Spec me a budget HTPC

[shadowmaster]

Looking to build a HTPC to go with my projector. Something that can play 1080p mkv and blu rays, and allow for the occasional internet surfing is all I need. Budget is £150, which I'm not sure is enough?

I was looking at these new Intel atom ion boards, they seem quite good value for money.

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/165387

Do AMD have an equivelent?

Thanks

[Ulti]

I can't spec you a build as I don't think I can find the right parts to fit your budget, however, I can tell you that something like a MSI 785GM-E51 paired with a Sempron 140 is likely to beat the Intel Atom, with better integrated graphics. However, the disadvantage is that the AMD build is mATX which is quite a bit bigger than the mini ITX which means the use of a slightly bigger case. However the AM3 does also come at a slightly cheaper price. It also comes with the added bonus of being able to unlock to a dual core but you won't need anything faster than an Sempron 140 at stock for a HTPC.

A decent BluRay drive costs quite a bit though so tbh I don't think you can do a full build for £150. You'll need a PSU, a case, a HDD and memory too so it's gonna be more around £250-£350 if anything.

[shadowmaster]

Ok cool, I sort of figured £150 was a little on the low side. What about this?

MSI 785GM-E51 -£55

Antec NSK1300 mATX Case -£60

AMD Sempron 140 -£25

I was looking at the Sempron yesterday but was not sure if it would be enough for an HTPC, but looking at the reviews and what you said it should fine.

Anyhow thats £140, which just leaves the ram and hd left I think? We can leave out the blu ray drive as I have a PS3. Just having a look at the ram prices, I know they have gone up in price but its almost double!

[Ulti]

HDD is pretty good value at the moment, Samsung F3 500GB for around £35 on Scan's today only.

RAM is tough those as you'll need DDR3.

As you're buying from Ebuyer, you could go for these at £25 for 1GB so £50 for 2GB.

You could also for for an 785G AM2+ board and find 2GB of DDR2 somewhere else as it shouldn't cost more than £30 for 2GB DDR2 which is enough for a HTPC and web browsing.

[shadowmaster]

I know this is only 780G but is that much different from the MSI 785G motherboard?

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/168321

[Ulti]

780G chipset has HD3200 IGP as opposed to HD4200. For general purpose I think they offer around the same performance but HD4200 has a slight boost in games.

The graphics core in the 785G is upgraded from the HD3200/3300 utilized in the 780G/790GX to the HD4200. The primary difference between the cores is that the HD4200 fully supports DX10.1, Unified Video Decoder 2.0 (UVD), hardware accelerated picture in picture capabilities, dynamic contrast, HQ video scaling, hardware accelerated video transcoding, and full Powerplay support. The graphics core still runs at 500MHz (in current form) and at least in our particular sample, we were able to reach 1057MHz without too much trouble.

What does all this mean? For one, thanks to the HD4200, AMD finally offers multi-channel LPCM audio output plus additional hardware video accelerated functions. As far as performance is concerned, expect a 5%~ 15% performance increase in games.

Tomshardware pretty much says there's almost no difference in the real world though as far as I can see:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...et,2381-4.html

[scaryjim]

Most of the reviews I've seen put the 4200 and 3200 level pegging in games - the only real difference is that 4200 has UVD 2 rather than UVD 1 which would probably make it slight favourite for an HTPC. There were rumours of a minix 785G mini-itx board but it doesn't seem to have made it to retail (and it would probably cost ~ £100 just for the mobo, anyway...)

For £150, you can get an Acer Aspire Revo from ebuyer: Atom 230, NVidia ION, 1GB RAM, Linux pre-installed on a 160GB HDD. No optical drive, obviously - but it sounds like that isn't an issue for you anyway. As long as you have playback software that can utilise hardware decoding (or CUDA, incidentally) it should handle 1080p playback easily.

[shadowmaster]

Most of the reviews I've seen put the 4200 and 3200 level pegging in games - the only real difference is that 4200 has UVD 2 rather than UVD 1 which would probably make it slight favourite for an HTPC. There were rumours of a minix 785G mini-itx board but it doesn't seem to have made it to retail (and it would probably cost ~ £100 just for the mobo, anyway...)

For £150, you can get an Acer Aspire Revo from ebuyer: Atom 230, NVidia ION, 1GB RAM, Linux pre-installed on a 160GB HDD. No optical drive, obviously - but it sounds like that isn't an issue for you anyway. As long as you have playback software that can utilise hardware decoding (or CUDA, incidentally) it should handle 1080p playback easily.

For £150 its very tempting, but I like the idea of being able to upgrade my HTPC in the future (ie add a drive, or a tuner card, change the cpu etc).

