HTPC Spec'ing

[Gingerbread Man]

vening all.

I think this is the right sub forum, Thai or the Gadgets forum.

I have current long standing HTPC which has been upgraded slightly over the years from housing the hard drives within, to having a separate NAS setup, more RAM, different GPU, an SSD added....the list goes on.

Anyhow, too long ago the thing stopped booting. I believed it was a dodgy graphics card and bought another, but alas that wasn't the cause. I'm now thinking the motherboard is at fault which is leading me to look down the barrels at a rebuild. It runs DDR3 and a newer motherboard now has DDR4 and well... it's time unfortunately to have a slightly bigger upgrade.

I plan a theatre build in the old studio flat as part of the current house reno, but that's behind lots of other areas, so currently the amp is in storage. Ideally I plan for Atmos and 4K, but currently and for a while it'll be straight connected to the stereo TV. I ran Kodi and had my music and film stored on a NAS as stated, it worked well till it went pete tong.


So I currently have;
a Lian Li PCC37 MUSE desktop slimline micro ATX case -I quite like it, happy to keep it. I use an external Infrared receiver for my Harmony One which works fine.
a 1030 GPU with either a fan or one with a large heatsink, so two to pick from.
a Corsair CX430m PSU - Happy to reuse if possible.
8gb of DDR3 - this'll have to be swapped out for newer stuff. I believe 8gb to be fine...?
an SSD as the main boot drive and windows, and an traditional HDD for a little bit of storage - happy to keep all of this.
a DVD Blu Ray drive. not 4K but I don;;t know the last time I put a DVD in it - happy to keep it.
I do currently have a Wifi setup on it. It was ethernet but due to a house shift about it's currently in a temporary spot, so I'll reuse this Wifi card for now.
CPU....I can't recall what it is and can't turn it on to find out! - this will need upgrading so that's neither here or there.

Can you guys please point me in the right direction of what I should be looking at buying for the rebuild?

I have since emigrated to Australia but I should be able to buy everything the same I'd imagine.

Thanks.

[muppetman74]

At the risk of being PH'ish and not actually answering your question(!) I was an advocate of HTPCs for about 20 years, starting with XP Media Centre back in the day. Upgraded software and hardware over the years and then downsized to an Intel NUC when I stopped using physical media.

For the last couple of years I've been using an Nvidia Shield combined with an HDHomerun network tuner for live TV and a NAS for media storage. It runs Kodi, Plex and all the catchup apps I need. Lower power, quiet and simple for the family to use. I don't think I'll ever go back to an HTPC. The other thing is that it seems to handle all the new audio surround formats etc. without any configuration, somthien I always struggled with on HTPCs.

Just another point of view anyway,

[Gingerbread Man]

I'm hearing this a bit. I'm looking into the Sheild. Any adverts on it?

How are they for quality of video and audio if I ever build my planned home cinema?

[RizzoTheRat]

I looked at this a while back when my kodi/pi needed rebuilding/replacing, and having looked at NUCs and small formfactor PC's, ended up getting a Chromecast with GoogleTV and a Synology NAS (920+) instead.

The NAS runs Plex and the Plex app on the Chromecast works perfectly. I'm also using the iPlayer, ITV Hub and Amazon Prime apps, and NordVPN. As an added bonus can also cast to it easily from a phone or PC.

Considered a Shield but it seemed a bit over the top for what I needed

[Howard-]

muppetman74 said:

At the risk of being PH'ish and not actually answering your question(!) I was an advocate of HTPCs for about 20 years, starting with XP Media Centre back in the day. Upgraded software and hardware over the years and then downsized to an Intel NUC when I stopped using physical media.

For the last couple of years I've been using an Nvidia Shield combined with an HDHomerun network tuner for live TV and a NAS for media storage. It runs Kodi, Plex and all the catchup apps I need. Lower power, quiet and simple for the family to use. I don't think I'll ever go back to an HTPC. The other thing is that it seems to handle all the new audio surround formats etc. without any configuration, somthien I always struggled with on HTPCs.

Just another point of view anyway,

My thoughts entirely. There is no real benefit to an HTPC nowadays, and plenty of drawbacks. They were great back in 2007 when HD was a new and shiny thing, you wanted to play back multiple formats through an AV system, XBMC etc were in their infancy, and the idea of a dedicated box that plays this stuff back from a network with a decent interface was but a pipe dream. But times have changed.

Get an nVidia Shield for playback, and set up a server / NAS hidden away somewhere running Plex.

Edited by Howard- on Friday 28th May 17:05

[Griffith4ever]

I use a combo of an Nvidia Shield as the viewing/streaming platform, running Plex, and then a Synology NAS as the file host.

The synology is just superb - particularly the web interface. I run a PLex server on it. No transcoding as I don't need it.

Running the Plex server on the Shield was a constant ball ache and was never reliable. With the above setup it works flawlessly.

(fyi the Shield can run a plex server - pointed at file storage on your lan, and also be the plex player). It is a st plex server.

Edited by Griffith4ever on Friday 28th May 17:26