Maximum PC's HTPC. Opinions?

I was just wondering what people thought of the HTPC that Maximum PC recently put together.

Here's the article.

It seems mostly solid to me. I am questioning the lack of a discreet audio card and the reliance on wireless connectivity, however.

Is anyone else using the core i3 to pull the weight of both video and audio? Does it have the muscle?

I built a very, very similar HTPC a few months ago for close to half that price. Been working great so far.

Seems like a decent little machine I suppose, but hella expensive considering it doesn't have a tuner in it or even mass storage - and yes I know the guy intends to stream content over his LAN but, even so.

$30 for an aftermarket CPU cooler on a CPU he has no intentions of ever overclocking? Why do people automatically assume the Intel stock HSF is so bad when it works just fine, is very quiet by default, and let's face it, this is built on an i3 for Pete's Sake; even watching HD content will barely dent the i3 in terms of temps...

I don't think I'd "waste" an SSD on a machine like an HTPC, personally. The guy could have put 3TB in that box for the same price with 2x1.5GB drives for about $130, that would seem more logical to me but whatever.

This part really threw me, however:

I decided against a mechanical hard drive for this build, as I find that components on my theater rack often get jostled while they’re running.

Click to expand...

I don't know what this person is doing, but unless he's got this HTPC setup in a mobile home that is always on the road in motion, or he's living on a houseboat or something, I don't think there's much basis in reality for that statement. If he's of the mind that the typical operational vibrations of a modern computer (hard drives, spinning, fans spinning, optical drives spinning, etc) actually causes damage to the components - he even mentions a head crash in the next sentence as part of the reason he chose not to use a physical hard drive - this guy needs to be avoided at all costs.

I'm astonished that this review was done by Gordon Mah Ung himself - the review "feels" like it was written by some anonymous contributor to their forums, oddly. He's been with Maximum PC since it originated as b00t Magazine way back in 1999. I was an original subscriber to that magazine and I wish it was still around, actually. Once they "converted" to Maximum PC it's been a waste of a magazine ever since, in my opinion. b00t was [H]ard, start to finish, but then they just got too soft over the years after switching to Maximum PC.

Guess things change, sadly. I could build this same box for less, anyone can. $944 for that is pretty much all retail pricing, too, which obviously can be improved upon pretty dramatically if you do some research.

You don't need terabytes of data if all you are watching is internet shows and you have a file server. At least going SSD is one more thing you don't have to worry about being loud. He also likely went for the Silverstone heatsink because it's half the size of one that comes with the i3 (37mm vs. 60mm) and the whole reason for the 2100T is because it only runs at 35W TDP. That's still demands a premium currently.

Anyhow, I would add a discrete video card because I can't stand the judder problem that Intel can't shake and I refuse to do workarounds and hacks to stop it.

I don't like that tiny case...probably why he didn't want to put a HDD in there.

I don't believe he is serious about cord-cutting if he really is only going to use wireless. He could at least add a powerline network and cover streaming of nearly all internet content.

He didn't need a discrete audio card if he has HDMI out to a receiver.

I put an SSD in my box so I could use the 1TB HD I had in there to store ripped blu-rays. Total waste to have storage in your tiny box making heat and noise if you plan to stream over a network. Mine cost a good bit less than his, though.

If I were going to build new, I probably would go with an i3, but I think I would add a video card in too. Fortunately, I had an older PC around with a core duo processor running at 3GHz. A $60 case, a $60 vidcard, $85 for the SSD, $25 for a WMC remote, $45 for wireless keyboard, and I'm good to go. Already had ram, blu-ray drive, and power supply. I may remove the blu-ray too, since I'm streaming...

While I'll let the i3 slide (I still think it's over kill for the money spent and the functional use). The SSD is probably one of the most egregious expenditures for a HTPC. A SSD makes sense when heat is an issue. Like it's 90 degrees inside. However if that's the case maybe one should save for central air before spending money on an HTPC. In addition HTPC's stay on. So the likelihood of you realizing the additional performance unless you watch all videos at 32x is minimal. It adds cost, while preventing the user from making sensible upgrades like a discrete video card which adds performance in all areas (watching the video and moving through the UI which is also GPU accelerated).

