this new box has to be able to bitstream the hi-def sound codecs to my Pioneer for decoding. I want to see the DTS-MA and Dolby Tru-HD sections light up when I watch a movie run on the HTPC. PQ is a must as well, as is a slick, easy to use interface. I spent the past two weeks drilling these guys with questions and reading page after page after page of discussions and reviews on the subject and various pieces of hardware.


I feel pretty confident at this point that I got a great hardware list to do the job.

 

[itschris]

I've pretty much locked in on the following hardware/software list. There are certain things that are probably overkill like the PSU but I have some reasons which I'll explain. I'm totally open to any and all suggestions, however, and am willing to entertain all advice.

Case: The case had to be good looking, roomy, and fit style-wise in my system. I wanted quality, but didn't want to spend $300 on some of the more esoteric offerings. Silverstone was the way to go as far as I could see. The GD07 is a really nice case that will look right at home sitting next to my Sunfire amp. It's got great reviews to back it all up.
SilverStone Technology Co., Ltd.- GD07

CPU: The Intel i3 4130T has gotten great reviews from the HTPC community and seems to be the go to chip for current builds.
Amazon.com: Intel I3-4130T 2.90 3 LGA 1150 Processor BX80646I34130T: Computers & Accessories

M/B: Layout of the board is important, especially with the case design and what you're going to put in it. The layout, the quality, the price... all make this a really good choice in my opinion.
Amazon.com: Gigabyte LGA 1150 Intel H87 HDMI SATA 6Gbps USB 3.0 Micro ATX DDR3 1600 Intel Motherboards GA-H87M-D3H: Computers & Accessories

CPU Cooler: I'm not sure I'm going to really need one, but they're not expensive so I'm gonna get one. I looked a ton of these, but figured the one from SilverStone is just as good as any and I know it'll work in the case and with my board fitment-wise.
Amazon.com: Silverstone Tek Argon Series CPU Cooler with 92mm Cooling Fan for Socket LGA775/1155/1156/1366/2011, AM2/AM3/FM1/FM2, White AR02: Computers & Accessories

RAM: This is my least sure choice. I think this okay, but just don't know enough. I know I'm going to stick with 4 gigs for now. I don't understand latency and timing and all that... not sure if it even matter for what I'm doing but I think these modules from GSkill are a good choice. The board has two slots. I'm just wondering if I should go with 1 4 gig module instead in case I want to bump up to eight if and when I decide to add tuner cards to the rig. I know there's a very small performance penalty but I'm not sure if it matters. I'm open to advice and debate on this.
G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F3-10600CL8D-4GBHK - Newegg.com

PSU: I know 450w is overkill for this HTPC, but I wanted to go with a top performing PSU that was fully modular. I didn't see any modular options in the 350-375w range. SeaSonic seems universally recommended and I'm not opposed to spending a few extra bucks for a top of the line PSU
SeaSonic SSR-450RM 450W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply - Newegg.com

Boot Drive: SSD is a no-brainer these days. This Samsung has been reviewed to death and is regarded as a quality option.
http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Electronics-EVO-Series-2-5-Inch-MZ-7TE120BW/dp/B00E3W15P0/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1388421436&sr=8-2&keywords=ssd+840+samsung

Media Drive: For now I think I'm just going to use this box for video. My music is all perfectly setup on my other PC with PLEX. I'm just going to leave it like it for now. Once this is up and running, I'm going to build a much bigger NAS to store everything. That's just down the road a bit. For now, I'm just going to go with a Western Digital 3TB Green Drive which seems to be solid performer for an HTPC build.

Optical Drive: I'm going to upgrade my Blu-Ray reader in my other machine in my office where I rip my discs. I'm just going to go with a standard DVD drive for the HTPC just make software installation less of a hassle. I don't anticipate going in and out of the HTPC very often. I'll just rip on my other machine and move it to the HTPC over the network for now. It's just more convenient at this time. I'm just going to go with the OEM LG Blu-Ray reader... it seems as good as any.
Amazon.com: LG Electronics 14x Internal BDXL Blu-Ray Burner Rewriter WH14NS40 - Bulk Drive - Black: Computers & Accessories

OS: I think I'm going to stick with Windows 7. There's a lot more trouble shooting guidance on 7 then there is on 8. No other reason besides that.

Media Software: I'm going XMBC I'm willing to put the time and effort into getting this setup perfect. I want to be able to control things with my iPad and XMBC (as does PLEX) seems to have a nice enough remote app to run things. I'm going to set things up to boot right into XMBC so hopefully I'll just have to turn the box on, grab my iPad, and touch the screen to make movies happen.


