Bad idea to use old rig as HTPC?

I

ioric18

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 18, 2011
Messages
176
Hi guys,

Being a newbie in HTPC, I have a rather funny idea.
I have had my AMD3800+ A8N-SLI deluxe combo for 5 years, and I just upgraded my personal comp. I would rather not sell all these parts online and prefer to "fully utilize" it till the end of its day.
So if I plug in a new GPU and possibly a BG drive, can I still use this rig as my HTPC? I have the panasonic TC-P50S2, and this thing has 3 HDMI, and couple of other audio/video ports. I'm also thinking of using this as my media (movies, songs) center.
Any thoughts?
 
I run an A8N-SLI deluxe with an AMD 3200, 1GB DDR400, Soundblaster 5.1 and an 8400GS. I've got Ubuntu 10.04 with XBMC on it and it runs flawlessly. Despite the 2GHz single core CPU I can play 1080p h.264 smooth as butter with the 8400GS and VDPAU. Very little work is required to set something like this up.

One stumbling point I ran into is that the CK804 onboard audio chip the A8N has is not well supported under Linux. You may have better luck with Windows. Since I wanted to stick with Ubuntu I picked up the soundblaster and have it outputting stereo. Haven't tried 5.1 in my setup as I only have two speakers.
 
From an ability perspective your old system has more then enough power to be a very capable HTPC. You can get a cheap graphics card (my personal preference is the low end AMD cards) and a Blu-Ray drive and have a very nice setup.
 
If you're not encoding and watching at the same time your old build is more than enough to handle the task. Just get a good GPU and you'll be fine (you don't have to spend a lot either).
 
Thanks for all the response. Sounds like my "budget plan" would work...=)
 
Oline61 said:
I run an A8N-SLI deluxe with an AMD 3200, 1GB DDR400, Soundblaster 5.1 and an 8400GS. I've got Ubuntu 10.04 with XBMC on it and it runs flawlessly. Despite the 2GHz single core CPU I can play 1080p h.264 smooth as butter with the 8400GS and VDPAU. Very little work is required to set something like this up.

One stumbling point I ran into is that the CK804 onboard audio chip the A8N has is not well supported under Linux. You may have better luck with Windows. Since I wanted to stick with Ubuntu I picked up the soundblaster and have it outputting stereo. Haven't tried 5.1 in my setup as I only have two speakers.
Click to expand...

I have the Audigy platinum for this rig. Didn't know this card would come in handy after 5 years! Good deal.
 
kac77 said:
If you're not encoding and watching at the same time your old build is more than enough to handle the task. Just get a good GPU and you'll be fine (you don't have to spend a lot either).
Click to expand...

Yeah, I'll probably use it only for watching anyways. So I'm good.
 
Yea that setup as fine. Like what everyone else said, get a low end GPU that can handle hardware decoding of videos and you should be set.
 
ioric18 said:
I have the Audigy platinum for this rig. Didn't know this card would come in handy after 5 years! Good deal.
Click to expand...

If you use an AMD HD5000 or HD6000 series card, the audigy platinum would be doing nothing in your rig but taking up space and creating heat. It would add nothing.
 
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