Feedback Req: Ultimate HTPC/Gaming/Desktop System - i4C 2.66, 8GB, 4TB, 4850: $2.1K

[JakFrost]

With all that storage onboard A gigabit network link should be considered unless the files are never going to move off the system except by USB or firewire. It'll take a long time to xfer 4TB of data.... even over wireless N. Wireless is fine for streaming and net usage. Not for heavy data xfer though.

Video card is fine, but not 'ultimate'

in my own experience with this same UPS A 750VA UPS is not powerful enough for this rig. Plasma and other components that are not on 24/7 and still don't suck as much juice as this thing will under full load.

Good luck in your build.

Media Transfer

I'll be loading the HTPC with my media over eSATA from my WD Green 1 TB drives and my WD Blue 500 GB drives at ~48-55 MB/s. That's about Gigabit Ethernet speeds from my testing.

The reason for this specific Linksys WMP300N wireless network adapter is not because of any merit of this part or Wireless N network standard but because my friend doesn't have a network cable run in his living room since his Internet enters his bed room that is two floors up and there is no network cable drop so he's limited to wireless connectivity. This card has an external antenna connected by a cable so that's the most important feature here allowing it to be moved to get a better signal reception than if the antenna was connected to the back of the card while the HTPC is stashed away in some corner of the room in-between electrically noisy A/V components.

I am certainly going to spec out his house to see if it is possible to do a in-wall CAT5e/6 network cable drop to his living room to ensure much better connectivity but for now this is the setup. I have the crimping and network cable testing equipment so I'll talk to him if he's interested in buying the raw network cable and a few Keystone jack plates and borrowing a cable snake to do the cable drop ourselves.

Having a network cable will be much better and more reliable than wireless of course and we could split the cable with a switch to allow other devices to get on the network.



Ultimate Video Card

Ultimate is such a relative term. You have to consider this is a HTPC build with the best bang-for-the-buck parts per category and not really the super-expensive Extreme Edition Black Version Superoverclocked Watercooled parts. I think that either the ATI 4850 and 4870 are great choices for this build. The other alternatives are the X2 versions of these cards but they just seem to expensive for the purpose of this system.

Current Card In Config

SAPPHIRE 100259-1GL Radeon HD 4870 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card - Retail - $199.99

Better Cards

SAPPHIRE 100260SR Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB 512-bit (2 x 256-bit) GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card - Retail - $259.99

SAPPHIRE 100270SR Radeon HD 4850 X2 2GB 512-bit (256-bit x 2) GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card - Retail - $289.99

SAPPHIRE 100251SR Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB 512-bit (256-bit x 2) GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card - Retail - $404.99

Now you might be asking, but what about the nVidia GTX 280 or 295 video cards? Well the reason why I kept the nVidia cards out of the list is because of the audio pass-through limit these cards have, only allowing the S/PDIF connector to pass through 1.5 Mbps audio signal limiting these cards to 5.1-channel Dolby Digital (AC3) or 5.1-channel DTS. These cards can't do the super high quality lossless formats or 7.1-channel formats.

This is not a hit against nVidia cards since I personally am a nVidia fan and I use their video cards for my system, including my desktop that does HTPC duties, which is connected to my Plasma TV where I do audio over HDMI with 5.1-channel Dolby Digital (AC3) pass-through of up-mixing. I can't do 7.1-channels or lossless because of S/PDIF but for me currently 5.1-channels is enough since that's how many speakers I have. But in the future if I was building a new HTPC it would have to be 7.1-channel compatible.

AVSForum - Factual & Unbiased HTPC HDMI HD Audio + Video Roundup Thread



Power and Juice

The UPSes that I listed are just examples of what I used and what I recommend, of course each person will have to use a wattage meter to determine their load to figure out the right size of UPS to buy and also to add a little extra on top for longer battery life.

The 750VA might be enough for this HTPC if no other components are used but I don't know that right now so that's why I'm brining my own Kill-a-Watt P3 wattage meter so that I can measure the load on this system and other components under normal and full load to figure out how much power everything uses to make a better recommendation for my friend. We'll see after it's built and assembled and I'll be sure to post some benchmarks with power readings under 2D and 3D loads.

 

[engiNURD]

... Overall, I think an investment in a UPS is pretty good since it keeps your equipment running and safe from electrical problems.

I agree, a UPS is a very good investment.

If you haven't had equipment damaged by an electrical storm consider yourself lucky up to now because sooner or later something will get hit.

Not everyone lives in areas with many electrical storms... we get very few out here in LA, Cali.

Wattage Meter (Use To Measure Load Before Buying a UPS!)

Below is a pretty good wattage meter that should be used before buying any UPS system. Use it on all the equipment that you are planning on plugging into the UPS and calculate the total wattage and VA (Volt-Amp) load so that you can correctly determine size of the UPS you require. Too many people have no idea how much load their equipment generates so they buy either too little or way too much UPS. For $15 they can buy a meter that will tell them exactly how much load their equipment generates so they can buy the proper size UPS. You can also use this meter to determine the Power Factor (VA to Watt Ratio) of your load to determine the efficiency of your equipment, especially the power supply from your computer. Many cheap power supplies from offbrand names or one that are bundled with cases have a low Power Factor and waste much of the electricity that's why I only recommended 80% power factor power supplies for this configuration.

Keep in mind that you will not get exact readings if you're using a PSU with Active PFC.

...1) APFC can fool Kill-A-Watts into giving you abnormally low readings (some times giving better than 100% efficiency)

2) Power supplies derate with temperature anywhere from 2w/c above a nominal rated at value to 10w/c.

3) Kill-A-Watt's and most power meters sample too slowly to catch transient loads (the Transient load from our tests is 117w and is COMPLETELY missed by Kill-A-Watts).
...
The power meters in UPS software are just as bad. You have to spend some change before you get anywhere near an accurate power meter when your PSU has APFC.

P3 Kill A Watt Electricity Load Meter and Monitor - $14.99
http://c1.neweggimages.com/NeweggImage/ProductImageCompressAll200/82-715-001-05.jpg[/IMG]
...

tsk tsk, did you ask newegg if you can hotlink their image?

 

[JakFrost]

Originally Posted by Paul_Johnson View Post
...1) APFC can fool Kill-A-Watts into giving you abnormally low readings (some times giving better than 100% efficiency)

2) Power supplies derate with temperature anywhere from 2w/c above a nominal rated at value to 10w/c.

3) Kill-A-Watt's and most power meters sample too slowly to catch transient loads (the Transient load from our tests is 117w and is COMPLETELY missed by Kill-A-Watts).
...
The power meters in UPS software are just as bad. You have to spend some change before you get anywhere near an accurate power meter when your PSU has APFC.

Keep in mind that you will not get exact readings if you're using a PSU with Active PFC.

I know this about Active PFC power supplies and transient loads from a few articles that I've read but I think that the P3 meter is good enough to get a nice baseline established to get a ballpark figure down on the load that the equipment generates. Of course hooking the system up to a nice oscillator and monitoring for load spikes would be better and more accurate but we're talking about major money here and more complexity. If there was a product like the P3 out there that was more accurate then it would be great and I would recommend that also but there isn't anything out there right now.