That's pretty much the bulk of it. Again, if you see something glaring let me know. I did a lot of research on these components so feel free to ask questions if you have any. I'm going to hold off on ordering stuff just a bit longer to make sure I'm fine with everything. Once I feel 100% confident, I'll pull the trigger. You guys can help with that.

 

[aberkowitz]

Chris,


Congrats on the build. My experience of building my own HTPC is that there are millions of opinions, and on less civilized boards people who will do their best to make you feel inferior, so as long as you feel confident in your choices you're going to be just fine.


As for what you've laid out, it looks like a great setup. I have a few comments based in my own experiences:


1) the cooler is most definitely overkill. If it makes you feel better then go for it, but with a box as big as the silverstone and with the limited amount of components you have in there the stock cooler that comes with the processor (and the silverstone fans) will be more than sufficient.


2) nice call on the modular power supply. It doesn't look like that one comes with a power cord. Make sure you add one to the list if you don't have a spare laying around.


3) not sure if you have wired internet easily accessible, but if not you're going to need a wireless adapter. TPLink is the best brand out in there in my experience.


4) you will need a keyboard and mouse for initial setup. Again, best if you can repurpose and existing one.


5) Arctic Silver 5 High-Density Polysynthetic Silver Thermal Compound AS5-3.5G - OEM - Newegg.com Needed to protect your processor, couple dabs on top of the heat sink . Plenty of YouTube videos out there on how to construct.


My only major thought regarding your build is the amount of storage space you're expecting to utilize as it relates to the amount of media you want to store today. 3 TB is not insignificant if you're using the mkv format and stripping out extras, special features, director's commentaries, etc from BDs. It's a ton of space if you only have DVDs. If you want to preserve everything, or if you want to rip ISOs (overkill in my opinion), and if you're mostly ripping media off of discs your 3 TB can go faster than you think. I have no idea what your media library looks like, so I have no basis to judge, but given the box you're buying and the good deal on the WD drive, it may make sense to pick up at least 2 drives. This also pushes out the time you need to build the NAS, and worst case scenario you can remove the extra drive and drop it in a NAS. Please don't take this as me being critical. You understand your needs best- I was just throwing out a thought.

 

[itschris]

Excellent feedback. Thanks.

The reason i thought about getting the cooler was that I have all my stuff in a BDI cabinet. Granted its made for home theater, but I'm concerned that things are getting a bit tight in there and there's not super good airflow. I mean for $40 I thought it'd be good insurance... especially since I plan on adding some tuner cards at some point. Maybe I'll leave it out and see what happens.

The HTPC is going to be with the rest of my equipment which is where the router is. It'll be hardwired into the router. Actually... I need to get a switch at this point since the router is full I think. Then again, I could always just unplug the blu-ray player. I can't remember the last time I used it. It's just taking up an HDMI and network port at this point.

I don't think I'm going to rip ISO. I think I'm going to run uncompressed MKV's so I can strip out the stuff I don't want. I have about 50 blu-rays at this point... with about 20 ripped. Once I get this up and running, I'm going to seriously ramp up my collection. I figured the 3TB will last me for awhile. I really think at some point this year the 4TB drives are going to be the sweet spot. At that point, I can decide what I need to do. I flirt with the idea of a NAS, but not sure why. I can easily put 4 drives in my box without zero effort. I'm not really sure of what a seperate NAS will do for me and if it's worth it, but I've got some time to really think about that. I'm not really pushing this stuff out to different rooms in the house, but I guess I could with a NAS. I guess there's other ways to do that anyway so I don't know. Backup is going to be important and I'm not sure if a NAS is really a true backup solution. Maybe sort of, but not really. I have to really give that whole thing some thought.

I'm going to keep my music on my other computer... for now. If I end up running close to capacity I can easily just add another drive to the HTPC. I guess I just have a lot of options at this point and need to think about the future. I want to see how I use my system first which will help me determine what to do down the road.

I absolutely welcome the analysis and advice so keep it coming.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

Just some numbers for food for thought.
1) 3 TB usable space is about 2.6TB
2) Uncompressed 1080p 2h movie file will probably take most it - I assume you've meant to say "compressed mkv" lols
3) a Typical 1080p with DTS soundtrack BD to MKV rip of about 2h movie is approx 10-15 GB and 5-7GB for 720p version - which honestly is ok for most movies = so a single 3tb hd will hold at-least 150-160 1080p MKV H.264 compressed movies, but keep in mind if a single drive fails = all would be lost (restoring from cloud backup would be very slow)

4) I would like to reinforce point regarding stock cooler - I have a T series intel core I3 cpu with stock cooler and it's silent, but also keep in mind stock cooler/heatsink already includes "rubber" like thermal pad which is b!@$# to remove without scratching the surface of the heatsink - I highly recommend to keep stock thermal pad and get/use aftermarket thermal compounds only if decide to go with 3rd party cooler, then big YES - get the good thermal stuff !!