For $1000 it's twice the cost of what someone could build and 2x less functional as well.

kac77 said:

While I'll let the i3 slide (I still think it's over kill for the money spent and the functional use). The SSD is probably one of the most egregious expenditures for a HTPC. A SSD makes sense when heat is an issue. Like it's 90 degrees inside. However if that's the case maybe one should save for central air before spending money on an HTPC. In addition HTPC's stay on. So the likelihood of you realizing the additional performance unless you watch all videos at 32x is minimal. It adds cost, while preventing the user from making sensible upgrades like a discrete video card which adds performance in all areas (watching the video and moving through the UI which is also GPU accelerated).

For $1000 it's twice the cost of what someone could build and 2x less functional as well.

Click to expand...

An SSD on a loaded HTPC is a god send for apps like media browser where it needs to load up a ton of cover art, etc. I couldn't live w/out it and get the responsive GUI I want. It depends on what you want, I suppose. I otherwise stream everything (tuners, rips, etc) over gige so to me its the most important investment.

That article is also from May so take it with a grain of salt a lot of stuff out now may not have been before. I don't know if the Pentium options were well known yet or out. Back then the i3 200T with low profile fan was the most popular option by far (he also said "3D enabled" so I don't think you can go much lower than that for 3d). In any event, I don't think he even knows what he wants out of it as the benchmarks are all with Quake but he doesn't have any real playback video tests.

sippm said:

An SSD on a loaded HTPC is a god send for apps like media browser where it needs to load up a ton of cover art, etc. I couldn't live w/out it and get the responsive GUI I want. It depends on what you want, I suppose. I otherwise stream everything (tuners, rips, etc) over gige so to me its the most important investment.

Click to expand...

Came in here to say the exact same thing. Also, another concern for a lot of HTPC users is power consumption. An SSD helps with that, especially over a 3.5" HDD.

Not to mention the further reduction in noise, as another user already said above.

sippm said:

An SSD on a loaded HTPC is a god send for apps like media browser where it needs to load up a ton of cover art, etc. I couldn't live w/out it and get the responsive GUI I want. It depends on what you want, I suppose. I otherwise stream everything (tuners, rips, etc) over gige so to me its the most important investment.

That article is also from May so take it with a grain of salt a lot of stuff out now may not have been before. I don't know if the Pentium options were well known yet or out. Back then the i3 200T with low profile fan was the most popular option by far (he also said "3D enabled" so I don't think you can go much lower than that for 3d). In any event, I don't think he even knows what he wants out of it as the benchmarks are all with Quake but he doesn't have any real playback video tests.

Click to expand...

You could easily add in two HD's (which you might want to do anyway if that's where all of your music/videos are) and end up with more capacity, redundancy, and have more than enough non-sequential throughput if a crap ton of of cover art was really a concern. I actually have that same setup and I've got about 80GB of music and much more for movies and it's not a problem. Although different front ends could handle it differently I suppose.

For me though I don't wait for cover art to load and that's on two old almost dead Seagates. (Correction: One of the two died this morning....glad they were raided). But considering he's primarily streaming, buying a SSD makes even less sense since the bottleneck is the network not local I/O and with it only being 60GB he won't be able to store that much even if he wanted to.

3D Blu Ray is dictated by the HDMI standard and the GPU not really the CPU.

Headcase_Fargone said:

Came in here to say the exact same thing. Also, another concern for a lot of HTPC users is power consumption. An SSD helps with that, especially over a 3.5" HDD.

Not to mention the further reduction in noise, as another user already said above.

Click to expand...

Power savings are totally dependent on use. If you are gaming or using it in a desktop setting where there's more access it will beat a mechanical hard drive, but even then you're talking 2W or less for 2.5 and slightly more for 3.5. At idle they usually are within 1 to 2 watts of each other and for HTPC that's exactly where it will be most of the time.