The P3 is good enough to figure out that you have a 300 watt load from the system during 3D games and 50 watt from LCD and 100 watt from peripherals for 450 watt load, then you double it for future growth and to maintain longer battery life and you get a 900 watt UPS or get 650/750 watt UPS for a lower cost. Those 100+ watt transient load spikes because of Active PFC power supplies should be eaten up by the extra room you leave in the system.

I have to look for a good article about sizing up UPSes to link to also later.

tsk tsk, did you ask newegg if you can hotlink their image?

I don't think that they mind seeing referrers coming in from HardForum.com with many folks linking their wishlists and parts from this web site. They probably appreciate the extra money this traffic generates for the few images that folks like myself link to. What's their alternative? Filter out hotlinks from this forum or replace the images with blank/nasty placeholders for people on HardForum, what would that do to their image on this site then people make posts about parts that they sell? If they do something like that I still have links to their product pages, which are more important anyway to get my configuration across. The images are helpful since they make the presentation nicer and easier to understand what each part is.

 

[Dangman]

If there was a product like the P3 out there that was more accurate then it would be great and I would recommend that also but there isn't anything out there right now.

Actually if you're willing to spend $150 (minimum), you can get the Brand Meter which has been shown to provide very accurate wattage readings.

I don't think that they mind seeing referrers coming in from HardForum.com with many folks linking their wishlists and parts from this web site. They probably appreciate the extra money this traffic generates for the few images that folks like myself link to. What's their alternative? Filter out hotlinks from this forum or replace the images with blank/nasty placeholders for people on HardForum, what would that do to their image on this site then people make posts about parts that they sell? If they do something like that I still have links to their product pages, which are more important anyway to get my configuration across. The images are helpful since they make the presentation nicer and easier to understand what each part is.

No, it's against forum rules to hotlink images. It's essentially stealing their bandwidth or somesuch.

 

[engiNURD]

I was just nitpicking at your use of the word "exactly." You said you'd get exact readings despite already knowing they wouldn't be exact.

Rules: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=760666 ... #14.

 

[JakFrost]

Actually if you're willing to spend $150 (minimum), you can get the Brand Meter which has been shown to provide very accurate wattage readings.

No, it's against forum rules to hotlink images. It's essentially stealing their bandwidth or somesuch.

There's a big difference between a $15 power meter and a $150 one but is the accuracy here worth 10x the price for a home computer user who just wants to get baseline some info about his equipment? A hardcore enthusiast might go for the better meter and personally if I start getting more into system building I'll definitely get it.

I just e-mailed Newegg Webmaster to see if it is okay to hotlink to their images just for this thread. I'm wondering if they are going to say yes or no because there is a benefit to them letting others link to their pictures, especially from forums dedicated to computer parts that drive business their way. Of course there's plenty of evidence of companies being hardheaded about this stuff no matter the benefit. We'll see what they say...

I was just nitpicking at your use of the word "exactly." You said you'd get exact readings despite already knowing they wouldn't be exact.

Rules: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=760666 ... #14.

Okay, I meant to write "approximately" instead of exactly.

But how prevalent are those transient load spikes really in frequency and peaks? Also, can't they just be attenuated by the capacitance effect of the UPS batteries themselves? (Kind of like how Passive PFC is supposed to work?)

 

[Dangman]

There's a big difference between a $15 power meter and a $150 one but is the accuracy here worth 10x the price for a home computer user who just wants to get baseline some info about his equipment?

There have been some cases where the P3 will show about 110% efficiency with a PSU with APFC. Meaning that it will show 200W when in reality the system is drawing 400W. See the problem there?

But oh well as long as you understand that the P3 is not a baseline (well I guess doubling your assumed power usage might negate this) nor accurate reading, it's all good.

As for the video card, just stick with the HD4870 1GB card. The dual-GPU ATI cards are not a good fit for a HTPC considering how loud and hot they can be.

 

[JakFrost]

There have been some cases where the P3 will show about 110% efficiency with a PSU with APFC. Meaning that it will show 200W when in reality the system is drawing 400W. See the problem there?

But oh well as long as you understand that the P3 is not a baseline (well I guess doubling your assumed power usage might negate this) nor accurate reading, it's all good.

As for the video card, just stick with the HD4870 1GB card. The dual-GPU ATI cards are not a good fit for a HTPC considering how loud and hot they can be.

The P3 is really that bad? Wow! That's sounds like it is really in-accurate.

I've used it personally on a few things around the house like my Plasma TV and of course my computer and it seemed like it shows good readings. Below is the power supply in my own system and I get 240w 2D and 290w 3D peak. The power factor is 0.70 at idle and climbs to 0.74 at peak. It is not an Active PFC power supply and I don't think that it even does Passive PFC either so the readings I get from the P3 match my UPS output.

OCZ PowerStream 520W SLI ADJ ATX2.0 EPS12, +3.3V 28A +5V 40A +12V 33A

Does that problem with P3 happen on all Active PFC power supplies or only on some? If it is consistent then it would mean that the P3 is pretty much obsolete now. Time for that other power meter tester you mentioned.

Also I also think that the X2 cards are an overkill and I never liked SLI or X2 configs anyway.

 

[Dangman]

The P3 is really that bad? Wow! That's sounds like it is really in-accurate.

Does that problem with P3 happen on all Active PFC power supplies or only on some? If it is consistent then it would mean that the P3 is pretty much obsolete now.

The problem with P3 only occur with some of APFC PSUs AFAIK. However, there isn't a list of PSUs that are shown to be accurate or inaccurate with the P3s. The only PSU I know for sure that the P3 is accurate with is the BFG ES-800. If you really want to know, just contact the PSU editor here on the site as well as JonnyGuru and ask him which of the PSUs he tested had inaccurate readings with the P3.

 

[The_Engineer]

I haven't been keeping up well with all of the recent activity in here but Here is the UPS I am planning on buying for my personal rig when I found that one of these littler guys just wasn't enough

Tripp-Lite
1500VA
900W output
199.99 + 29.00S&H (might be able to find it with free shipping somewhere...)

http://www.amazon.com/Tripp-Lite-SM...UTF8&coliid=IDSWUOKJQWV4G&colid=3D21HP538B78R

Now you might be asking, but what about the nVidia GTX 280 or 295 video cards? Well the reason why I kept the nVidia cards out of the list is because of the audio pass-through limit these cards have, only allowing the S/PDIF connector to pass through 1.5 Mbps audio signal limiting these cards to 5.1-channel Dolby Digital (AC3) or 5.1-channel DTS. These cards can't do the super high quality lossless formats or 7.1-channel formats.

THAT is an interesting tidbit that I was totally unaware of.

 

[JakFrost]

I haven't been keeping up well with all of the recent activity in here but Here is the UPS I am planning on buying for my personal rig when I found that one of these littler guys just wasn't enough

THAT is an interesting tidbit that I was totally unaware of.

That Tripp Lite UPS looks really good. It has the same specs as the APC model but this one comes with an LCD readout as a bonus. I've always liked the quality of the better APC UPS models but frankly some of their prices are quite inflated compared to their competitors like Tripp Lite. On the other hand there are a bunch of generic brand UPS vendors with much better prices out there and often seen stacked high in electronics stores but I wouldn't trust their specs or their low prices.

