Phantom Myth HTPC Project

[Kevin P]

I've decided to build an HTPC. It will act as a HD DVR and DVD player for starters. It will also feed music to my whole house audio system. It will be Linux based, running MythTV.

Here's what I'm thinking of using:

Antec Overture II case



ASUS P5B-E ATX Motherboard



Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 Conroe 2.4GHz 4M shared L2 Cache LGA 775 Processor



Kingston ValueRAM 1GB (2 x 512MB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel



Samsung SpinPoint T Series HD321KJ 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive



M-AUDIO 9900-40768-00 7.1 Channels 24-bit 192KHz PCI Interface Sound Card



ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 7 Pro CPU Cooler



And the two pieces I've ordered already:

pcHDTV HD-5500 Hi Definition Television Card



MSI NX7600GT Diamond Plus GeForce 7600GT 256MB 128-bit GDDR3 VIVO PCI Express x16 HDCP Video Card

[aud19]

You've gone to the dark side of Intel!!!!! :E

[whoaru99]

Looks like a lot of good stuff. Dunno about that mega-cooler though unless you are intending to OC by quite a lot.

Also, there is a new Core 2 chip coming soon, the 4300(?) that is supposed to OC very well and turn in some really awesome numbers for less $$. There is a review on Tom's Hardware or AnandTech, don't remember which....

I ended up going with a Gigabyte P965-S3.

[Kevin P]

Yep, Jason, went Intel for this build. I hear it does MPEG encoding/decoding better.

As for the mega-cooler, bigger = quieter. I don't want any tiny turbos in my HT gear cabinet. Also, in my experience, stock HSFs suck eggs in terms of cooling performance, even if you don't OC.

[whoaru99]

That makes sense about being quieter. Never have had problems with stock coolers though and I've done a couple 20-30% OCs.

Guess I'll find out soon though. I'm doing a "budget" system and hoping to take a Celeron D (Cedar Mills core) to 4gig or more if I can - at least until the higher Core 2 Duos and or Core 2 Quads come down in price.

[Kevin D]

Kevin,

Check out my last FS add in the pawn shop. I've got a HTPC built around that same case that I need to get rid of. I'll be happy to part it out if you wanted some of the pieces from it.

Kevin D.

[aud19]

Well other than that I CAN'T STAND Intel chips and prefer ASUS vid cards over MSI...looks like some quality gear the Kevin :T

I'd also go with the Nvida 7600 card but one of the "silent" Asus units myself but that's my own stubborn problem

[Kevin P]

I like the Asus vid cards but they don't have HDMI out, or HDCP AFAIK. The MSI does. They're basically just nVidia cards with either Asus or MSI labels slapped on them anyway. Maybe differences in the drivers, but since this will be a Linux box, it'll be using the nVidia Linux drivers anyway.

I'm an AMD fanboy too but Intel has caught up with the Core 2 Duo Conroe chips. Besides, I have to say I built one box with an Intel chip, right? :lol:

[Chris D]

Awesome, dude. You guys are still beyond my level, but I'm watching with interest and hope to learn something.

[dyazdani]

Cool!

[Kevin P]

Ok, I've had the machine assembled for almost a week now, still working on getting all the pieces parts working together smoothly before I install it in my HT cabinet, but I figure I'd post my impressions so far...

I had to make some hardware changes from the parts I speced out originally.

The Freezer 7 Pro CPU cooler was too tall for the HTPC case cover to fit, so I ended up using the stock Intel cooler. This seems to be working fine, I guess Intel's stock coolers are better than AMD's (I always use aftermarket coolers for AMD chips for that reason).

Next, the M-Audio sound card didn't have any working drivers for Linux. So I yanked it and got a cheapo CompUSA sound card which worked right off the bat. I'll use the mobo's onboard sound for HTPC since it has coax and optical outputs, and the 2nd sound card to stream music throughout the house (using mpd daemon in Linux).