In terms of noise are you saying that amongst the stereo equipment and a TV that's probably on, that your mechanical hard drive is making more noise than the other components that it's paired with?

kac77 said:

Power savings are totally dependent on use. If you are gaming or using it in a desktop setting where there's more access it will beat a mechanical hard drive, but even then you're talking 2W or less for 2.5 and slightly more for 3.5. At idle they usually are within 1 to 2 watts of each other and for HTPC that's exactly where it will be most of the time.

In terms of noise are you saying that amongst the stereo equipment and a TV that's probably on, that your mechanical hard drive is making more noise than the other components that it's paired with?

Click to expand...

It's just another noisy component that need not be. My HTPC is extremely quiet between fan profiles and the SSD it's running. Completely inaudible with the TV off from where I sit.

Also, my HTPC isn't idle most of the time. It's constantly scanning my media library for updates, downloading meta data, etc.

since I sit on my couch on the opposite side of the room as my PC when using it in a THPC role I can say that my rig below is not noticable when running...I do not see the peronal need for a ssd but again everyone has different needs.

core i3 is MORE than enough for this role as long as you have even a cheap card that can accellerate video streams

The i3 may or may not be overkill depending on what you want to do with it. It can be beneficial if you plan on doing post processing or transcoding. Not everyone is just looking to play files without an improvement.

Headcase_Fargone said:

It's just another noisy component that need not be. My HTPC is extremely quiet between fan profiles and the SSD it's running. Completely inaudible with the TV off from where I sit.

Also, my HTPC isn't idle most of the time. It's constantly scanning my media library for updates, downloading meta data, etc.

Click to expand...

I've just never met the noisy hard drive that can be heard outside of the case even with the TV off. There's other equipment that I have that's far noiser. Between the XBOX and the PS3 along with the stereo. The cost premium just isn't justification for me to try and remove noise from something that I can't hear anyway.

I suppose if your frontend is agressively scanning your library then there could be a use for it. Mine doesn't work that way so for me I see little use for it. But to each their own. If it works for you... go for it.

Advantages of SSDs:

Less heat in case, quieter than HDD. More room in case. Faster booting and working with fan art. And if streaming, why waste separate your storage if it all won't fit in the HTPC. One can stream music as well as movies.

kac77 said:

You could easily add in two HD's (which you might want to do anyway if that's where all of your music/videos are) and end up with more capacity, redundancy, and have more than enough non-sequential throughput if a crap ton of of cover art was really a concern. I actually have that same setup and I've got about 80GB of music and much more for movies and it's not a problem. Although different front ends could handle it differently I suppose.

For me though I don't wait for cover art to load and that's on two old almost dead Seagates. (Correction: One of the two died this morning....glad they were raided). But considering he's primarily streaming, buying a SSD makes even less sense since the bottleneck is the network not local I/O and with it only being 60GB he won't be able to store that much even if he wanted to.

3D Blu Ray is dictated by the HDMI standard and the GPU not really the CPU.

Click to expand...

If you have boxes like me (Habey 600, M350), you really don't have room for multiple drives or anything HD fancy. Also, I guess if you have two HDs and all loaded locally, you aren't really running off a server or streaming full time?

Some want a small client STB replacement and size/heat is a huge huge factor.

I agree a 2.5 and an SSD idling are about the same on power. Its not he is primarily streaming, but if you want a responsive OS and not have a laggy 10' UI, then I would have a hard time not doing an SSD. And having a 10' UI is what HTPCs do.

Yes you need a recent HDMI standard for 3D connectivity (but btw he has BDROM), but he wanted to do 3D, and that is certainly affected by the CPU/GPU (the i3). Doing 3d will be more GPU intensive; I don't know if an I3200T (with no separate GPU) is fully up to snuff for that. I'd be nervous, but I never tried.

kac77 said:

I've just never met the noisy hard drive that can be heard outside of the case even with the TV off. There's other equipment that I have that's far noiser. Between the XBOX and the PS3 along with the stereo. The cost premium just isn't justification for me to try and remove noise from something that I can't hear anyway.