AVSForum - Factual & Unbiased HTPC HDMI HD Audio + Video Roundup Thread

Yes, the AVSForum thread that I listed to above lists all the sound cards and their compatibilities for passing more than 5.1-channel audio and lossless formats. The ATI video cards have RealTek audio chipsets on them, just like the motherboards these days, so you install drives for these chipsets so that you can select them in Windows as an audio output source like a regular soundcard but the sound is passed through the HDMI connector out of the video card. So if the audio chipset and drivers support 7.1-channel formats, like many RealTek HD Audio chipsets (ALC 1200, etc.), you get that sound out of the HDMI connector. However, on the linked thread there are issues with HDMI compatibility with some receivers with the audio input. Once driver issues are resolved the ATI video cards should be able to pass through 7.1-channel audio out through HDMI.

On the other hand the nVidia 8800/9800/260/280 cards only have a 2-pin S/PDIF input connector that acts as a pass-through from the motherboard's or audio cards' S/PDIF output 2-pin connector. The S/PDIF protocol is limited to 1.5 Mb/s transfer rate so you can only get Dolby Digital (AC3) 5.1-channel compressed audio at 192-640 Kb/s or Digital Theater System (DTS) 5.1-channel compressed audio at 1.5 Mb/s. So the current nVidia cards without on-board audio chipsets are limited by the S/PDIF protocol from transmitting better quality or more channels.

Until the video card vendors like AMD/ATI implement better audio chipsets on their video cards and also until nVidia jumps on-board with AMD/ATI to start putting dedicated audio chipsets on their video cards we won't get good HDMI lossless audio support. Another possibility would be for motherboard audio chipsets to start using HDMI input-output connectors for pass-through video connectivity like the new Asus Xonar HDAV cards do below to use the motherboard's audio chipset and video card's audio output.

The only real solution at this point in time is to get the new Asus Xonar HDAV audio cards that support 7.1-channel and lossless audio output. When they are then my friend's HTPC can be upgraded with one of these cards along with his audio system in his house to move it up into the 7.1-channel and lossless 192/24 audio territory.

ASUS Reveals Xonar HDAV1.3 Series Sound Cards with World's First Dolby TrueHD Bit-Stream Feature for the New Blu-ray Era

Following the success of becoming the world’s first sound cards to be equipped with the next generation DTS-HD Master Audio and Dolby Digital Plus bitstream on the PC platform, the ASUS Xonar HDAV1.3 Series once again moves to the forefront as the world’s first and only solution to offer Dolby TrueHD audio bitstream on the PC platform. A powerful combination comprising of C-Media’s custom-made AV200 audio processor and ArcSoft’s TotalMedia Theatre software player lets users be the first to enjoy Dolby TrueHD’s lossless compression rate of 24bit/192KHz over to their AV receivers. This breakthrough in the emerging Blu-ray era was unprecedented before the release of the Xonar HDAV1.3.

The ASUS Xonar HDAV 1.3 is the world’s only solution capable of providing bit-to-bit exact lossless Blu-Ray audio output—without any downsampling to DVD quality—allowing users to enjoy next generation audio enhancements such as DTS-HD, Dolby TrueHD and Dolby Digital Plus on the PC. Furthermore, the Xonar HDAV 1.3 also supports most Video Graphics Cards on the market, allowing delivery of both video and audio outputs through a single HDMI cable.

 

[JakFrost]

One more thing that I thought of as a possible upgrade for the future is a Solid State Disk to add to the configuration but right now the price is a bit of a factor for some folks.

There are some very significant advantages to consider when adding in a Solid State Disk to this system. The biggest one being the much increased responsiveness of the system when starting new applications or switching between multiple windows and applications. This upgrade would increase the value of the system to the user simply due to the removal of the annoying waits when using the system. There is nothing more annoying to me than to have a fully loaded system with tons of RAM and start a new application to switch to another application that wasn't used for a while only to wait and wait until the system loads the files from the hard disk or from the page file.

Normal systems are always bottle necked by the hard disk drive access latencies when trying to load data from the disk and also with the way that Microsoft Windows operating systems move unused memory pages from applications that have not been used for a while to the hard disk's page file, requiring those memory pages to be read back from the slow disk and back into memory no matter how much RAM you have.

Solid State Disks perform much better than hard disk in data read and write functions when dealing with regular hard disk usage that would be seen through starting applications and using the system. They have a big advantage is when accessing a lot of data that is spread around the disk and when considering that over time the data on a hard disk tends to become fragmented and eventually the files move apart from each other on the disk over time. A hard disk's head has to mechanically move to gather all the pieces of files and different files on the platters while solid state disk's access is constant no matter where in flash memory the data for the files is located. Both hard drive types perform very well in sequential data access roles such as when playing or copying large media files but hard drives go to pieces when they start accessing small files spread out on the disks while the solid state drives gracefully slow down and maintain their level of performance more steadily.

Another small benefit to this system configuration is that this solid state disk drive will have a single large partition and will be used exclusively for the operating system, applications, and game files that are going to be composed of many small files that will be accessed often and mostly randomly. The solid state drive specializes in fast access of random data so performance will be maximized from using it to store these files. The other standard hard disk drives will be used primarily for storage of large media files and since they will mostly access them sequentially so these drives will be able to work at maximum performance while also maintaining a very low cost-to-capacity ratio. I have clocked these Western Digital Green 1TB drives doing steady ~47 MB/s over eSATA when transferring large movie files while occasionally peaking at 60 MB/s for large MKV files and dipping at 30 MB/s during small MP3 files.



Choices

Capacity - 60-80 GB

Capacity wise I think that 64-80 GB is more than enough storage for loading up a full Vista operating system, Office, applications, and also a few games and having enough storage for the usual files and documents that folks collect overtime on the system. Anything less in capacity will probably be restrictive in short time.

If you have an older laptop and have one of the smaller 40-80 GB drives from a few years you probably only started running out of room on it once you loaded it up with your media collection of music files and movies. In this HTPC system configuration the standard hard disk drives would contain the media files thus freeing up a lot space from the solid state drive used for core operating system and application files.

Vendor Choice

I have always favored large vendors for their proven reputation and support overtime with the products that they produce. There have always been very noticeable flops from some of the products that were made by these vendors such as the Quantum Big Foot 5.25" suicide drives, IBM DeathStar 75 series, Seagate Barracuda firmware whack drives, etc. but overall most of these manufacturers have had a good track record. I'm always very weary in buying products from smaller or not well known manufacturers regardless of any get great accolades in reviews because I've been burned so many times with these products not lasting as long or getting shafted on support from these manufacturers.

As the number one choice I listed the Intel X25-M 80GB drive below as the choice for this configuration even though that it is currently priced at USD $363 whereas other competitors are priced at 1/3rd of that for a little smaller 64GB drive. I trust Intel a lot more than most of the other memory manufacturers on the market these days and I'm weary of their engineering designs, support, and long term longevity of their drives.

While a drive for similar capacity but at 1/3rd the price might seem like a steal and a savings for $200, you have to consider the amount of time in man-hours that will be wasted in rebuilding a system after a failure of the drive. If a drive fails and it takes 2-week waiting period to receive a replacement and then 10-hours to reinstall the operating system and applications or even 1-hour from a disk image backup that time might be worth a lot more to you than the $200 you thought you would save on the original price.