Last, the fan on the MSI video card is noisy, so I ordered this:

ZALMAN VF700-CU 2 Ball VGA COOLER



I also added these pieces:

Microsoft Optical Desktop Elite for Bluetooth M54-00013 2-Tone USB Standard



Microsoft Media Center 2005 Remote and USB Sensor



As for software, I have installed:

Ubuntu Edgy Eft - Desktop Linux Distro with GNOME
MythTV 0.20
XMame for classic games
Supporting software (MySQL, Apache for MythWeb, mpd music daemon to stream background music, DVD rippers/players, etc.)

Here's some screen shots. They are large, so I have them here as links:

Main Screen

Recordings

A screen shot of an HDTV feed

Weather info

Games (Galaga shown)

I still have to get the remote working, hook up the Bluetooth keyboard/mouse, and get the beast into the HT cabinet and get it hooked into the system (with component video and SPDIF audio).

[aud19]

Funny, I've never had any problems with AMD heat sinks.... :scratchhead:

Noisy vid-card fans is also why I LOVE the silent Asus cards I mentioned

Does the MCE remote work with Linux...? :scratchhead:

Too bad about the M-audio card

Any pics?

[Kevin P]

I built an box for a friend of mine with an Athlon64 3500+ (actually, the one out of my first Phantom Stalker PC). The chip idled in the 35C range in the Stalker with a Thermaltake tower. When I put it in the new machine with the stock AMD HSF, it idled closer to 50C, a bit too warm for my liking. I then bought a Arctic Cooling HSF for that machine, put it in, and dropped the temps like 15C. So, in my experience, aftermarket for AMD is lots better.

With the Core 2 Duo, I get about the same temps with the stocker as I did with the Arctic Cooling unit.

Asus should sell their VGA heatsink separately. I went with MSI since it has HDMI out.

The LIRC drivers in Linux are reading the remote successfully. I just have to get MythTV to talk to it. Maybe tonight or tomorrow night.

I took a couple pics but haven't had a chance to upload them. I'll take more once the box is finished and ready to go into the cabinet.

[ekkoville]

Look's awesome Kevin. Curious how the HDTV tuner card decodes the HD content from the cable/satalite, whichever you use? Also, does MythTV work in a PC based or Mac OS X machine?

[Hdale85]

MythTV is a linux app. I'm not sure if it will work on the PowerPC based linux os but the newer macs run x86 OS's so I'm sure it would work on those.

[Kevin P]

Look's awesome Kevin. Curious how the HDTV tuner card decodes the HD content from the cable/satalite, whichever you use? Also, does MythTV work in a PC based or Mac OS X machine?

I'm using Comcast cable. The card can decode the unencrypted digital channels, which basically translates to the network HD channels, the simulcast digital SD network channels, and some of the junk channels (religious and shopping channels). For some reason I can't get WMUR-DT though. They must have it encrypted, even though they're not supposed to. I can get WCVB-DT though.

It can also pick up the analog NTSC channels.

As for Apple OSX, the frontend can run on it but the backend has to run on a PC running Linux. So you can watch recorded or live shows on a Mac but you'll need a Linux box to handle recording duties.

[Kevin P]

Ok, at long last, here's the pics of the box...

The innards. I put a Zalman HSF on the video card, which isn't shown in this pic.


The box




The box, installed in the cabinet


Rear view, showing connections


I had to install a fan to keep the inside of the cabinet cool


And the requisite BLING!!! stickers...

[aud19]

Looking good Kevin :T Everything up and running on it? Running fairly quietly?

[Danbry39]

Awesome, dude. You guys are still beyond my level, but I'm watching with interest and hope to learn something.

Me too, but I'm probably just as far behind Chris as he is behind some of the rest of you. :T

[eddiespaghetti]

I've been toying with the notion to build a Linux HTPC foe a few weeks now. This post has saved me a great deal of time researching - thanks for the parts list!

In retrospect, is there anything you would have done differently - different parts, different process?