I suppose if your frontend is agressively scanning your library then there could be a use for it. Mine doesn't work that way so for me I see little use for it. But to each their own. If it works for you... go for it.

Click to expand...

Try the Seagate BlackArmor NAS 220. Noisy as shit with the clicking and clacking, and I'm hearing impaired, so that's saying a lot. It got so annoying I built a shelf in the basement and ran a network cable down there to it so I don't have to listen to it anymore. :-P

I have two of them (4tb each).

Maximum PC is a magazine for noobs. It has no business on a [H]ardcore geeks site like this.

And yes I have 3 HTPC's.....and yes they are 5x more awesome than this one at a quarter of the price.

Krazypoloc said:

Maximum PC is a magazine for noobs. It has no business on a [H]ardcore geeks site like this.

And yes I have 3 HTPC's.....and yes they are 5x more awesome than this one at a quarter of the price.

Click to expand...

I like your style! Like I said, the guy was clearly n00bish for running Quake benchmarks on an SFF-style HTPC.

sippm said:

I like your style! Like I said, the guy was clearly n00bish for running Quake benchmarks on an SFF-style HTPC.

Click to expand...

I'm a bit taken aback that they didn't run some CAD rendering tests and maybe a few Eyefinity benchmarks.

sippm said:

An SSD on a loaded HTPC is a god send for apps like media browser where it needs to load up a ton of cover art, etc. I couldn't live w/out it and get the responsive GUI I want. It depends on what you want, I suppose. I otherwise stream everything (tuners, rips, etc) over gige so to me its the most important investment.

Click to expand...

My library isn't even THAT large, and I couldn't imagine having to wait on the coverart to load from a regular HDD. I probably would have to disable CoverArt, just for the sake of being able to navigate my library. And that would look 100x less awesome than what my SSD allows me to do.

That being said, I can't wait for the day, I dunno, 10 years from now where SSD's have huge capacities and are super cheap so I don't have to wait for the 5400rpm green drives to spin up...

Xonim said:

My library isn't even THAT large, and I couldn't imagine having to wait on the coverart to load from a regular HDD. I probably would have to disable CoverArt, just for the sake of being able to navigate my library. And that would look 100x less awesome than what my SSD allows me to do.

That being said, I can't wait for the day, I dunno, 10 years from now where SSD's have huge capacities and are super cheap so I don't have to wait for the 5400rpm green drives to spin up...

Click to expand...

I added an SSD to my server just for this purpose. The SSD now hosts the MySQL database as well as the share where all my thumnails are kept for my HTPC's running XBMC. It also hosts my web server which has sped up my websites and web services quite a bit.

sippm said:

If you have boxes like me (Habey 600, M350), you really don't have room for multiple drives or anything HD fancy. Also, I guess if you have two HDs and all loaded locally, you aren't really running off a server or streaming full time?

Some want a small client STB replacement and size/heat is a huge huge factor.

I agree a 2.5 and an SSD idling are about the same on power. Its not he is primarily streaming, but if you want a responsive OS and not have a laggy 10' UI, then I would have a hard time not doing an SSD. And having a 10' UI is what HTPCs do.

Yes you need a recent HDMI standard for 3D connectivity (but btw he has BDROM), but he wanted to do 3D, and that is certainly affected by the CPU/GPU (the i3). Doing 3d will be more GPU intensive; I don't know if an I3200T (with no separate GPU) is fully up to snuff for that. I'd be nervous, but I never tried.

Click to expand...

rofl! Its all in your head. If you think that an i3 with a spinning disk is incapable of rendering a snappy UI, even with a lot of thumbnails, you need to have your head examined.

How do I know? Because I did both: WD green (5400rpm no less!) with 500 videos = no lag. Then got an SSD and guess what? still no lag

Activate: AMD said:

rofl! Its all in your head. If you think that an i3 with a spinning disk is incapable of rendering a snappy UI, even with a lot of thumbnails, you need to have your head examined.