There is also a big performance difference between some of those bargin priced drives and the high priced ones so that $200 difference might be a lot lower if you consider the performance and reliability aspect of it.

However, the current price of USD $363 for 80 GB of SSD storage is quite a lot though and SSD might be a better option if Intel decided to price this model down to a more manageable ~$200 rate.

Issues

I'm catching up on some of the SSD articles that I linked to below and I just noticed the whole debacle with the JMicron MLC controllers on some SSDs causing huge delays in small file random write accesses times. I guess my recommendation of the more expensive Intel might be justified just on this fact alone as to avoid getting one of the crappy SSDs.



Solid State Disks




Intel X25-M SSDSA2MH080G1 80GB SATA Internal Solid state disk (SSD) - Retail - $363.00 ($ 4.5375 / per GB)



Articles

There is a pretty good article to read about solid state drives below.

AnandTech - Intel X25-M SSD: Intel Delivers One of the World's Fastest Drives

AnandTech - The SSD Anthology: Understanding SSDs and New Drives from OCZ

 

[Dangman]

Man I can't tell if we're helping you or the other way around with all the mini-essays you keep writing

 

[engiNURD]

Check out the OCZ Vertex SSDs... givin intel a run for its money.

 

[JakFrost]

Man I can't tell if we're helping you or the other way around with all the mini-essays you keep writing

I think this thread is a mutual effort and I really appreciate the help and feedback that you guys give me for the recommendations that I post in here. I'd rather be wrong about something and have you guys call me on it here publicly to point out a better solution than to recommend some piece of crap to my friends.

I'm usually on the up-and-up of technology trends but these days there are so many products out on the market that it is impossible to know everything about every single one of them and not miss some vital piece of information. Luckily we have places like HardForum to throw ideas at people and have them critique them to improve things.

I really appreciate all feedback from everyone, especially you Danny Bui and enginurd since you guys give me the best critiques and recommendations.

Much of my writing tends to border on lengthy posts with rants in-between so I do appreciate you guys taking the time of reading through the stuff, at least skimming it for details.

Check out the OCZ Vertex SSDs... givin intel a run for its money.

Yeah, but looking at that AnandTech SSD Anthology article the OCZ Vertex drives still suffer from write issues after all the pages on the SSD have been written to. It seems that OCZ addressed some of the issues and their performance has increased over the other SSD drives from the market but Intel still beats them.

Good suggestion though since the OCZ Vertex drives are a very good cost alternative to the Intel ones offering close to 50% discount on price-per-gigabyte to Intel but with a bit of a performance hit.

I've suggested the Intel X-25M and OCZ Vertex drives to my friend and I'll let him make a decision. Additionally, I'm earmarking an SSD for my future system upgrade but I don't know if I should wait until ATA-TRIM support is out with Windows 7 or should I just on-board earlier.



Solid State Drives - Price/Performance Alternative to Intel X25-M Series




OCZ Vertex Series OCZSSD2-1VTX60G 2.5" 60GB SATA II Internal Solid state disk (SSD) - Retail - $209.00 - (-$40.00 rebate) - $169.00 ($ 2.816 / per GB)





OCZ Vertex Series OCZSSD2-1VTX120G 2.5" 120GB SATA II Internal Solid state disk (SSD) - Retail - $419.00 (-$30.00 rebate) $389.00 ($ 3.2416 / per GB)

 

[engiNURD]

The 30GB OCZ Vertex was recently on sale for $128 - $25 Promo code - $20MIR = $83 AR AC. Too bad its still out of stock, since the promo expires today.

 

[JakFrost]

The 30GB OCZ Vertex was recently on sale for $128 - $25 Promo code - $20MIR = $83 AR AC. Too bad its still out of stock, since the promo expires today.

That's a good price but I wouldn't recommend the 30GB to buy since it would quickly become too small. I just recently increased my Windows XP's with Office 2003 and some applications partition from 20 GB to 40 GB since I ran out of space, and I still have 6 GB of programs like Adobe Suite and Visual Studio 2008 installed on another partition along with 60 GB of various games.

I just did a Vista Ultimate install on my VMware Workstation and I decided to be skimpy and set only a 8 GB volume size instead of the recommended 16 GB, only to find out that I only had 200 MB free after the install. Vista eats 8 GB without installing .NET Framework 3.5, Office 2007, Adobe Suite, and other applications.

Even with a 60 or 80 GB drive some larger games would still probably need to be installed on one of the other hard disk drives or game management would have to be used to uninstall older games that are no longer played.

I think that 60-80 GB is absolutely the bare minimum to use and have enough space for the operating systems, applications, and some games for now. At least until larger SSD drives come out and the prices drop to double or triple up in size. That is usually the case every ~1 years where the sweet spot in capacity-per-price moves over to the next 2x size drive.

I still think that an SSD upgrade would be very beneficial to the user experience and responsiveness of the system. I already sent the info to my friend but I'm going to make a stronger case with him to get one for this HTPC. I agree with Anand's recommendation that the best money invested in a good system is in a SSD.

I think that a bare minimum investment of $169 for the OCZ Vertex 60 GB drive is a good investment while $369 for the Intel X25-M 80 GB might be a bit hard to swallow comparing the performance between these two drives.

There is a huge performance difference in the random small write performance between the OCZ and Intel but looking at the overall PCMark Vantage results the difference gets a lot smaller, but both of them still beat the pants off the WD VelociRaptor 10K RPM drive.

For this system configuration that wants to do a all-around-system for HTPC / Desktop / Gaming the SSD is a clear winner in every respect since the WD VelociRaptor 10K RPM drive is not even in consideration due to the noise and heat that it generates compared to no noise and minimal heat for the SSD.

The Intel X25-M 80 GB MLC SSD drive gets $0.031-per-pcmark and the OCZ Vertex 60 GB MLC SSD gets $0.017-per-pcmark. That is almost like paying half-price for the performance when getting the OCZ.

 

[engiNURD]

Heh, my XP partition is 25GB, and its fine. Games/apps with large footprints I simply install into another partition.

I tried the 30GB Vertex, and it underwhelmed me. I was expecting instantaneous response, but that wasn't the case. However, apparently all I needed was a 2nd one for RAID0 -- what many on the OCZ forums are now doing since they dropped in price. So two of them in RAID0 would give you 60GB of space and much better performance than a single 60GB, and it would have cost around the same after rebate and promo code. Though, I no longer have the 30GB I was playin with, so it'll be some time before I play with a RAID0 array of SSDs, lol.

 

[JakFrost]

I tried the 30GB Vertex, and it underwhelmed me. I was expecting instantaneous response, but that wasn't the case. However, apparently all I needed was a 2nd one for RAID0 -- what many on the OCZ forums are now doing since they dropped in price.

That might be interesting to do for ultra performance but I'm just concerned about the 30GB capacity. I've seen my OS install go from 4GB partition for Win2K, to 8 GB for XP, then 10 GB, then 20 GB, and now 40 GB (when I'm actually uninstalling unused applications). It might be possible to squeeze Vista into 30 GB but I think that would be more of a hassle with the application and game installs on another drive defeating the purpose of getting an SSD for data access performance in the first place.