[llololloy]

Mini ITX are quite nice (ie atom etc..) but the cases cost a bloody fortune in comparison to micro atx (apart from the cheap ones that look naff).
Also, nvidia do fairly good IGP on some motherboards.
I have an asus m3n78-vm which is currently £47 on ebuyer. Not massively cheaper but even a few quid helps at this price. It uses ddr2 so might also help save a few quid on ram. Not sure how the nvidia 8200 compares to the amd 4200 but the last time I installed w7 on it it was a breeze and everything worked 1st time. (I chose that motherbaord as it had all the connections I wanted on the back (ie spdif and hdmi)

[shadowmaster]

Ok I think I've done a little more looking about and this is what I've come up

Antec Fusion Black + 430watt PSU £80
Samsung HD200HJ 200GB £15
MSI 785GTM-E45 785G £49
AMD Sempron 140 2.7ghz £26
1GB DDR2 Ram £10

Total cost £180

The only thing is the HD and case are 2nd hand but are in very good condition. I was going to go with the cube case but I like the look of the fusion more. I am also hoping I can unlock the 2nd core on the Sempron with the MSI board

[llololloy]

Fusion Black is a very nice AV case (I also have one). Runs very quiet with included fans / psu and is fairly easy to install stuff (little fiddly but nothing too bad).
Only draw back in my mind is the lcd. If it's the blue one I have then the back light is too blue all the time. The vfd on the silver version is much better but the case just doesn't look as nice (well, it blended better with my black amp and black telly). Still a good case, just warning you of a possible annoyance.
Look good choices anyhoo.
Is the sempron 140 a good cpu? Thinking of getting one for my home server as it's current athlon 3500 not only draws a biit too much power but also struggles to do anything when unraring / encoding.

[shadowmaster]

Fusion Black is a very nice AV case (I also have one). Runs very quiet with included fans / psu and is fairly easy to install stuff (little fiddly but nothing too bad).
Only draw back in my mind is the lcd. If it's the blue one I have then the back light is too blue all the time. The vfd on the silver version is much better but the case just doesn't look as nice (well, it blended better with my black amp and black telly). Still a good case, just warning you of a possible annoyance.
Look good choices anyhoo.
Is the sempron 140 a good cpu? Thinking of getting one for my home server as it's current athlon 3500 not only draws a biit too much power but also struggles to do anything when unraring / encoding.

Thanks for the heads up, I wanted black as my tv, stand and sofa are all black

I've read good things about the sempron 140. Even as a single core its more then capable as HTPC or work cpu. I am sorting hoping that I can unlock then 2nd core but if not then I am sure it will do the job.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/Sempron_140

[shadowmaster]

Good news, managed to build the system yesterday and at the same time I was able to unlock the 2nd core, so now I have AMD Athlon II X2 240. Not bad for £24

There is one problem though, I cant read the temperatures of the core, at single core I could but for some weird reason both cores are showing zero? Also what's the best stability test program, prime 95?

[Ulti]

I had the same problem as you, I couldn't monitor the temperature of the cores with any programs after unlocking but the single core temps were in the 20s when overclocked and didn't go above mid 30s at load with stock cooler so I figure that even as a dual core it shouldn't be over 30 at idle and 50 at load which is perfectly acceptable. However, these are just estimates though. I'm guessing you could use some maths/physics/electronics knowledge to actually find out the temperature though as the single core has a 45W TDP and as a dual core it has 65W TDP.

I generally use Prime95 on small FTTs for CPU stability, memtest for memory and Furmark for graphics card. If it passes all of those I then use OCCT for overall system stability (well CPU/memory is what OCCT is for but there is a graphics card test). You can also run 3DMark in loop but I've never tried that personally so I can't comment on that.

[shadowmaster]

I had the same problem as you, I couldn't monitor the temperature of the cores with any programs.

I generally use Prime95 on small FTTs for CPU stability, memtest for memory and Furmark for graphics card. If it passes all of those I then use OCCT for overall system stability.

Thats quite rigorous, I'll start off with prime 95 and see how it goes

[Ulti]

Well to be honest though I don't run them for anything long as others do, I run it for around 2-6 hours usually so I'm not so "stability minded" afterall

I was pretty stupid not to run memtest though, I've had program crashes for a while but seeing as Prime was stable and OCCT only crashed occasionally I thought my memory was stable. My HDD then got corrupted and I'm guessing it may have been due to unstable memory. Silly me. I doubt this will apply to you though as I don't see the benefit of overclocking memory for a HTPC, of course overclocking the processor may bring some benefits though.