How do I know? Because I did both: WD green (5400rpm no less!) with 500 videos = no lag. Then got an SSD and guess what? still no lag

Click to expand...

I never equated needing an i3 with needing a snappy UI; in any event, grats 2 u for loading fast thumbnails on a 5400rpm on whatever your 10' UI is.

sippm said:

I never equated needing an i3 with needing a snappy UI; in any event, grats 2 u for loading fast thumbnails on a 5400rpm on whatever your 10' UI is.

Click to expand...

7MC with MB, and neither did I

The point is that the vast majority of people come here looking for an HTPC on a budget. Sure, they can get an SSD within their budget, but then they're spending the money on a crummy SSD with a 60gb capacity. Unless you plan on streaming everything, the high capactiy green drives just make more sense for more people

Activate: AMD said:

7MC with MB, and neither did I

The point is that the vast majority of people come here looking for an HTPC on a budget. Sure, they can get an SSD within their budget, but then they're spending the money on a crummy SSD with a 60gb capacity. Unless you plan on streaming everything, the high capactiy green drives just make more sense for more people

Click to expand...

This would still never make sense to me regardless of the budget or application. I would never ever have any sort of power saving drive as the boot/OS drive. There is simply no reason for it as you can get a better, faster performing drives with the same or similar thermal characteristics for the same price. An SSD is always a good choice regardless of the size when included in an HTPC, as you should NEVER be storing your media on the boot drive for many reasons.

Joe Average said:

Seems like a decent little machine I suppose, but hella expensive considering it doesn't have a tuner in it or even mass storage - and yes I know the guy intends to stream content over his LAN but, even so.

Click to expand...

Well the TV tuner is almost of no value to me at least. I can't do anything with it given I have U-Verse and network TV reception blows goats here. I've got the tuner and I've really never done jack squat with it. I encode my movies and stream them over LAN or I use Hulu / Netflix applications to watch stuff over the Internet on my HTPC. I also do use it as a Blu-Ray player. But I do not use it as a DVR or use it to actually watch TV. I've really never been able to. I could pull the tuner out of the machine for all it matters.

Joe Average said:

$30 for an aftermarket CPU cooler on a CPU he has no intentions of ever overclocking? Why do people automatically assume the Intel stock HSF is so bad when it works just fine, is very quiet by default, and let's face it, this is built on an i3 for Pete's Sake; even watching HD content will barely dent the i3 in terms of temps...

Click to expand...

It depends. If your ambient room temperatures are on the high end of the spectrum the Intel stock heat sink and fan will not get the job done without getting incredibly loud.

Joe Average said:

I don't think I'd "waste" an SSD on a machine like an HTPC, personally. The guy could have put 3TB in that box for the same price with 2x1.5GB drives for about $130, that would seem more logical to me but whatever.

Click to expand...

I don't think an SSD is a waste. If you want silence and performance, the SSD makes sense. Also some HTPC chassis do not provide active cooling to the hard drives. In which case an SSD starts to make even more sense. Also an SSD provides great responsiveness to the system. I think this is desirable in an HTPC. I'd rather throw a small SSD in the machine and keep all my storage on another machine on the network and that's actually the setup I'm using. It's worked well for some time.

Dan_D said:

I think this is desirable in an HTPC. I'd rather throw a small SSD in the machine and keep all my storage on another machine on the network and that's actually the setup I'm using. It's worked well for some time.

Click to expand...

I think this is exactly the point right here...anyone that has tried both locally attached storage whether it be internal or external and network attached storage will ALWAYS chose network attached storage.

Krazypoloc said:

I think this is exactly the point right here...anyone that has tried both locally attached storage whether it be internal or external and network attached storage will ALWAYS chose network attached storage.

Click to expand...

I've centralized pretty much all the storage in my home and consolidated it into one place. The only storage you'll find now on most machines is all in the gaming boxes and the server. The gaming boxes just need the room for installed games. I'm not using that much space in those machines. Everything else is on the network and is physically located in my server. This way everything is in the same location no matter what machine you are on and it's accessible to every machine / person with access. It's also a centralized point that's easier to backup and manage.

do SSD have about the same life as mechanical drives? Been thinking of getting one for a new media center build myself.