Maybe if the 60 GB drives would become available at a steeper discount ~$125 each then do two of them in a RAID-0 config it would become more feasible from a performance perspective. It's something to think about but I don't know if the price/performance ratio would work with the current $169 for 60 GB price.

 

[engiNURD]

No, it wouldn't be, and that was my point: 60GB (2x30GB in RAID0) for around the same price as a single 60GB, but much faster. 60GB would surely be enough for most people. If you don't uninstall games/apps, then I guess you'd need two 60GB SSDs, but unfortunately, the affordable model right now is the 30GB, so if you want such performance, you'll have to fit your stuff within 2 of them for now. Getting just one of these current SSDs, even if its the 120GB model, just isn't worth it, IMO. I'll probably wait until they get faster and cheaper, of course, before buying them.

 

[sirmonkey1985]

an i7 for an htpc? a wee bit overkill eh?

i know its also a gaming system and desktop.. but honestly whats the point? your using a 4870 which will be the bottleneck before the cpu? you could save an easy 300-400 dollars by just using a high end 45nm C2Q..

reminds me of a guy i know that built a file server with a q9550 and 4870x2 and yet views the system with ultraVNC..

@ The Engineer
as long as you get a good connection with the 802.11n it will do 11-12MB/s transfering which isnt all that bad for wireless..

 

[engiNURD]

... you could save an easy 300-400 dollars by just using a high end 45nm C2Q. ...

Really?

$165 - Q8200
$230 - i7.920
==========
$65

$240 - P6T, X58
$85 - UD3L, P43
==========
$155

$96 - 6GB DDR3 1600, $16/GB
$60 - 6GB (2GB + 4GB) DDR2 800, $10/GB
==========
$36, difference of $6/GB


Total savings of $256... not $300 - $400... and that's not even a high end Core2Quad, which costs more than the Q8200. The Q9550 alone is the same price as the i7.920, so the only real savings from a high end Core2Quad build would come from the RAM and motherboard, which won't come near $300 in savings if using comparable parts.

 

[JakFrost]

an i7 for an htpc? a wee bit overkill eh?

i know its also a gaming system and desktop.. but honestly whats the point? your using a 4870 which will be the bottleneck before the cpu? you could save an easy 300-400 dollars by just using a high end 45nm C2Q..

reminds me of a guy i know that built a file server with a q9550 and 4870x2 and yet views the system with ultraVNC..

@ The Engineer
as long as you get a good connection with the 802.11n it will do 11-12MB/s transfering which isnt all that bad for wireless..

HTPC = Yes, Desktop = Yes, Gaming = Yes

While I call this an HTPC system because of the most important function that it will be used for this system is also going to do desktop and gaming functions so those are the ones that really affect the build more so than an HTPC. If this was purely a low-budget HTPC then any C2D system with Intel G45 on-board video card and RealTek chipset would have been perfect for full accelerated 1080p AVC Blu-ray video output and the CPU would be able to handle anything else thrown at it. The desktop requirement ups the configuration a little for better video and more memory but it is the gaming that really pushes this system towards the top parts for ATI 4870 and Core i7.

Original Paragraph
Another option to downgrade would be to go with the older Intel Core 2 Quad Socket 775 and DDR2 memory architecture. The cost savings will $184.01 at 9% savings but at a performance decrease of 20% in most applications and 20-40% decrease in video encoding and linear calculation processing applications. There is some good information about the how the new Intel i7 architecture compares to the older Core 2 in this article AnandTech: The Nehalem Preview: Intel Does It Again article. (Revised paragraph.)

The Core i7 versus Core 2 Quad is still a valid argument but one that I explored at the very beginning of this thread when I first posted this system as a C2Q then after realizing that for a 20% performance increase you only pay 9% difference, and now the difference in price has probably dropped. There is just no reason at this point or in the immediate future to go with Core 2 Quad instead of the benefits of a Core i7 system. There was a nice article I read somewhere last month that basically agreed and said the same thing since the prices of Intel X58 motherboards and DDR3 memory have dropped in the last few months.

Wireless N

Funny you should mention Wireless N standard since the card in this system does B/G/N but I don't remember if I mentioned this fact, my friend's living room is two floors (two ceilings) below where his Internet connection enters the house and where the Wireless router is. Most likely he has Wireless B/G router without N. He can get a Wireless N router for ~$35-$160 so he can increase his bandwidth. The only concern that I have is over the connection quality going through two ceiling/floors and also the added latency due to the connection. I've seen some Wireless routers add 100ms to the connection almost making the Wireless connection seem like a fast modem connection with the slowness of the responses.

You could get 11-12 MB/s on Wireless N but how much are you going to get two floors down? The interfaces won't negotiate the highest transfer speed with so much signal loss in that situation. The best solution in my opinion is going with a wired connection on Fast Ethernet (100 Mbit/s = 11 MB/s) or Gigabit Ethernet (1,000 Mbit/s = 40-80 MB/s depending on Jumbo Frames and IRQ Balancing).

I've volunteered to wire up my friend's house with Cat 6 cabling in-wall to all the bedrooms and other rooms in the house going to Cat 6 certified keystone jacks in the walls. I have the network cable tester, crimp tools, punch-down tool, and I just need to borrow the wire snake spool from another friend of ours to run the cables. I'll also borrow a thin-wire surveillance camera with light to identify the cable drop-down points inside the walls to figure out where the building designer put in the cable conduits so that I'll know where to snake cable in.

I also priced out and recommended all the cable, jacks, and wall-plates necessary for this job and it seems like it is pretty cheap to get everything purchased. The biggest difficulty is probably the labor of finding the conduits in-wall and snaking the cable but after that I have the network crimping, punch-down, and cable testing all handled.



Cat 6 UTP Stranded, General In-Wall Rated (CMG), 500MHz 24AWG 1000FT Bulk Cable - Blue - $92.00


Keystone Wall Plate - $0.34 - $0.43


Cat6 Tooless Keystone - White - $1.70

 

[engiNURD]

Crimping Cat6 is a biatch.

 

[JakFrost]

No, it wouldn't be, and that was my point: 60GB (2x30GB in RAID0) for around the same price as a single 60GB, but much faster. 60GB would surely be enough for most people. If you don't uninstall games/apps, then I guess you'd need two 60GB SSDs, but unfortunately, the affordable model right now is the 30GB, so if you want such performance, you'll have to fit your stuff within 2 of them for now. Getting just one of these current SSDs, even if its the 120GB model, just isn't worth it, IMO. I'll probably wait until they get faster and cheaper, of course, before buying them.

D'oh on me! Thanks for writing that up, you made yet another good suggestion, because I just realized about RAID-0 (stripping without parity) increasing the capacity of the RAID to 2n (double). My mind is stuck on RAID-1 (mirroring) for redundancy and fault-tolerance that I use in my own system with capacity n/2 (half) that I didn't realize that 2 x 30GB in RAID-0 = 60 GB.

Now to find OCZ Vertex 30 GB cheaply, unfortunately they are out of stock on Newegg.com and there is a limit of 1-per-customer.

