The new and improved HTPC

[Lex]

Well, you may recall I had a heat problem with my new HTPC based on Abit/XP-1900 CPU right? Well, trying to resolve that, I bought this cheezy fan heatsink assembly from Best Buy along with a couple of cyclone fans. Well, the worst happened, I actually chipped the CPU putting the heatsink and fan on the dang thing.

It did start up with it, next thing I know the whole system went dead, nothing. Needless to say I was PISSED!

If you know me at all, you know that I tend not to let things like this get to me, right? Wrong! lol. Solution?

Castillo HTPC cabinet

Enermax 431 watt EXTERNAL power supply (sits on back side of first shelf down from top on back side of AV cabinet.

CPU Case fan (replaces original 300 watt power supply opening)

1 Cyclone blower PCI slot fan to get hot air out.

Asus A7V333 Motherboard RAID board, raid currently disabled. For future expansion. On-board audio also disabled.

New AMD Athlon XP-1900

512 meg PC-2700 RAM

Radeon 7500 graphics

40 gig primary drive, 7200 RPM Maxtor
80 gig secondary drive, 7200 RPM Maxtor

Turtle Beach 5.1 card

Intel NIC

ZOOM 56K modem

Photo shoot of the guts:










Now for the skinny. motherboard/memory/CPU combo is fast, damn fast! PC-2700 memory appears to be the stuff in this Via 333 based computer. Initially, DVD playback had the same video freeze problem as the Abit system did. I said, man, this can't be! This is a helluva computer by all standards. Searching for a software solution, I said hmm, I got this free power DVD disc, so I will load it up. Even though Jon said I was locked into using ATI's software. I was desperate. First thing it asked me, do you want to speed up your DVD Rom? I said hell yes! EMI mod or some such I think it called it. Well, what do you know, after that mod was made, my DVD playback using the Radeo software straightened right up. Still have a few audio dropouts, but overall, playback is quite nice. Time to try another movie though. It did freeze up late last night on Shrek.

Lots to check out yet, including trying to download from Tivo, but soon I will try more stuff with it.

Long story short, I spent a bloody fortune, but not only do I now have an HTPC. I also have a powerful backup computer for any other use.

Lex

[JonMarsh]

Hi Lex,

Glad to hear your HTPC project is coming along.

Maybe we misunderstood each other; you're not locked into the ATI playback software (lot's of kinds will work; I have PowerDVD 4 on one system, and Ravisent Cinemaster on another), but the ATI software will give you the best playback quality, especially using your RGB outputs.

If you use PowerDVD 4, be sure to check the video setup. Without hardware decoding turned on, (requires a video driver supporting DXVA), the software only playback is somewhat grainy and not as clear and sharp. Best performance will be with hardware video support turned on. BUT, there is also a bug with the PowerDVD player, it often resets the gamma level with the ATI drivers to a very low value, so scenes are dark in the hardware overlay. If that interaction happens with the driver you're using, the only workaround that I've seen is to start the DVD, stop it, open the video properties, and adjust the video overlay gamma to the center. Then restart your DVD.

System shouldn't be locking while playing movies. Check to be sure you have the most recent Via 4in1 drivers installed, other possiblity is DVD-ROM. Some brands have somewhat flaky firmware- I stay away from Toshiba's for that reason; have had best results with Pioneer, pretty consistent results with Acer, Hitachi, and Sony.

-Jon




Earth First!
_______________________________
We'll screw up the other planets later....

[Bing Fung]

Lex you are a funny man, nothing like throwing money at a problem in an attempt to make it go away :LOL:

Good to hear that you are starting to sort things out, albeit in some haphazard fashion.

I was talking to my buddie Cam and he was having the same lipsync problems with his HTPC with Radeon and the Sharp 9000 DLP projector as well. He solved his problems by buying a low cost Panasonic DVD player with progressive scan (model RP-53...something?) He could not be happier. He stated that the image is much nicer than it ever has been and the kicker is it flat out works.




Bing

[Lex]

Well, yeah, that's true. I did do that Bing, but the problem did go away. I had to do something, or just sit there with a PC that didn't work. Simply, I have become an Asus guy. That makes 3 Asus boards. All different, and all performing well. I knew you were gonna have a good laugh. This project didn't turn out as I wanted, or expected. I wasn't thrilled by what I had to do either, but I had to see something for my prior investment besides a pile of parts.

Now granted, the external power supply may be "out there". But it works, and gets lots of cool air into my system unit. The fact it's a rather large supply gave me fairly long cables on it, making this a possibility.

Oh well, live and learn, and I did learn from this.

Lex

[Bing Fung]

Sorry man, didn't mean to make fun of you

Hey don't apologize for it Lex, I wish I had the money to throw at problems to make them go away....

I wasn't laughing at your problem, I was laughing at your solution for that is a common joke with my golfing buddies. This one person is a real high roller and I always kid him about this. I always do an impersonation of him waving a downward facing palm and saying "Please..... What do I have to pay you to make the problem go away...?" ..heheh

Asus make excellent boards and I'm contemplating the A7V333 my self.

Nice rig!




Bing

[Lex]

Jon, thanks for the tips. Indeed, it is a Toshiba DVD player. I have a Pioneer slot loader not being used, but the case, as you know is made for a tray type player. To put a slot load in it, will really deface it. I guess I could sell them both, and buy a pioneer tray type maybe. I may just wait for DVD-RW to come down a bit more, and throw one of those in there.

Bing, thanks, it is a nice machine now, and seems very fast.

Lex