Critique My Build please

C14N

Hi all. I've been making plans to order a HTPC. I have the following proposed setup:

I had originally planned a 3.0 GHz AMD CPU but they're gone. 2.8 isn't much of a drop anyway though.

Here's a link. Clicky.

I'm not sure about the network card or the sound card.

I want to be able to set up a LAN with 3 PCs, one of them being this one so I can play games. I also need this to be able to connect to my router. Can anyone tell me if this will work?

For sound card, I was planning on connecting the PC to an AV reciever via optical/SPDIF so I can get 5.1 surround. Will this card do it and do it well?

Oh and I'm not sure about that Blu-ray player either, I get the feeling that it doesn't make much which BR I go for difference but maybe I'm wrong...

BigEejit

What are you connecting it to? And what sort of games were you planning on playing? is this going to live under the TV and need to be silent?

I'd say a 600watt PSU is way too much for that setup, a 400 would probably do it. Try and find something low noise, if it isnt going to be on all the time I wouldnt worry too much about it being 80+. The Antec case is not very big, your motherboard probably comes boxed with two sata cables so you may not need that sata cable in your order.

If you went with one of the AMD 780GX or 790GX boards you would get crossfire going with that radeon board. They also have HDMI ports on the motherboard. Something like a http://www.ebuyer.com/product/160867 (DFI Lanparty LPJR790GX-M2RS) has optical and coaxial 8 channel sound outputs so you could lose the Creative board as well.

That cpu isnt going to win any contests either, if going lowish processing power you may as well go lower energy use and get a AMD 5050e. Its a bit slower (2.6 ghz versus 2.8Ghz) but has a 45 watt tdp versus 65 watt for the 5400+

No video capture board? I also recommend the Scythe Shuriken low profile cooler (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/148079).

From my experience, the fan on a graphics card is one of the noisiest things in the computer, if you cannot do without the card could you look for a passively cooled one? Might have to drop down graphics performance a couple of notches, ASUS HD 3650 Silent 512MB DDR2 Dual DVI Out AGP Graphics Card http://www.ebuyer.com/product/161925

C14N

BigEejit wrote: »

What are you connecting it to? And what sort of games were you planning on playing? is this going to live under the TV and need to be silent?

It will live under the TV alright. I don't need absolute silence, a low hum is acceptable. It'll be about 10 feet from the couch anyway so perfect silence isn't necessary. I shouldn't be able to hear it over speakers. Games, well mostly stuff like Team Fortress, CoD4, that sort of thing. I'm not sure about what AV reciever I'll use yet. Any sub €400 suggestions would be appreciated. I'm wondering should I plug the HDMI cable into the AV reciever and then plug that to the TV or would a direct connection be better?

BigEejit wrote: »

I'd say a 600watt PSU is way too much for that setup, a 400 would probably do it. Try and find something low noise, if it isnt going to be on all the time I wouldnt worry too much about it being 80+. The Antec case is not very big, your motherboard probably comes boxed with two sata cables so you may not need that sata cable in your order.

Are you sure 400w would be enough? I'm not doubting you, I just want to be sure. I forgot that the MB will probably come with cables, I'll remove that from the list. Do you know any good quiet power supplies? If not I guess I'll have to dig around and find one myself.

BigEejit wrote: »

If you went with one of the AMD 780GX or 790GX boards you would get crossfire going with that radeon board. They also have HDMI ports on the motherboard. Something like a http://www.ebuyer.com/product/160867 (DFI Lanparty LPJR790GX-M2RS) has optical and coaxial 8 channel sound outputs so you could lose the Creative board as well.

I don't want to bother with Crossfire or SLi tbh. I can easily do without the extra cost involved, it's fairly unnecessary for me. I also have no intention of ditching the Creative card because I want high sound quality.

