Newbie - Question about simple and cheap PC Setup

[uffe_graa]

Hello-

I'm fairly new to xLobby and this home theater PC stuff.

Right now I've got all my MP3s and about 2 dozen DVDs on my hard drive.

What I'm trying to accomplish with my first setup is just to get all my music and movies on there and then use this PC to run this stuff exclusively in my living room.

In the future, I'll probably want to do more and eventually set up a home theater room.

Anyway, at the moment, I'm just using a laptop with an external HD for this, but would like to have a desktop permanently connected to my stereo and TV (the TV it will be connected to is a 43" HD Plasma) for this.

My question is this: What do I need to focus on when building this PC? It won't be used for gaming, mostly just for running music and movies through xLobby.

I want this PC to have the performance where it really matters, but not much else.

I should probably mention that my movies are ripped to .ISO files so the PC won't be controlling a DVD player or anything.

Any suggestions?

Thanks a lot for any advice you can offer.

-Uffe

[Marbles_00]

I'm sure you will be getting all sorts of suggestions, but as a base, I'd be looking at an Intel CPU of at least 3Gig or higher (sorry not to mention AMD processors as I've never actually used them, so I can't suggest a good size). Reason being is that if you use ffdshow to upscale your DVD's or plan on doing any extra filter/processing of HD signals, then you want the horsepower to do it in realtime. From what I have read, the 3Gig is a minimum.

At least...again as a min. you would want 1Gig of RAM. More the better.

The video card you would want to make sure that it can output 16x9 resolutions (most of the newer nVidia or ATI cards can do it). I don't think there is a reason to use nVidia SLI technology or get the top line ATI card (unless you can afford it). A min. here would be an ATI 9500, or nVidia 5200 (I have used a ATI 9550 with good results). These cards can output to widescreen resolutions, but are on the low scale for playing back HD content, but on the flip side, they're cheap off ebay.

If the Plasma has a HDMI input then you could use a DVI to HDMI cable. Otherwise you could go DVI to DVI (if that is what is on the plasma), or a dongle/transcoder from DVI/VGA to component video.

For audio, most motherboards have adequate digital outputs to get you started.

For hard drives...get as large as you can...and preferably SATA. I say use large drives because if you wish, later on, you could set up a NAS system and swap the drives over to that, then just network your HTPC for music/movie content. A good NAS thread can be found here.

Hope this was a good starter.

[lpg]

I am in the AMD camp. I would spend the money on the processor and memory. I have a dual core AMD 4600x2 that works extremely well and I am able to scale the DVD to 1920x1080 with no problem.

Sound card - you could probably go with what comes off od the motherboard. Make sure it has an SPDIF port so you can send it to your reciever. Check to see if the reciever has optical or digital coax input and match it to the output type of the mother board.

Video
If you are not playing games do not spend the money on SLI. Make sure the video card supports Vista to futureproof alittle bit. If these are too expensive just make sure the card has the right port on it to connect to your TV. Plasmas and LCD's usually use DVI Rear projections sometimes have VGA. Before I leave this point it is important to understand what is the max input resolution your TV supports. As an example my DVI port of my Samsung only supports 720p but the VGA port supports 1080p. Gigabyte, BFG, EGA, ATI all produce good quality cards. Some cards are even fanless (slient).

Get a large slient drive. Newegg has a 500gb samsung OEM drive for $150.

Do not skimp on the powersupply. Check websites like: http://www.avsforum.com or http://www.slientpc.com for makes and models.

Avsform has a dedicated HTPC forum that is great and there is a tremedous amount of information and support available.

Many of us have accomplished what you are setting out to do. So you are not out on the ledge by yourself.

Keep the questions comming

Good Luck and Welcome.

[cioffij]

I agree with lpg. I have only owned Intel processors until I built my latest PC. I too, have the AMD dual core 4600, and although I'm not using it fo Xlobby now, there is a big difference in all the other stuff I do with it. Very noticably faster.

The reason I recommend it is the value. I recommend that people don't buy the latest-greatest. Look for the knee of the curve. The prices on these dual cores have dropped because of Intel's latest release. Very good value to be had here.

So I recommend you also get something that runs quiet and cool. AMD dual core, 2G memory, LOTS of storage so you can BACKUP your stuff. Mirroring is better than RAID in my opinion and you may only need two drives. I have two 500 GB drives, mirrored. Then I partitioned them and made one partition just for backups. In your case, I'd do two drives and use an image backup such as Ghost, or get 3 drives and mirror the OS drive and backup to the third.

Overkill? Wait until you have a drive failure and are presented with the pleasant chore of ripping ALL your DVDs again.

on-board sound is OK on all the high-end motherboards I've found, whether you build or buy.

For video, you need to be able to drive two displays. If you plan to play compressed HDTV shows, such as can be downloaded and if you will be playing them on a monitor or TV that supports true 720P, 1080i, or 1080p, you will need some horsepower. If you don't then you'll get jumpy or pixelated playback. Ripped DVDs present no problem with any decent video card, though. But if you're spending $1000 or more on this setup, why skimp on the video? Again, something like the NVIDIA 7600 series is on the right part of the price curve, in my opinion.

Make sure it has the right connector for your plasma display. That is, if your plasma TV has DVI, obviously you need that. But also consider what your second display might be, because once you get going with this, you will see that you need it. You can't just use the TV.

Get a reliable (brand name) DVD drive.

As I said in another thread, I like the Antec case with many low-speed fans. Virtually silent. If you get one with lots of fans, it HAS to be large (120mm?) fans with speed controls on them or it'll sound like a bloomin air conditioner.

Don't forget a card reader for your photos.

Lastly, ripping to ISO means you will have up to 8G files. You might want to reconsider using DIVX or something. more like 1G per movie.

Jim