ZipZoomFly:



OCZ OCZSSD2-1VTX30G Vertex Series 30GB (SSD) SATA II Solid State Drive (SSD) Solid State Drive Retail - $129.99 (-$20.00 rebate to 2009-03-31): $109.99 x 2 = $219.98

Newegg:



OCZ Vertex Series OCZSSD2-1VTX30G 2.5" 30GB SATA II Internal Solid state disk (SSD) - Retail - $128.00 (-$20.00 rebate to 2009-03-31): $108.00 x 2 = $216.00 (SOLD OUT as of 2009-03-26)

 

[engiNURD]

... Now to find OCZ Vertex 30 GB cheaply, unfortunately they are out of stock on Newegg.com and there is a limit of 1-per-customer. ...

Yah, as I mentioned earlier, its been out of stock since that promo code came out (the one that made it $83 AR AC).

The 30GB OCZ Vertex was recently on sale for $128 - $25 Promo code - $20MIR = $83 AR AC. Too bad its still out of stock, since the promo expires today.

 

[JakFrost]

Yah, as I mentioned earlier, its been out of stock since that promo code came out (the one that made it $83 AR AC).

Yeah, dang it! But I'm still happy that the whole SSD thing with RAID-0 with the OCZ Vertex drives is a very good improvement to the system.

The Asus P6T motherboard has 6 SATA ports on the Intel ICH10R chipset, so 2 x SSD and 4 x HDD would work out perfect.

It also has 2 SATA ports on that JMicron chip so that would be used for the LG Blu-ray drive and I just hope that the JMicron is compatible with the LG Blu-ray. My very old Silicon Image controller works with my LG Blu-ray but my BIOS won't boot from it. I hope that the JMicron is better or I'll have to temporarily swap SATA ports to get the OS install going from the ICH10R ports and then swap in a HDD.

I looked at the inside of the case and there is plenty of space to mount those 2.5" SSD drives in there. I'll probably mount the drives somehow on the leftover space on the bottom 5.25" external bay since only the front quarter will be used by the Lian-Li media reader. I'll see if there is some kind of a conversion bracket or stacking bracket for 5.25" to 2.5".

 

[Rydawg5143]

Jackfrost, you need help in math class.

 

[JakFrost]

Jackfrost, you need help in math class.

Probably, it's hard doing even simple math at 2 am in the morning. There's probably math and logic errors on half the calculations that I try to do, not to mention the numbers are only valid for a few weeks until the prices fluctuate again.

 

[Rydawg5143]

i was just commenting on your SSD price per gb calculations, I want some 3 cent/ gb SSD

 

[JakFrost]

i was just commenting on your SSD price per gb calculations, I want some 3 cent/ gb SSD

I got it, I messed up the decimal point there. All fixed now.

Below are the prices per GB of storage for the SSDs and HDDs listed. However, the price would be more accurate in terms of price-per-performance. But we only have incomplete numbers from the benchmarks above.

Intel X25-M SSDSA2MH080G1 80GB SATA Internal Solid state disk (SSD) - Retail - $363.00 ($ 4.5375 / per GB)

OCZ Vertex Series OCZSSD2-1VTX30G 2.5" 30GB SATA II Internal Solid state disk (SSD) - Retail - $128.00 (-$20.00 rebate to 2009-03-31) $108.00 ($ 3.6 / per GB)

OCZ Vertex Series OCZSSD2-1VTX60G 2.5" 60GB SATA II Internal Solid state disk (SSD) - Retail - $209.00 - (-$40.00 rebate) - $169.00 ($ 2.816 / per GB)

OCZ Vertex Series OCZSSD2-1VTX120G 2.5" 120GB SATA II Internal Solid state disk (SSD) - Retail - $419.00 (-$30.00 rebate) $389.00 ($ 3.2416 / per GB)

Western Digital Caviar Green WD10EADS 1TB SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM - $99.99 ( $ 0.09999 / per GB)

 

[JakFrost]

There is a large price premium for Intel SSDs right now due to their position as the best SSD on the market by far so you really have to consider the considerable expense of getting two SDDs right now. But keep these performance results in mind when Intel releases their new SSD products in Q3/Q4 of this year and the price drops on the existing Intel X25-M 80 GB drives. At that time you might consider upgrading and buying another SSD to reap the double performance benefits at lower cost.

Below are some nice numbers for running two of the Intel SSDs in a RAID-0 (stripping) array. Basically having two SSDs will effectively double your hard disk performance in real-world applications, while having two HDDs only gives a tiny increase.

In computer performance the #1 bottleneck is when the computer has to wait for User Input, the #2 bottleneck is Hard Disk access time and random read/write performance. Having an SSD decreases the #2 bottleneck significantly, and having multiple SSD continues to slash that bottleneck by roughly ~45% per drive. There really is no better bang-for-the-buck purchase for performance, responsiveness, and usability than a single SSD, except for double SSD for RAID-0 stripping. You can always go to 3, 4...6 SSDs for RAID-0 if you’re hunting for ultimate performance but anywhere past 2 you’re hitting up against the SATA2 300 MB/s limit for sequential read and with 4 SSDs you’re hitting up against south bridge chipset bandwidth limitations, not to mention the costs! SATA3 600MB/s is already being tested but some manufacturers like Fusion-io sell PCIe cards that have SSD drives on them to utilize the huge PCIe bandwidth instead of SATA.

Here are two more reviews to check out for RAID-0 performance.

Reviews - One Drive vs Two Drive RAID-0 (Stripping)

ExtremeTech - Intel X25 80GB Solid-State Drive Review - PCMark Vantage Disk Tests

BenchmarkReviews - OCZ Vertex SSD RAID-0 Performance
(Be Warned about BenchmarkReviews! Synthetic benchmark results only, no real-life benchmarks such as PCMark Vantage.)

 

[JakFrost]

This weekend we built the HTPC from the parts that I listed to above there. In a nutshell it is an absolutely awesome machine and here are some of my impressions about it. I really did not get a lot of time with the machine since we only built the hardware at night with the OS install, and then spent most of the next day doing software installs and setups. There was no time to run any type of benchmarks or even to finish all the software installs. That will have to be done next time that I visit my friend's house.

Large Case

The size of the case is pretty large. It is basically a mid-tower case that is laid down on its side. It is quite long and wide because of this so it does not fit in any stereo type furniture and instead it requires to be placed on the floor or on a coffee table. I think that a better idea was to just use a standard tower case and set it to stand on the floor. It would have fit better in the corner of the room standing up instead of trying to lay down and be oversized. That is a point to consider.

Quiet Acoustics

The acoustics from this system built with two 120mm case fans, 120mm power supply fan, 92mm CPU fan, and 92mm video card fan are absolutely great! The system is very quiet and the low noise that it produces is in the mid-lower sound range so it is hardly audible with any type of audio playing while even sitting 3-feet away from the box that is raised on an ear height fireplace.

I was concerned about the video card fan producing high RPMs and noise but that was not the case at all even while playing Fallout 3 with Ultra High Video settings. It is absolutely quiet and perfect for HTPC duties. That was my biggest concern and it turned out to be a non-issue.

Thermals

I did not get a chance to look into the thermals of this system but the design of the case is perfect. The air is sucked in from the grills on the left and right side of the case towards the front, passing through the hard drives and then it moves through the two 120mm fans in the center of the case while it is further sucked into the 92mm video card, 92mm cpu fans, and 120mm power supply fans and it is pushed out of the case. This creates a very nice thermal wind in the case moving the air from the front to the back, just like the ATX standard intended.