BigEejit wrote: »

That cpu isnt going to win any contests either, if going lowish processing power you may as well go lower energy use and get a AMD 5050e. Its a bit slower (2.6 ghz versus 2.8Ghz) but has a 45 watt tdp versus 65 watt for the 5400+

That's not a massive wattage difference to me. I think I'll just stick with the 2.8. I don't see what you mean by lowish processing power, 2.8 is generally considered fast, although I know it's not a quad. I don't really need the quad core to be honest, I've heard that not many programmes even make the most of the second 2 cores.

BigEejit wrote: »

No video capture board? I also recommend the Scythe Shuriken low profile cooler (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/148079).

What do you mean no video capture board?

That's a nice looking cooler but will it fit? I still have nightmares about fitting a Zahlman heatsink in my own PC and it was a lot of hassle.

BigEejit wrote: »

From my experience, the fan on a graphics card is one of the noisiest things in the computer, if you cannot do without the card could you look for a passively cooled one? Might have to drop down graphics performance a couple of notches, ASUS HD 3650 Silent 512MB DDR2 Dual DVI Out AGP Graphics Card http://www.ebuyer.com/product/161925

Hmm, looking on ebuyer today I was thinking more of upping the GPU performance. I was looking at this XFX GeForce 9800GT which comes in at under £100. In all honestly I'm not bothered whether it's ATi or nVidia, it's just that nVidia is usually the more expensive of the two. I don't personally think GPUs are that noisy. I have a Radeon 4870 in my own PC and it's relatively quiet. It's the fans that make most of the noise in my experience.

Oh and any word on the network card?

Thanks.

BigEejit

C14N wrote: »

It will live under the TV alright. I don't need absolute silence, a low hum is acceptable. It'll be about 10 feet from the couch anyway so perfect silence isn't necessary. I shouldn't be able to hear it over speakers. Games, well mostly stuff like Team Fortress, CoD4, that sort of thing. I'm not sure about what AV reciever I'll use yet. Any sub €400 suggestions would be appreciated. I'm wondering should I plug the HDMI cable into the AV reciever and then plug that to the TV or would a direct connection be better?

Well, thats definitely personal preference, Avforums seems to have a lot of people using Onkyo TSXR606, nice looking machine (http://www.richersounds.com/showproduct.php?cda=showproduct&pid=ONKY-TXSR606-BLK)

Are you sure 400w would be enough? I'm not doubting you, I just want to be sure. I forgot that the MB will probably come with cables, I'll remove that from the list. Do you know any good quiet power supplies? If not I guess I'll have to dig around and find one myself.

Well if you break it down for each item in the pc, motherboard+ cpu+ ram = less than 130 watts at most, graphics card another 100 watts at the most, other bits and pieces = 20 watts. Power supplies are at their most efficient in the middle of their stated wattage usually. But if you are planning on adding a heap of stuff into the htpc later on maybe a bigger psu is prudent.

I don't want to bother with Crossfire or SLi tbh. I can easily do without the extra cost involved, it's fairly unnecessary for me. I also have no intention of ditching the Creative card because I want high sound quality.

I'll be honest and say I could not tell the difference between onboard realtek 8 channel audio and a Terratec 8 channel usb jobby (dont know model, was at a friends place)

That's not a massive wattage difference to me. I think I'll just stick with the 2.8. I don't see what you mean by lowish processing power, 2.8 is generally considered fast, although I know it's not a quad. I don't really need the quad core to be honest, I've heard that not many programmes even make the most of the second 2 cores.

Ah, thats what I was getting at, it wasnt a triple or quad core and so a plain old dual core is probably considered lower procssing power. Also the Athlon line of processors does not have on-die L3 cache as far as i know that is only on the Phenom chips. Supposed to make a good bit of a difference.

What do you mean no video capture board?

That's a nice looking cooler but will it fit? I still have nightmares about fitting a Zahlman heatsink in my own PC and it was a lot of hassle.