Azhar said:

do SSD have about the same life as mechanical drives? Been thinking of getting one for a new media center build myself.

Click to expand...

Well yes and no. The things that will kill a mechanical drive won't bother an SSD. However SSD's NAND flash memory has a finite number of writes it can perform. Load leveling algorithms help to keep the stuff alive for longer, but there are some variances from brand to brand, model to model. SLC memory is very durable compared to MLC memory but at a huge cost increase. I'd say that it's possible to get the expected life span of the machine with either mechanical or SSD drives. Typically that's 3-5 years at most.

Just as folks put different parts in their desktops and gaming machines, folks do the same for an HTPC. Who says that having no HDD in an HTPC is wrong? And the more parts you don't have to buy, the easier it is to afford an SDD. When I think of how long it takes my TIVO to boot, I marvel at having my HTPC boot in mere 10s of seconds.

In the article on MaxPC, the guy was just showing some choices. I don't think he was trying to say those were the parts that are needed in every HTPC.

Krazypoloc said:

This would still never make sense to me regardless of the budget or application. I would never ever have any sort of power saving drive as the boot/OS drive. There is simply no reason for it as you can get a better, faster performing drives with the same or similar thermal characteristics for the same price..

Click to expand...

Find me a large 7200rpm drive that has the same thermals, noise level, and price as the "green" models ("green" meaning any of the slow spinning drives). you can get 2TB of storage space for under 60$ these days if you get a "green" drive.

Krazypoloc said:

An SSD is always a good choice regardless of the size when included in an HTPC, as you should NEVER be storing your media on the boot drive for many reasons

Click to expand...

You've been drinking the kool-aid that some people around here have been passing out. For the average HTPC user, there is no harm in storing your media on the boot drive, especially if you've got a separate boot partition. Just be realistic that a single drive failure will cause you to lose the media.. but then, thats the case for probably 99% of computer users. We'd all like to have a nice NAS setup, but thats beyond most people. Alternatively you could add the SSD as the OS drive with a slow spinner as the storage drive internally, but then you just doubled (and then some) your storage budget.

Hell, I even think my gaming rig's SSD was the biggest disappointment out of any major upgrade I've ever made

AQ_OC said:

Who says that having no HDD in an HTPC is wrong?

Click to expand...

I don't necessarily.. I mean, I've got an SSD in mine. I just think making that recommendation to people who come here on a budget or acting like an SSD is a "must have" in an HTPC is delusional

I agree. An SSD is not a requirement for an HTPC. Mine worked just fine when running an HDD. But then again, I can hear the HDDs in my Tivo from across the room. Adding yet another noise maker didn't make me happy.

People have different needs and desires...they should go for what works for them. Just like anything in life.

Azhar said:

Try the Seagate BlackArmor NAS 220. Noisy as shit with the clicking and clacking, and I'm hearing impaired, so that's saying a lot. It got so annoying I built a shelf in the basement and ran a network cable down there to it so I don't have to listen to it anymore. :-P

I have two of them (4tb each).

Click to expand...

Blech and that's why I don't buy Seagate. Been burnt (this morning in fact-- thank God for RAID) read the book, saw the movie. I don't plan on going with Seagate EVER again.

sippm said:

If you have boxes like me (Habey 600, M350), you really don't have room for multiple drives or anything HD fancy. Also, I guess if you have two HDs and all loaded locally, you aren't really running off a server or streaming full time?

Click to expand...

Even in that case. For the cost of that 60GB SSD you can run two 2.5 WD Blacks in RAID1 or RAID 0 (I don't like RAID 0 but you if you want to) with 320 GB of storage and STILL have 30 bucks left over. You are NOT going to experience lag with that setup. Want low power? Go with Blues and you'll still have money left over and you won't experience lag, have little noise, gain redundancy and at least store something locally.

