Any HTPC experts? Need a little help...
Discussion
I'm not fully up to date on latest parts, but I'd imagine many of the Haswell CPU's are low power enough to make something silent.
If you are interested I have a nice OrigenAE X11 case in black in good condition, complete with silent Seasonic PSU and lots of silent Noctua Fans. It's a complete machine (minus HDD) with an Asus (IIRC) board and Athlon 2400+ CPU, out of date obviously but the case is much more tasteful than most and PSU/fans are still decent. Let me know if interested.
If you are interested I have a nice OrigenAE X11 case in black in good condition, complete with silent Seasonic PSU and lots of silent Noctua Fans. It's a complete machine (minus HDD) with an Asus (IIRC) board and Athlon 2400+ CPU, out of date obviously but the case is much more tasteful than most and PSU/fans are still decent. Let me know if interested.
I've got an i5 in one of these cases: http://www.novatech.co.uk/products/components/case...
the controller is crap, mine is in a drawer somewhere, but the case is actually quite good. I've got a 3.5" drive in the prescribed bay but also got an old 2.5" laptop drive in to the case too, stood on its side, you'd easily get an SSD or two in it.
the controller is crap, mine is in a drawer somewhere, but the case is actually quite good. I've got a 3.5" drive in the prescribed bay but also got an old 2.5" laptop drive in to the case too, stood on its side, you'd easily get an SSD or two in it.
The answer to this depends on whether you need a silent (or very quiet) system or not.
To decode hd quietly you want a dedicated card - I use a radeon 5840 (from memory) which is fanless and has hardware decoding built in. Processor wise my HTPC is still on a very quiet celeron - gfx card does all the work. System is happy to record two HD channels and playback in HD all at the same time. If I was rebuilding I'd get the slowest I3 I could find.
If noise isnt an issue get whatever processor you fancy but I'd still get a discrete gfx card designed for playback - anyyhing fanless eith hardware decoding should do thr job.
To decode hd quietly you want a dedicated card - I use a radeon 5840 (from memory) which is fanless and has hardware decoding built in. Processor wise my HTPC is still on a very quiet celeron - gfx card does all the work. System is happy to record two HD channels and playback in HD all at the same time. If I was rebuilding I'd get the slowest I3 I could find.
If noise isnt an issue get whatever processor you fancy but I'd still get a discrete gfx card designed for playback - anyyhing fanless eith hardware decoding should do thr job.
I've been running one of these for the last 2+ years in a HTPC/file server running windows media centre with media browser plugin
Intel i3 2120T - http://ark.intel.com/products/53427/Intel-Core-i3-...
It's on 24/7 but goes to sleep when not being used, plays everything I've tried to play, no hiccups, no stutters, in fact when I first installed it, I tried my highest mbit/sec mkv file (one of the Lord of the Rings films if a remember rightly) with 5.1 audio and the cpu usuage was only 10-20%
an i3 is more than enough.
Cant really comment on the case front mine is in a MATX case and I think is using the retail heatsink and fan.
Intel i3 2120T - http://ark.intel.com/products/53427/Intel-Core-i3-...
It's on 24/7 but goes to sleep when not being used, plays everything I've tried to play, no hiccups, no stutters, in fact when I first installed it, I tried my highest mbit/sec mkv file (one of the Lord of the Rings films if a remember rightly) with 5.1 audio and the cpu usuage was only 10-20%
an i3 is more than enough.
Cant really comment on the case front mine is in a MATX case and I think is using the retail heatsink and fan.
mebe said:
The answer to this depends on whether you need a silent (or very quiet) system or not.
To decode hd quietly you want a dedicated card - I use a radeon 5840 (from memory) which is fanless and has hardware decoding built in. Processor wise my HTPC is still on a very quiet celeron - gfx card does all the work. System is happy to record two HD channels and playback in HD all at the same time. If I was rebuilding I'd get the slowest I3 I could find.
If noise isnt an issue get whatever processor you fancy but I'd still get a discrete gfx card designed for playback - anyyhing fanless eith hardware decoding should do thr job.
This is exactly how I had my setup before I upgraded, I was using an old Celeron with a Radeon 5450 low profile graphics card with HDMI out, graphics card handled all the video decoding - only upgraded as the graphics card failed and I noticed the i3's now had onboard graphics, crap for games but ideal for video decoding.To decode hd quietly you want a dedicated card - I use a radeon 5840 (from memory) which is fanless and has hardware decoding built in. Processor wise my HTPC is still on a very quiet celeron - gfx card does all the work. System is happy to record two HD channels and playback in HD all at the same time. If I was rebuilding I'd get the slowest I3 I could find.
If noise isnt an issue get whatever processor you fancy but I'd still get a discrete gfx card designed for playback - anyyhing fanless eith hardware decoding should do thr job.
Built a system not so long ago, as mentioned a Haswell i3 is more than ample for 1080p and HD audio bitstreaming over HDMI. No need for additional graphics cards.
I have mine in this case http://www.silverstonetek.com/product.php?pid=233&... along with a Silverstone PSU and ASUS motherboard. With the fan optimisation stuff supplied by ASUS running the whole thing is pretty much silent in operation. In fact it turns off the case fans most of the time.
Found this guide and a lot of other stuff on the site really useful: http://assassinhtpcblog.com/hardwareguide/
I have mine in this case http://www.silverstonetek.com/product.php?pid=233&... along with a Silverstone PSU and ASUS motherboard. With the fan optimisation stuff supplied by ASUS running the whole thing is pretty much silent in operation. In fact it turns off the case fans most of the time.
