New HTPC build.. m-itx... thoughts?

[streetster]

Well the case arrived today, and its pretty small, my plans for a passive heatsink + 80/92mm fan are looking doubtful. Think i'll order the mobo+cpu+memory+hdd on friday and then buy a bluray drive next pay day (i'll stick xp/vista/ubuntu on my 8gb usb drive to install an OS and get playing with it) - and hope that the 60w psu works, otherwise i'll grab a picoPSU+block off ebay for ~£60 to get it all up and running

[streetster]

Just ordered:

Motherboard, CPU, 4gb Memory, 500gb harddrive, and a few cables, for ~ £260... should be arriving Tuesday.

Will probably be buying a picoPSU Tuesday night when it doesnt turn on...

[parsley]

goos stuff streetster, keep with the updates - pretty much exactly the build i'm looking at

unless it turns out to be pants

[streetster]

goos stuff streetster, keep with the updates - pretty much exactly the build i'm looking at

unless it turns out to be pants

My order was delayed, but should arrive tomorrow so hopefully will have something to show tomorrow night

[streetster]

Well... everything turned up today, put it all together, hit 'on' and cpu fan span up but no POST. tried a few more times, removed ram, hdd, but no joy.

As the case has no speaker (!!) i cracked open the side of my main PC to use the speaker in that. nothing. no beeps.

Decided it must be that (as expected) the PSU wasnt up to the job, so unplugged 24pin psu cable from main pc and plugged into little pc (little pc case only has 20-pin psu cable). *STILL NO POST*

At this stage i was getting a bit worried. Then saw the 4-pin P4 plug and decided to plug the big psu into that as well. Voila! post!

Installed vista (via usb pendrive), went to install wifi drivers (hoping they'd be built into windows), but no they're on the cd. i have no cd drive. therefore no luck. gave up for today and have plugged everything back into my main rig.

So, i definately need a 4-pin molex -> 4-pin P4 plug (see my wanted thread). And possibly need to get a picoPSU too -but i'll cross that bridge when i get there...

It wouldnt be such a pain if i could run both PCs simultaneously, but ho hum, closer to my mini itx pc than i was yesterday

[walibe]

Mate, download the Windows 7 Pre release which I think anyone can download now? Your setup would love that OS and you! Glad to see the progress and glad it works, theres nothing worst than dead hardware turning up .

[streetster]

Mate, download the Windows 7 Pre release which I think anyone can download now? Your setup would love that OS and you! Glad to see the progress and glad it works, theres nothing worst than dead hardware turning up .

We'll see, im going to give xbmc+aeon a go as it looks rather tastey. The 4-pin molex -> 4-pin P4 connector just arrived and so now the itx rig is up and running via the 80w PSU. So far so good

some pictures to follow...

[shaffaaf27]

nice going

any pics?

[streetster]

Sorry for the crappy quality... will try to get some more with a real camera at some point!

[shaffaaf27]

cheers

[walibe]

Really is a nice little system. Sure the kids would like a PC like that for their room and Daddy wants one for under the TV

[proneax]

that's h264 though, x264 is usually the stuff wrapped in a mkv wrapper and is used to encode most of the 720/1080p downloads...

h.264 is a video standard like MPEG 2. x264 is a piece of software that creates h.264 video, there are many other software and hardware encoders of h.264 video. ATI 3000 and up and Nvidia 8000 and up can decode h.264 video through DXVA. I don't know the details but a video *properly* encoded with x264 will play back on a DXVA system and be accelerated by the video card. Of the x264 encoded videos I've encountered, the vast majority are hardware accelerated by DXVA on my ATI 3450. I use MediaPlayerClassic HomeCinema edition.

here is the url:

mpc-hc.sourceforge.net/DXVASupport.html

BTW nice setup, looking to do that later in the summer, hopefully with a sweet SSD.

[streetster]

h.264 is a video standard like MPEG 2. x264 is a piece of software that creates h.264 video, there are many other software and hardware encoders of h.264 video. ATI 3000 and up and Nvidia 8000 and up can decode h.264 video through DXVA. I don't know the details but a video *properly* encoded with x264 will play back on a DXVA system and be accelerated by the video card. Of the x264 encoded videos I've encountered, the vast majority are hardware accelerated by DXVA on my ATI 3450. I use MediaPlayerClassic HomeCinema edition.

here is the url:

mpc-hc.sourceforge.net/DXVASupport.html

BTW nice setup, looking to do that later in the summer, hopefully with a sweet SSD.

yup, got wmc-mc running with some dxva-compatible x264 encodes, great stuff also got xbmc+aeon skin on there which looks pretty nice - still plenty of tweaking needed and got to copy some more media across to the box now

[parsley]

looking good, i'd be interested at what power it draws at the wall when you've got the bd drive in, and with all it's whistles and bells playing.

(btw spotted the BD optiarc slimline slotload drive, for a few quid less than anywhere else i've seen it yet: at redstore.com , the scan price seems to have gone up a bit since this thread started

[Goldfish92]

I know your thread is massively old now but, I am thinking of building a new primary/media PC based around the Silverstone LC-12 and a Core i5 660... (Bought myself an Xbox 360 for gaming so no longer need the Sugo-05 for it's PCI slots for my 5770)...
Basically just wondering if you had any issues with temps or the likes as I like to try and get smaller and smaller with each PC i build every year but my SUGO is already hot enough as it is :S

Any input would be much appreciated Cheers, Goldfish.

[streetster]

Well.... the box got quite hot - so a couple of weekends ago I cut a hole in the top of the case and stick in a 92mm slim fan which keeps the temperatures down nicely. Though I've now got another problem which I'm about to create a new thread for... think I've been trying to pull too many amps as I've almost burnt out one of the power cables.

Probably picoPSU time...