Video capture card like a Hauppauge HVR 1300 (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/121758) for recording tv stuff.
The top of the scythe shuriken is 7cm above the surface of my motherboard when fitted, and considering that the Antec Remote has 120mm fans in the side of it I think we can be fairly sure it will fit, unless of course you are using 6 cm stand offs to mount your mobo

Hmm, looking on ebuyer today I was thinking more of upping the GPU performance. I was looking at this XFX GeForce 9800GT which comes in at under £100. In all honestly I'm not bothered whether it's ATi or nVidia, it's just that nVidia is usually the more expensive of the two. I don't personally think GPUs are that noisy. I have a Radeon 4870 in my own PC and it's relatively quiet. It's the fans that make most of the noise in my experience.

Well if you dont mind a bit of a hum and need gaming performance then pick any that you like. I dont know if you can connect that graphics card to your telly though.

Oh and any word on the network card?

I used a wireless pci card before and it was alright, but 108mb is not the speed you get, you'd be lucky to see 1/3 of that in the real world. Your mobo should have a gigabit port on it though.

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I have to agree with BigEejit - got for the 2.6GHz e-series processors. You can passively cool them. Also, I definitely recommend a passively cooled GPU. The 120mm fans on the side/back of the case will have a low hum and that's really all you need with this is sitting under your TV!

C14N

BigEejit wrote: »

Well, thats definitely personal preference, Avforums seems to have a lot of people using Onkyo TSXR606, nice looking machine (http://www.richersounds.com/showproduct.php?cda=showproduct&pid=ONKY-TXSR606-BLK)

Yeah I was looking at the new 607 just a minute ago. I'll leave that discussion for now though.

BigEejit wrote: »

Well if you break it down for each item in the pc, motherboard+ cpu+ ram = less than 130 watts at most, graphics card another 100 watts at the most, other bits and pieces = 20 watts. Power supplies are at their most efficient in the middle of their stated wattage usually. But if you are planning on adding a heap of stuff into the htpc later on maybe a bigger psu is prudent.

Well I don't plan on adding stuff in. Uprades in the future perhaps but if I'm going to get upgrades I can get a new PSU too. I don't know what brands are good for PSUs though:o Any tips?

BigEejit wrote: »

I'll be honest and say I could not tell the difference between onboard realtek 8 channel audio and a Terratec 8 channel usb jobby (dont know model, was at a friends place)

Yeah a lot of people don't but I can hear a definite difference between on board sound and dedicated sound myself.

BigEejit wrote: »

Ah, thats what I was getting at, it wasnt a triple or quad core and so a plain old dual core is probably considered lower procssing power. Also the Athlon line of processors does not have on-die L3 cache as far as i know that is only on the Phenom chips. Supposed to make a good bit of a difference.

Hmm, well ebuyer have stopped selling the 2.8s for some reason anyway. Guess I'll go with 2.6. Was this the one you were talking about? I don't want to go triple or quad btw because it's quite expensive and I don't really need it. The only reason I'm choosing AMD over Intel is because of price.

BigEejit wrote: »

Video capture card like a Hauppauge HVR 1300 (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/121758) for recording tv stuff.
The top of the scythe shuriken is 7cm above the surface of my motherboard when fitted, and considering that the Antec Remote has 120mm fans in the side of it I think we can be fairly sure it will fit, unless of course you are using 6 cm stand offs to mount your mobo

I was more getting at will it fit with the RAM and GPU and everything? That's where my problems occured before.

As for TV recording. I've heard about it but I'm not so sure. I have Sky+ anyway and I've heard that you can only get free-to-air channels with a TV card and that setting it up takes a bit of work too. Any opinions on that?

BigEejit wrote: »

Well if you dont mind a bit of a hum and need gaming performance then pick any that you like. I dont know if you can connect that graphics card to your telly though.

You can connect any graphics card to your telly;) You just need a DVI to HDMI adaptor, which usually comes boxed and if it doesn't then I have one anyway. My only concern is whether it will fit on a MicroATX board.