5) I still have reservation "recommending" you to use underlying windows for base OS. Keep in mind my openelec boot from my weak atom box with slow laptop hd takes about same time as my Core I5/SSD/Win7 desktop

 

[jinjuku]

I would get an AMD APU vs the i3. AMD is still doing a better job with the display than Intel. You don't need anything stellar:

CPU Newegg.com - AMD A4-6300 Richland 3.7GHz (3.9GHz Turbo) Socket FM2 65W Dual-Core Desktop Processor AMD Radeon HD 8370D AD6300OKHLBOX

Motherboard MSI FM2-A75MA-E35 FM2 AMD A75 (Hudson D3) HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard - Newegg.com

You can get the CPU and Mainboard for less than the i3 you linked. I doubt you would miss any performance and you are guaranteed to have the best VQ with this setup.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

AMD's APU will certainly will deliver better GPU and cheaper, but in expense of more heat and consequently noise. just my 2 humble cents

 

[jinjuku]

AMD's APU will certainly will deliver better GPU and cheaper, but in expense of more heat and consequently noise. just my 2 humble cents

55 watts tpd for the i3 vs 65 watts for the AMD...

Add in a 3rd party GPU and not only is the i3 more expensive to start with, you just increased the $$ output and blew past any thermal savings.

 

[panteragstk]

I would get an AMD APU vs the i3. AMD is still doing a better job with the display than Intel. You don't need anything stellar:

CPU Newegg.com - AMD A4-6300 Richland 3.7GHz (3.9GHz Turbo) Socket FM2 65W Dual-Core Desktop Processor AMD Radeon HD 8370D AD6300OKHLBOX

Motherboard MSI FM2-A75MA-E35 FM2 AMD A75 (Hudson D3) HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard - Newegg.com

You can get the CPU and Mainboard for less than the i3 you linked. I doubt you would miss any performance and you are guaranteed to have the best VQ with this setup.

AMD's APU will certainly will deliver better GPU and cheaper, but in expense of more heat and consequently noise. just my 2 humble cents

Both true, but AMD consistently gets better HQV scores. Whether or not you care about that is another thing. More codec compatibility with AMD as well. My i3 works well, but not near as well as my AMD video card. Video quality is quite a bit better. However, with the HD graphics 4400 the quality should be spot on. Be careful if you try to play back 23.796 fps content as intel has had issues with that in the past.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

55 watts tpd for the i3 vs 65 watts for the AMD...

Add in a 3rd party GPU and not only is the i3 more expensive to start with, you just increased the $$ output and blew past any thermal savings.

Jinjuku, Intel's i3 T version is only 35W ARK | Intel® Core™ i3-4130T Processor (3M Cache, 2.90 GHz)

I think the plan would to be rely on buildin video in core i3 - it SHOULD support the hd decode and hd-passthrou - but if honestly I am still skeptical on that..
Intel drivers just never amazed me
Testing Intel's September HD 4600 Graphics Driver | SemiAccurate

 

[jliedeka]

If you have any need to keep your HTPC as quiet as possible, you might want to check out silentpcreview.com | Everything about Silent / Quiet Computers before making your final hardware choices.

Jim

 

[jinjuku]

Bottom line is that 65 Watt TDP is nothing to worry about. It's changing deck chairs on the Titanic as far as I'm concerned. I would save the $$.

 

[itschris]

I'm pretty much locked in on the CPU. I've read a lot about the chip and it's reviews and what I want to do with it and have actually spoke with a couple of our I.T. guys who are really big into the HTPC and... of course gaming. He showed me his machine... today actually... at his house and it absolutely does the HD bitstream. I'm sure the AMD stuff will work too.. I think it's just a FORD vs Chevy argument and I'm really not worried about saving a few dollars. I've always been happy building stuff with Intel in the past and I really like the Gig boards.

As a side note... I've never actually seen a hard core gamer's rig. His setup was crazy. He had huge tower full of LED's and two 55" Samsung TV's side by side. He has special chairs, headphones and mic booms and controllers all over the place. His other server box looked like something you'd see at NASA. I can't even begin to estimate the cost.

 

[jinjuku]

I'm pretty much locked in on the CPU. I've read a lot about the chip and it's reviews and what I want to do with it and have actually spoke with a couple of our I.T. guys who are really big into the HTPC and... of course gaming. He showed me his machine... today actually... at his house and it absolutely does the HD bitstream. I'm sure the AMD stuff will work too.. I think it's just a FORD vs Chevy argument and I'm really not worried about saving a few dollars. I've always been happy building stuff with Intel in the past and I really like the Gig boards.