I only got a quick glance at the Western Digital 1TB hard drive thermals and they are reading 30-32 C while running and doing constant writes while transferring data from external 1TB hard drives. I did not get a chance to even look at the CPU or any other temps since we were so busy with he software.

CPU Socket 1366 Bracket

The most difficult part of the entire hardware assembly was figuring out how to use the separate mounting bracket for the socket 1366. After a half-hour of looking at the parts and turning them around and looking at the back of the box for instructions to figure out how they are mounted we got it and mounted them. Looking back this would have been better if we just looked at and analyzed the back of the box better for the separate bracket and realized not to use any of the brackets from the heatsink box for socket 775.

The bracket was installed easily once we realized how to set it up and it is very nice design since it doesn't require any pressure to install and you don't have to worry about breaking your motherboard or cracking your chip. You just use a screwdriver to screw in the long pegs to the frame under the motherboard and you don't have to deal with the heat sink arm at all.

Heatsink Size

The size of the heatsink is absolutely perfect for the inside of this case and the top case cover clears the heatsink but a quarter of an inch. The heatsink fan was mounted with the rubber pads without much of an issue. It provides a good and strong airflow out of the case and it is very quiet when running. Very happy with this 92mm fan heatsink choice, anything else would have been too large.

Linksys Wireless Card Weirdness

We experienced some weirdness with the Linksys Wireless card since after assembling the system we powered it for the first time and it didn't start. The optical drive and hard drives all powered up and the motherboard and video cards all lit up by we didn't get the boot-up "beep". I did the memory removal trick to get the system to give us a beet code error but nothing. I started removing expansions cards, with the video capture card first, then the wireless card and finally the system gave us the no memory beep code. We put the wireless card into the last PCI slot and nothing again, then into the middle PCI slot and same deal, no boot-up. We removed the card and put in the memory along with the video capture card and the system started just fine.

After doing the OS install and pre-installing the drivers for the wireless card in the OS we tried again with the wireless card in the last PCI slot and the system booted just fine, installed the drivers and connected to the wireless network without a problem.

I set the system in the first boot to Plug and Play OS and the did the Vista 64-bit install and maybe the system autoconfigured something in the APIC table or the Plug and Play table to get the wireless card to work.

In any case the system works just fine with the wireless card and we get good performance out of since we did an Internet based speed test and it showed us max results for this broadband connection. We didn't do a dedicated wireless network bandwidth test with netcps since we didn't have time but we'll do so next time to check the signal quality and performance.

Intel SSD 8820 Firmware

The first thing we did with the system was use the Intel Firmware Upgrade utility to flash the SSD to 8820 firmware and that worked like a charm from the ISO image that I burned. Easy as cake.

We left the SSD in IDE mode since I forgot to change it to AHCI before the Vista install and we just left it there since we didn't have time to mess around with switching it. It performed very well from the start with an almost immediate second boot-up after the text mode boot messages finish with their auto-detections and time-outs from the JMicron SATA BIOS.

The operating system feels like it is almost immediate when we start any applications, there is no wait time perceived from when we click on an app icon until the window appears right away. It just works like magic.

SSD and Partition Alignment

I looked at the partition table that Vista SP1 64-bit created and it set the partition offset to 32256 (63 sectors * 512 bytes) so it appears that it is not aligned at the 32KB mark. I was under the impression that it would be aligned because we were installing Vista and not XP but now I'm not sure that it is aligned because I was under the impression that it would be aligned if it was located on a 32KB boundary and it is located on a 31.5KB. I'm also unsure if the Intel SSDs need to be aligned like the old OCZ SSD drives that had the stuttering issues.

I don't remember seeing anything about partition alignment and Intel SSDs on any of the reviews that I read except for a few people mentioning the threads below from the OCZ forum that are aimed at their own OCZ SSDs with JMicron 602 controllers.

OCZ Forum - Partition alignment importance under Windows XP (32-bit and 64-bit)..why it helps with stuttering and increases drive working life.

OCZ Forums - How to setup Core V1/2, Solid, Apex, Vertex SSD with aligned partitions using USB (if available on the drive) or SATA. Updated to show how to use Vista recovery disk

Without alignment this hard drive is damn fast and next time I get some time I'll run some disk benchmarks on it to see if we can get some numbers back.

Video Output Craziness

We had some issues with figuring out how to connect this system to the existing Sony A/V receiver and the Dell projector. We went around in a circle trying all kinds of connections and in the end we ended up with the most obvious and first choice that we tried, the composite video out of the S-video looking center connector. We learned that the video card will only output 1030i @ 30fps at 1440x900 or higher 1920x1080p resolution out of the composite output that causes unbearable flickering on the projector. We had to settle for 720p @ 60fps at 1280x720 for now until after the projector is upgraded to a new model. The new one should be HDMI based and it will support full 1080p 60fps at 1920x1080 so we'll switch the video output from the composite to the DVI output and use a DVI->HDMI dongle to give us a better connection and higher resolution than now.

When that happens my friend can dump the entire Sony A/V Receiver that is being used only as an oversized audio/video switch for component video and digital optical & coax audio and replace it with a cheap $70 HDMI & optical TOSLink switch simplifying the whole setup.

The video card worked just fine and the new ATI Catalyst 9.4 drivers worked like a charm so there was no problems at all with any of the parts in the HTPC system and the output options on the video card are great and it is very flexible in terms of connectivity. The whole trouble was with the A/V and projector connections and figuring out the best and highest resolution connection options.

Overclocking To Come

The system right now is running on all Auto settings so it is stock 2.66 GHz and DDR3 at only 1066 MHz. We did not have any time to spend on overclocking the system and that is fine since it'll be some time that it has running on stock settings before pushing it higher and that will let us know if it is stable.

Vista 64-bit and Media Playback

We spend most of the time with the software install and didn't get much of a chance to test the system's media capabilities but we did install Haali Media Splitter, FFDshow 32 and 64-bit, and MPC-HC 32 & 64-bit and we played some H.264 movies at 720p and 1080p with digital AC3 and DTS audio without a problem. The MPC-HC used DXVA acceleration on the ATI card just fine and fell back to software decoding for some other movies that we had. The CPU usage was 7% for DXVA and 17-20% for software so everything is fine there. We tried playback with XMBC frontend real quick and that worked just fine and so did Vista Media Center for TV playback. We did music with Windows Media Player also just to try. The audio playback was easy and all the audio worked like a charm over the optical connection from the on-board RealTek HD card. After installing drivers we didn't have to do anything to get audio, it worked just fine in 2-channel PCM and 5.1-channel mode in Dolby Digital and DTS. It supports 2-channel at 16 and 24 bit at 48 kHz but doesn't do 96 or 192 kHz, since it is S/PDIF after all and it is bandwidth limited to 1.5 Mbit/s.

Everything worked but we didn't do an exhaustive test. As long as the HD content worked everyone was happy!

No pictures yet since we didn't have time. Maybe next time.

 

[ShagnWagn]

Great write-up. I don't know how I missed your thread, because I have a very similar build I'm trying to get started. I didn't get much input though. http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1409953

Did you have a final component build list? I am building one for myself, and have two others that want me to build a HTPC gaming rig for them also. I'm not sure why people are unwilling to help or say "that's not a HTPC". lol. I will probably go with an ATI 4890 instead though, and hold off on the SSD's until later this year.