If you want to do an extender this how you do it. You buy a USB stick. Connect it to the internal USB hub and Boom. You've got your extender for streaming, you've got your speed (F$&^% go USB3.0 if you want), you've got low power and you'll save 80 bucks or more. HTPC's generally should be low cost. If you find yourself spending upwards of 500 bucks you better be gaming on it and you definitely should be housing content locally and without a doubt have discrete especially in this case of spending 900+. I'm sorry but the cost of that rig is absurd for the intended use. It's called OVERKILL. Without a doubt there's no one here (I hope) that can't build a killer rig. HTPC's are different you're not doing AUTOCAD on your HTPC. At least I hope not. You have to pick hardware suitable for the task. Don't just look up the most UBER piece of hardware. You'll likely spend more than what you need. Your CPU need not be anything more powerful than a C2D (although I checked today and Intel raised prices on those... significantly). If it's DC it will work. Spend the money you've saved on a discrete this ensures that if you want to do gaming, or watch videos you'll be able to game on it as well (I've got a GT430 in mine and play Genesis all the way to PS2 on it). That discrete also allows you to do 3D with post processing if need be, something IGP's can sometimes struggle with. Then go for I'd say no more than 4GB of RAM. For I/O if you stream or have a little collection then go for a regular decent hard drive. I seriously haven't heard loud WD hard drives so I stick with those. Need redundancy? Throw in another you'll gain performance if you have Intel Raid or if the OS is linux based (BTW you can RAID USB sticks). This whole i3+SSD+ 6GB HTPC thing I've seen is retarded. You've left gaps for the intended use while spending more than what's required for an HTPC... it's just not needed.

Prices have dropped a bit since march. It's not a $30 difference now, it's 5 dollars difference if you went for a 6Gb/s Crucial SSD. I think the biggest issue that most people are not getting is just because they named a max price does not mean they were shooting for the cheapest system possible. If you want 320gb raid, do it, but the people who are fine with a 64gb SSD aren't crazy either.

I haven't read Maximum PC in years but when I did they always went for the high end showcase builds. Not as outrageous as Boot was but they aren't going to scour all the online stores cherry picking what's on sale, nor are they just going to go for the adequate.

As I mentioned before, what's acceptable and what isn't depends on you. If you can get by with a E350 and onboard by all means do it. I personally cant. I have a X4 640 with a 5770 for my set as I use madVR and ffdshow for post processing and I may increase that in the future. If you think this is extreme I know one guy who has a i7 system that is a whole lot more aggressive with his post processing and he also goes the extra mile and tweaks HPET settings to improve audio. Different strokes...

Ryokurin said:

Prices have dropped a bit since march. It's not a $30 difference now, it's 5 dollars difference if you went for a 6Gb/s Crucial SSD. I think the biggest issue that most people are not getting is just because they named a max price does not mean they were shooting for the cheapest system possible. If you want 320gb raid, do it, but the people who are fine with a 64gb SSD aren't crazy either.

Click to expand...

You would still have to overcome a sizable capacity deficit and the lack of redundancy. SSD's are still twice the cost and there is nothing you can do yet to change it. In addition as I said before for streaming you could use USB sticks and then the cost deficit balloons for what is needed and match a SSD for noise and go under it for power. SSD's for this application is very much a niche. If you should happen to fall within it then sure different strokes for different folks but largely most applications for HTPC just don't require them for the asking price.

Ryokurin said:

I haven't read Maximum PC in years but when I did they always went for the high end showcase builds. Not as outrageous as Boot was but they aren't going to scour all the online stores cherry picking what's on sale, nor are they just going to go for the adequate.

Click to expand...

At 900+ you could fall into a cheaper build. It's not that hard.

Ryokurin said:

As I mentioned before, what's acceptable and what isn't depends on you. If you can get by with a E350 and onboard by all means do it. I personally cant. I have a X4 640 with a 5770 for my set as I use madVR and ffdshow for post processing and I may increase that in the future. If you think this is extreme I know one guy who has a i7 system that is a whole lot more aggressive with his post processing and he also goes the extra mile and tweaks HPET settings to improve audio. Different strokes...