Found this guide and a lot of other stuff on the site really useful: http://assassinhtpcblog.com/hardwareguide/
I've just bought a pair of theses to play with as a htpc.
http://www.solid-run.com
So far so good. Have it running openelec and controlled using my harmony remote
http://www.solid-run.com
So far so good. Have it running openelec and controlled using my harmony remote
Mr E said:
I could not do panasonics version of 3d with the integrated (has well) gpu. I also discovered a nasty decoding glitch with freeview hd using the same gpu.
A cheap 650ti resolved both issues and the system is still quiet.
Apologies as I don't want to hijack this thread but I'm interested in both things mentioned above as I have a HTPC with a Haswell i3, a Panasonic TXP50VT30B 3D plasma, a strange issue with Freeview HD when I record it.A cheap 650ti resolved both issues and the system is still quiet.
I haven't ripped any 3d Blu-Rays or tried to play them through the HTPC on the Panasonic so no idea if that works or not. But with Freeview HD, it seems okay if you watch it live, but when recorded seem to get the odd strobing effect like the odd changes in brightness of the background. It's not bad enough to make it unwatchable but it is noticeable and you'd expect better when viewing HD. Is that the decoding glitch described? Any information / links / etc. you have for this would be useful thanks.
I'm using a NowTV box (£10)
...fed by my HP N54L server (- ca. £200 for 2TB of storage with Raid 5 redundancy - £260 for 4TB) which has the Xpenology operating system (Synology NAS software)...
...using Plex (free)
Internet surfing, etc. is done from my phone/tablet - I don't see the TV as being a worthwhile device for this.
Xpenology has a built in Torrent/newsgroup download app, along with loads of others.
It's been pretty easy to set up.
...fed by my HP N54L server (- ca. £200 for 2TB of storage with Raid 5 redundancy - £260 for 4TB) which has the Xpenology operating system (Synology NAS software)...
...using Plex (free)
Internet surfing, etc. is done from my phone/tablet - I don't see the TV as being a worthwhile device for this.
Xpenology has a built in Torrent/newsgroup download app, along with loads of others.
It's been pretty easy to set up.
C0ffin D0dger said:
Mr E said:
I could not do panasonics version of 3d with the integrated (has well) gpu. I also discovered a nasty decoding glitch with freeview hd using the same gpu.
A cheap 650ti resolved both issues and the system is still quiet.
Apologies as I don't want to hijack this thread but I'm interested in both things mentioned above as I have a HTPC with a Haswell i3, a Panasonic TXP50VT30B 3D plasma, a strange issue with Freeview HD when I record it.A cheap 650ti resolved both issues and the system is still quiet.
I haven't ripped any 3d Blu-Rays or tried to play them through the HTPC on the Panasonic so no idea if that works or not. But with Freeview HD, it seems okay if you watch it live, but when recorded seem to get the odd strobing effect like the odd changes in brightness of the background. It's not bad enough to make it unwatchable but it is noticeable and you'd expect better when viewing HD. Is that the decoding glitch described? Any information / links / etc. you have for this would be useful thanks.
I originally tried to blame the DVB-T2 capture card, and their engineer walked me through the debug.
It's an onboard GPU decoder issue for the format that UK freeview HD uses. I debated raising it with intel but decided that a £60 Nvidia card was a much more time efficient option. I had plenty of room and power in the case.
Edit; If you want to really prove it, install VLC (if you don't have it already) and playback a recorded freeview HD channel in VLC. VLC uses it's own software codecs rather than the one in the GPU, and you won't see the strobes.
Edited by Mr E on Tuesday 23 September 15:46
Mr E said:
The strobe is exactly what I was referring to. I had it on both live and recorded TV, although my "live" TV is pretty much recorded with 0 time shift.
I originally tried to blame the DVB-T2 capture card, and their engineer walked me through the debug.
It's an onboard GPU decoder issue for the format that UK freeview HD uses. I debated raising it with intel but decided that a £60 Nvidia card was a much more time efficient option. I had plenty of room and power in the case.
Edit; If you want to really prove it, install VLC (if you don't have it already) and playback a recorded freeview HD channel in VLC. VLC uses it's own software codecs rather than the one in the GPU, and you won't see the strobes.
Interesting, thanks for that, I'll have a try with VLC.I originally tried to blame the DVB-T2 capture card, and their engineer walked me through the debug.
It's an onboard GPU decoder issue for the format that UK freeview HD uses. I debated raising it with intel but decided that a £60 Nvidia card was a much more time efficient option. I had plenty of room and power in the case.
Edit; If you want to really prove it, install VLC (if you don't have it already) and playback a recorded freeview HD channel in VLC. VLC uses it's own software codecs rather than the one in the GPU, and you won't see the strobes.
Edited by Mr E on Tuesday 23 September 15:46
A shame I missed this, I used this: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Open-Box-Intel-Nuc-DC321...
...and I just sold mine to someone for £155 with an i3, 60GB SSD and 6GB RAM (Plus wireless card and a LAN dongle).
A great little box, which even comes with VESA mounts so you can screw it onto the back of the TV. 15W Max TDP processor so essentially a laptop i3 in a little box.
...and I just sold mine to someone for £155 with an i3, 60GB SSD and 6GB RAM (Plus wireless card and a LAN dongle).
A great little box, which even comes with VESA mounts so you can screw it onto the back of the TV. 15W Max TDP processor so essentially a laptop i3 in a little box.
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