How did you decide on a case? It seems you almost ditched the whole HT component look because of the case size. I found several cases that seemed to work find for the ATX size in my link above. I am also considering the new Lian Li cases (maybe the PC-C33 and PC-C34F).

One last thing: Are you using the video card's audio, or the motherboard's audio? I am curious if you are getting full surround sound and also able to pass the original movie encoded (DD/DTS) signals.

 

[Dangman]

Great write-up. I don't know how I missed your thread, because I have a very similar build I'm trying to get started. I didn't get much input though. http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1409953

You didn't reply to those responses. So how were we suppose to provide input if you do not respond?

Anyway, JakFrost, nice writeup. While I may disagree with a good majority of your parts from a price to performance perspective and usage scenario, I do have to say this: Excellent work!

 

[JakFrost]

Did you have a final component build list?

How did you decide on a case?

One last thing: Are you using the video card's audio, or the motherboard's audio?

Parts List

The list on the first page is the final build list. My friend bought all the parts from it, except for the cables that he already had, and except for the Lian-Li media reader since it's out of stock on Newegg, no big miss.

Case

The case was chosen because of the HTPC factor and trying to make this system look like a stereo component. The Lian-Li case is absolutely awesome and the two 120mm fans centered inside the case provide great thermals and very low acoustics, compared to the fans being on the edges of the case in the front or rear. However, the sheer size of the case in terms of length and width is pretty big so it will never fit into any stereo cabinet as we found out. I think that a floor standard tower case might have been a better alternative in terms of space conservation but at the expense of some acoustics since most of those cases include front and rear fans instead of internal fans and that has an effect on the acoustics. Not to mention the mid/full tower cases from Lian-Li are quite more expensive for the better models. Now it's up to my friend to buy a new component shelf or a coffee table to sit this computer on top. Maybe he'll by a table with a lower shelf so he can hide it under the table and just expose it enough for the optical drive opening.

Audio Path - Motherboard S/PDIF Optical Out

My friend has a Logitech speaker system that already includes a little decoder box for DTS and Dolby Digital so he just feeds the optical out from the motherboard to the Sony A/V and then optical in to the Logitech decoder. Even after the projector upgrade most likely the sound will still be over S/PDIF optical and that is fine since he has only a 5.1 setup so both DD/DTS fulfill that need. The newer audio streams that are lossless like TrueHD and Master Audio will have to wait until they are better supported by video card HDMI, media players, and windows audio path.

My own setup is different though. I do the motherboard internal S/PDIF out to my nVidia video card S/PDIF input, then feed both video and audio over the same 60-foot HDMI cable to my living room Pioneer 1018 receiver, which then outputs video over HDMI to my Samsung 50" plasma. This works fine for my setup and I also get DTS and DD 5.1 channel surround sound, and I can go to 6.1 with DD+ that I already tried and tested with my audio setup. I'm awaiting a pair of speakers to come in and I'll do a full 7.1 channel setup in my living room, but I won't be able to get any 7.1 channel streams because of the S/PDIF 1.5 Mbit/s bandwidth limitation. Maybe I'll find a way to get this going. But so far I'm happy with FFDshow doing audio up-mixing to 5.1 channels anyway.

Intel SSD

The Intel SSD was a good choice in my opinion even though it is a little pricy right now since this still will most likely stay in this configuration for the foreseeable future, or until he fills up all 4 TB with media. He's already ~2 TB full from what I brought for him so he doesn't have much more to go. And since he's going to be getting and recording HDTV content that space will vanish shortly. It'll be time for an external RAID array and a RAID controller in a few months.

 

[JakFrost]

Anyway, JakFrost, nice writeup. While I may disagree with a good majority of your parts from a price to performance perspective and usage scenario, I do have to say this: Excellent work!

@Danny Bui

You got me very curious now and I want to know what parts you would recommend. I'm always interesting in "the perfect" setup so I want to hear your suggestions.

Just be aware that system was designed to be the Ultimate* All-In-One system with HTPC / Gaming / Desktop functions at the best price/performance ratio.

* Ultimate does not imply most powerful and expensive parts on the market, it means the best performing at all functions within standard computer costs. (e.g. single/double SSD is acceptable, 24 SSDs with RAID controllers is not, or single/SLI video card is acceptable, 3-SLI cards is not.)

By the way, those heatsink fins on the memory modules sure look good and they are lined up with the left side 120mm fan so it blows air right through the little slits in those fins. I know that you mentioned that these fins are more of a selling point than actual usable feature but I'm wildly guessing that the air moving between those fins might just provide a little better cooling than without them. Of course this is a wild guess but I'd like to be optimistic about geeky accessories like that.

 

[Alai]

Ehhhh on the SSD. Personally, I don't think it's worth it. If I had to do it again, I would probably have stuck with the 6400AAKS instead of buying the VR (Velociraptor). Having more than double the space and costing less than half the VR is definitely worth the slight decrease in load speeds.

Also, ehhhh on the HTPC case. I would just stuck with the ole Lian Li V350B and gotten a mATX mobo. Much smaller which is better for HTPC usage. Then again, it will get hot for OCing and gaming. So I guess that would be a personal choice. Which is why I don't like all-in-one setups. Much prefer one comp for server duty, another for gaming, another for HTPC.

Also, BLEEEHHH on the Linksys card. I hope it holds out for you but I think a better buy would have been the D-Link DWA-556. Super solid card that owns my older Netgear, Rosewill, or Linksys cards. Especially when pairing it with my DIR-655.

 

[Dangman]

@Danny Bui

You got me very curious now and I want to know what parts you would recommend. I'm always interesting in "the perfect" setup so I want to hear your suggestions.

Just be aware that system was designed to be the Ultimate* All-In-One system with HTPC / Gaming / Desktop functions at the best price/performance ratio.

* Ultimate does not imply most powerful and expensive parts on the market, it means the best performing at all functions within standard computer costs. (e.g. single/double SSD is acceptable, 24 SSDs with RAID controllers is not, or single/SLI video card is acceptable, 3-SLI cards is not.)

Hmmm, let me put it this way: I prefer keeping systems with different functions and roles separate to maximize their best price to performance value. In other words, I would have kept the HTPC and gaming/desktop as separate entities. In addition, a SSD and SLI setup is not what I personally think is within standard computer costs.

With that said, if the Ultimate Ultimate* All-In-One system with HTPC / Gaming / Desktop was your goal, then fine, it's a good build. It just wouldn't have been my goal. That's all I'm saying.

Oh and I really don't like the look of that Lian Li case. But if it fit your needs and wants, then I have no problem with you choosing it.

 

[Alai]

Hmmm, let me put it this way: I prefer keeping systems with different functions and roles separate to maximize their best price to performance value. In other words, I would have kept the HTPC and gaming/desktop as separate entities. In addition, a SSD and SLI setup is not what I personally think is within standard computer costs.

With that said, if the Ultimate Ultimate* All-In-One system with HTPC / Gaming / Desktop was your goal, then fine, it's a good build. It just wouldn't have been my goal. That's all I'm saying.

Oh and I really don't like the look of that Lian Li case. But if it fit your needs and wants, then I have no problem with you choosing it.

OMGGGGG it's like we're telepathically connected!!!