As a side note... I've never actually seen a hard core gamer's rig. His setup was crazy. He had huge tower full of LED's and two 55" Samsung TV's side by side. He has special chairs, headphones and mic booms and controllers all over the place. His other server box looked like something you'd see at NASA. I can't even begin to estimate the cost.

I'm not a Ford or Chevy guy so to speak. Just the best part for the job at hand:

My HTPC and 2.0 PC are AMD.

My Laptops are Intel.

On purpose for each.

 

[itschris]

Just some numbers for food for thought.
1) 3 TB usable space is about 2.6TB
2) Uncompressed 1080p 2h movie file will probably take most it - I assume you've meant to say "compressed mkv" lols
3) a Typical 1080p with DTS soundtrack BD to MKV rip of about 2h movie is approx 10-15 GB and 5-7GB for 720p version - which honestly is ok for most movies = so a single 3tb hd will hold at-least 150-160 1080p MKV H.264 compressed movies, but keep in mind if a single drive fails = all would be lost (restoring from cloud backup would be very slow)

4) I would like to reinforce point regarding stock cooler - I have a T series intel core I3 cpu with stock cooler and it's silent, but also keep in mind stock cooler/heatsink already includes "rubber" like thermal pad which is b!@$# to remove without scratching the surface of the heatsink - I highly recommend to keep stock thermal pad and get/use aftermarket thermal compounds only if decide to go with 3rd party cooler, then big YES - get the good thermal stuff !!

5) I still have reservation "recommending" you to use underlying windows for base OS. Keep in mind my openelec boot from my weak atom box with slow laptop hd takes about same time as my Core I5/SSD/Win7 desktop

The rips that I have from MKV are about 15 gigs or so. I believe that's the raw output stripped of all it's nonesense. I'm pretty sure that is not compressed. The one or two ISO's I have are maybe 20 gig or so... I'd have to check. Are you saying in #2 that an uncompressed rip of a blu-ray would take almost the entire drive?

I'm not worried about noise. My stuff is in a cabinet and noise is not an issue really. I'm just concerned about adequate airflow within the cabinet. I guess the thing is... for $40... does it really matter? I mean can it be a detriment... beyond the additional fan noise? All this fan business is new to me, so if there are downsides that I'm not aware of, I'd like to know. The cooler was one of the "safer than sorry" thoughts and figured it couldn't hurt anything especially if I add more stuff later.

Okay... I'm going to revisit OpenElec. I'm not sure what else it does, but I will look into it. I'm comfortable with Windows and like having the other capabilities like easily running other apps like ACCESS or EXCEL on the big screen when I work at home. It's not mandatory in any way, but I just like having options. I will, however, dig into your suggestion. I have to learn a lot more about it.

 

[itschris]

I'm not a Ford or Chevy guy so to speak. Just the best part for the job at hand:

My HTPC and 2.0 PC are AMD.

My Laptops are Intel.

On purpose for each.

I wasn't saying you're an AMD fanboy or anything just that for any given goal, you can do it different ways. I've just read a lot about the i3 and how well it's been working for people. Not that AMD wouldn't, but it's just a personal choice I think as both do it to a degree that I'd never notice any differences I imagine.

 

[jinjuku]

I know you weren't. You asked for input and I gave it. For me personally I want to know that I have the best in video processing and that is a guarantee with the AMD APU. I don't think the i3 is a slouch, but for an HTPC I truly believe you are throwing $$'s away for zero gain.

 

[itschris]

J
4) I would like to reinforce point regarding stock cooler - I have a T series intel core I3 cpu with stock cooler and it's silent, but also keep in mind stock cooler/heatsink already includes "rubber" like thermal pad which is b!@$# to remove without scratching the surface of the heatsink - I highly recommend to keep stock thermal pad and get/use aftermarket thermal compounds only if decide to go with 3rd party cooler, then big YES - get the good thermal stuff !!

I just looked up that thermal stuff and they have a video showing Arctics Silvers two step compound remover. Wasn't sure if you knew about this stuff or not. It seems to make the job pretty easy. (Video at the bottom)
Arctic Silver 5 High-Density Polysynthetic Silver Thermal Compound AS5-3.5G - OEM - Newegg.com

 

[itschris]

I know you weren't. You asked for input and I gave it. For me personally I want to know that I have the best in video processing and that is a guarantee with the AMD APU. I don't think the i3 is a slouch, but for an HTPC I truly believe you are throwing $$'s away for zero gain.

What about bitstreaming the hi-def audio codecs to my receiver?