BigEejit wrote: »

I used a wireless pci card before and it was alright, but 108mb is not the speed you get, you'd be lucky to see 1/3 of that in the real world. Your mobo should have a gigabit port on it though.

Yeah I know, I think it means megabit as opposed to megabyte. Anyway the only thing is that my broadband router is too far away for a wired connection and I want it on my home network.

BigEejit

C14N wrote: »

Well I don't plan on adding stuff in. Uprades in the future perhaps but if I'm going to get upgrades I can get a new PSU too. I don't know what brands are good for PSUs though:o Any tips?

Seasonic, OCZ (probably made by someone else), Antec ... usually you get what you pay for.

Hmm, well ebuyer have stopped selling the 2.8s for some reason anyway. Guess I'll go with 2.6. Was this the one you were talking about? I don't want to go triple or quad btw because it's quite expensive and I don't really need it. The only reason I'm choosing AMD over Intel is because of price.

Thats the single core one, the one I was looking at is http://www.ebuyer.com/product/149212

I was more getting at will it fit with the RAM and GPU and everything? That's where my problems occured before.

It fits fine on my motherboard and that has a highish northbridge and one on the power components as well. Only way to be sure is to do some searching.

As for TV recording. I've heard about it but I'm not so sure. I have Sky+ anyway and I've heard that you can only get free-to-air channels with a TV card and that setting it up takes a bit of work too. Any opinions on that?

Its easy to set up, lots of online resources. Most capture cards use the same set of components so in a current OS you may already have drivers.

You can connect any graphics card to your telly;) You just need a DVI to HDMI adaptor, which usually comes boxed and if it doesn't then I have one anyway. My only concern is whether it will fit on a MicroATX board.

I'd make sure about that, especially if it is boxed with you graphics card or if you have to buy one. Best bet would be to buy a card with a hdmi out, cover all bets.

Yeah I know, I think it means megabit as opposed to megabyte. Anyway the only thing is that my broadband router is too far away for a wired connection and I want it on my home network.

hehe, I was taking into account the megabits :pac: you will be quite lucky to get 3 megabytes/sec streaming data across your wireless network. A lot less if there are a lot of competing networks in your area.

C14N

BigEejit wrote: »

Seasonic, OCZ (probably made by someone else), Antec ... usually you get what you pay for.

Okay I have a bit of a problem. If I buy a Micro ATX case do I have to get a MATX PSU? If it is then there are only 2 on ebuyer and they're not great.

BigEejit wrote: »

Thats the single core one, the one I was looking at is http://www.ebuyer.com/product/149212

Oh yeah, thanks.

BigEejit wrote: »

It fits fine on my motherboard and that has a highish northbridge and one on the power components as well. Only way to be sure is to do some searching.

Okay, good to know.

BigEejit wrote: »

Its easy to set up, lots of online resources. Most capture cards use the same set of components so in a current OS you may already have drivers.

I'll be using Vista. I'll see about it. Can I do it with Sky HD?

BigEejit wrote: »

I'd make sure about that, especially if it is boxed with you graphics card or if you have to buy one. Best bet would be to buy a card with a hdmi out, cover all bets.

Yeah I already have an adaptor which I've tested so it's good.

BigEejit wrote: »

hehe, I was taking into account the megabits :pac: you will be quite lucky to get 3 megabytes/sec streaming data across your wireless network. A lot less if there are a lot of competing networks in your area.

Well if it's good enough for LAN then it's good enough for me.

Edit: Okay, gonna have to re-think things a little since the Antec Fusion cases are sold out.

Some other options are the Antec Fusion Max Veris which is a bit bigger as it's ATX but it still looks pretty good. I also quite like this one although it's not a brand name so hmm dunno. This Aplus one is nice too but I'm not familiar with the name. Then the last one is this Silverstone Grandia case which looks nice and has a built in card reader.