Building HTPC Couple Questions?

[Hdale85]

Ok now I've built tons of pc's I'm not new to it. Basically I'm looking for the best sound card and video card option for my htpc? Now when i say best i mean in a reasonable price range. For the video card I'd like to stay under 300. For the sound card one option im looking at is 250 the other is like 110. With the video card i had a Nvidia 6800GT before and it worked pretty good. I'm curious to know if the new radeons hand deinterlaceing better then the nvidia's or what not? I also see the new ati's are starting to have HDMI and HDCP which is deffinately a plus. Here are the sound cards im concidering, and also the cpu. I want to use a dual core intel cpu. Whats a good motherboard for it for an HTPC? I'd like to have like 1 PCI-X 16 slot and the rest just standard PCI as i want to put in like 3 TV tuners and a PCI sound card and stuff.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16829156001

http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Delta1010LT-focus.html

and cpu http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819116238

Thanks for the help in advance

[aud19]

I'm not a big fan of Intel's (IMO AMD 64's are better performing/value etc) so I'm not the best person to recommend a particular board for Intel chips but I always and ONLY use Asus mobo's.

For sound cards not much beats M-audio for perfomance/dollar IMO.

Unless you need the 6800's speed for hardcore gaming, I'd recommend the 6600 with "silencer" heat sink. NVIDIA has the best video processing out there and the silent 6600 should work awesome for a HTPC solution :T Plus it's inexpensive enough that it won't hurt to upgrade to a 2nd or 3rd generation HDMI/HDCP card in a year or two

[Hdale85]

The only reason im going with an Intel cpu is because i dont really need the better game performance, and for dual core the intels are just way cheaper. That intel cpu i'm concidering has 2 3ghz cores and 4Mb of L2 cache (2mb per core) for me to get anything like that in an amd cpu would be a lot more money. Also the intels support ddr 2.

So the 6000's are still better then the new ati cards? Have you tested the new one or anything? The reason i ask is because i have a Radeon x700 Mobile on my laptop and i swear it looks better with movies then my 6800gt did, but im not sure if thats true it just looks better then i remember.

For sound cards i figured that was true. Only reason i was looking at the other one is it converts everything to DTS, Unless its in DD already but anything in like 2 channel or games or anything it converts to 5.1 DTS and my friend says it does real well.

I have a few more questions, About tv tuners. I want at least 1 HD tuner and 2 SD Tuners. Or possibly if there is a really nice HD tuner that will tune SD channels as well just do 3 HD tuners. And finally a case? I found one that im looking at which is pretty nice? But I'm not sure if it'll do what I want. I want to put in about 6 hard drives (500 gigs each = 3TB) maybe I'd be better off just building a server with like a P3 or somthing for the hard drives? This is the case im concidering right now.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16811163053

Thanks again.

[Chris D]

Wow, nice case, man! My dream PC case is also made by Silverstone, the model with the front display. That's a big case, but looks great. Hope it works out for you!

[Hdale85]

Yea thats a 600 dollar case and i dont really need that feature. Kind of a useless feature with the newer displays.

[Hdale85]

Hmm noone seems to look at this section of HTG much

[aud19]

It's been a while since I looked but Hauppauge was pretty much top rated among tuner cards.

http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/prods.html

I just don't like and will never buy Intel if I can help it :B I haven't checked recently (particularly the dual cores) but if the past is any indication of performance, AMD's "slower" CPU's probably outperform the "better spec'd" Intel's anyways :lol: Just look in to it in any case, it never hurts to have all the info :T

As for cases that one's nice though I've got a soft spot for the one Chris mentioned too...it's just so damn cool! 8) I'm also a fan of Ahanix cases :T

http://www.ahanix.com/ahanix_product_list.asp?cid=6

[Hdale85]

Now where do i find prices on the Ahanix cases? And the one chris mentioned is just out of my price range. and i dont need an LCD on the chassis

[aud19]

Now where do i find prices on the Ahanix cases? And the one chris mentioned is just out of my price range. and i dont need an LCD on the chassis

http://www.ahanix.com/w2b.asp

[Hdale85]

Hmmm only problem is they dont have one with 6 internal 3.5" bays i need it to hold 6 500 gig hard drives :B

[aud19]

I don't think you really want that. Six (even quiet) drives are going to be too loud IMO. Not too mention the heat they'll produce will require more (ie: noisier) cooling.

If you want to run a large RAID array your best off doing a client/server setup IMO. You can put a couple decent sized quiet drives in the client for the OS and immediately accessible data then have "noisy" RAID server off in another room. It's a nice way to slowly build your system too

[Hdale85]

Yeah I've conciderd that as well. Then id have room to add more hard drives later as well. Just throw like a 40 gig in the main HTPC and have everything else on the server.

[aud19]

Doug, have you heard anything about the new AM2 chips coming from AMD? They use DDR2 memory like you wanted....

Also, they're supposed to actually offer a performance upgrade over "regular" DDR memory (something Intel's DDR2 architecture never really did).

[Hdale85]

I had a P4 system a while back with DDR2 and the memmory benched faster then any DDR. I used sisoft sandra pro to bench the memmory. The problem with the new amd chips is going to be cost when they come out I'm going to spend like 600 bucks or more on hard drives so I'd like to get a nice processor for little money like around 200 bucks like the Pentium D. I'm sure the new AMD's will be nice but past experience says the cheapest will be 400-500 bucks

[aud19]

Well if nothing else the new chip should drive down the pricing on the current AMD dual core CPU's wchich IMO are still equal to/better than Intel's with flawed DDR2 architecture :

[Hdale85]

True but how far away is the release? I'd love to have a dual core AMD but then again if built right a pentium is usually more stable. But i dont know i'm not building right now anyways.

[aud19]

It's due beginning of June I believe.

More stable?!?! 8O :blink: You reading Intel released propaganda again?!?! :rofl:

[ThomasW]

I'll ask the not so obvious guestion. Why do you think you need that much CPU for a HTPC?

Standard DVD playback can be done with anything 450 MHz or faster.

[dyazdani]

I'll ask the not so obvious guestion. Why do you think you need that much CPU for a HTPC?

Standard DVD playback can be done with anything 450 MHz or faster.

I was wondering the same thing, unless it will serve double duty - gaming, etc.

[aud19]

I was assuming gaming, HD etc. Regardless I still say AMD oke:

[dyazdani]

I was assuming gaming, HD etc. Regardless I still say AMD oke:

I've never had an AMD processor, but I do prefer the nVidia chipsets for some reason on other things.

[aud19]

Big fan of both companies myself Danish :T

[ThomasW]

He's said it wasn't to be used for gaming....

I'm an AMD man myself.... :T

[Hdale85]

Well recording 3 programs at the same time and watching another can take up quite a bit of cpu power not to mention HD programming and other stuff

[aud19]

I still vote for a single core 3700+ socket 939 for now (should be plenty for what you want to do and then upgrade to a 4400+ (or better) when they drop further in price if you find you REALLY need more power

If you plan on doing a server system as well you could swap them as well....

[Hdale85]

That is true, of course i was just planning on useing a P3 for the server or somthing somthing off ebay but I dont know.