Click to expand...

It's not what depends on me. It's what is generally required in order to run a HTPC even with 3D. This isn't some unknown value. Even with all of the post processing in the world your CPU if the HTPC is built right will largely go unused. In all of the uses of HTPC there's only 2 uses that requires more than a DC and that's encoding OTA formats in order to save space, which of course becomes null and void if you avoid the SSD. The other is gaming while recording and that's minimized if you have a decent tuner. I'm making it an issue because spending 900+ for a HTPC that can't even game acceptably @ 1080 is questionable to say the least. Fire up any DC (you could even go Atom here) and if it's paired with any GPU around 5670/430 within the last two generations the utilization will hover 10 - 15% (50%- 75% for Atom) and it will be a cheaper build and perform better than a i3 +SSD (the most expensive combo).... consistently. I'm merely asking for people to really look at what they are paying for versus what's really required. I would know previous build was C2D (the MB died) it ended up being an Athlon DC hand me down from a friend and it was cheaper and FAR more capable than relying on the IGP with SSD. Power is worse but I could go for a Pentium Cely DC and regain the power savings.

Let's look at an Intel build:

Intel Cely Wolf 2.6 = 49
Intel MB (I could go ASrock but let's not be absurdly cheap) $80
2X WD RAID 250 GB Blues = $80
Mem: $48
GT430: 60
Total: 317

Intel i3 2100: 124
Intel MB: 69
Kingston SSD 64: 104
Mem: $23
Total: 320

Now let's just say both are the same in cost. What are we talking about here in terms of differences:

Power and Noise (I still don't believe in the super noisy mechanical drive being heard over a plasma / LCD 40" or greater TV)
vs
Storage, Capability, and Data Redundancy (you can easily game with the 430 vs the IGP and the image quality is better)

Now this looks like just a difference in preference...what happens if I switch out the RAID config for something that's equally meant for streaming? Like a 16GB USB stick? The price falls to $256. At that price you'll still be able to add your emulators and games and you'll have a far better gaming experience, post processing is far far (like big time) better on a 430 than a Intel IGP and the overall system will match it for noise and the only thing lost would be a TDP diff of 30 watts which is easily recovered by undervolting at a savings of 64 bucks or more. Since this comparison was streaming I could even go Atom since the 430 is there and the cost drops to 181 which brings a savings of $139 which beats it in power, noise and you'll still be able to stream (if you think the Atom is questionable replace it with E-350). I could add a second USB stick or add more storage and still would be under the i3 + SSD combo. You could even replace the Atom with the new GT620 and still be under the i3 +SSD combo which has the same power envelope as the i3 and beat it on power and performance.

My rub is that specific hardware should be specd for it's intended purpose. Don't be lazy and just pick shit. Ask questions for what you intend to use the hardware for and pick accordingly. If you are streaming, 64 of SSD storage is a waste. It just is. The i3 by itself isn't a problem you can offset the cost with a lower performing part some where. However, i3 +SSD that's the most expensive parts if those are your minimum requirements they will always produce a build that's more expensive while carrying the Intel IGP in toe vs a more powerful discrete.

It's too much and too expensive. Honestly, I'm actually surprised their HTPC was this... "conservative" though after their last HTPC article from last year where they basically put a gaming rig into an HTPC case and then water cooled it since it was too damn hot.

Anyways, you can do just as good for less then that. Meh.

In my HTPC my Segate 160GBs ran hot and noisy. Since I have 4.5TB on a server, I didn't need the local storage. I switched to an inexpensive SSD and am very happy. My HTPC also has a DC-DC converter for a power supply, so there's no extra fan and any improvement in efficiency helps things across the board. Only three magnetic bearing fans, so it's now basically silent. I'm using an old BE-2300 and a 5450 video card and it can do everything a HTPC is supposed to do, quickly, quietly, and with very low heat.