Getting ready to move into a new apartment September 1st or September 15 and have planned this HTPC for awhile. Decided to build it now because life will be very hectic when I'm moving as I'm buying virtually all new furniture. No budget. In NY so have access to Microcenter and Amazon charges sales tax but Newegg doesn't. Will check out Microcenter later on, or might be lazy and just order all from Newegg.
Goals
- Playback of 1080P MKV
- Playback of 2D Bluray
- Emulation of NES, SNES, N64, PSX, PS2
- Playback of music
- Live TV/DVR from OTA HD broadcast
Build
$150 - Lian Li PC-C37B
$125 - i3 2100
$80 - Asus P8H61
$30 - G.Skill Ripjaw X DDR3 1333 4GB (2GB x2)
$45 - Antec Earthwatts 380W
$95 - Intel 320 Series 40GB
$80 - Samsung F4 2TB
$55 - Lite-on Bluray Reader 4x
----------
$665 (b/f tax/shipping)
Thoughts
Case was the big splurge as I can get an uglier case for $60. But the Lian Li speaks directly to my soul and since my fiance is an interior designer I decided to splurge here to make it high on WAF.
I want a more powerful HTPC because I'd like it to excel at emulating the systems mentioned above with high WAF. My question is what extent this will suffice with onboard graphics for emulating. My suspicion is that emulators are largely CPU dependent for stability and use GPU for flair. I'd like some tips here in terms of when/if I would need a graphics card, and I assume I'd need a half height one to fit in the case. Either way I'll probably get it without the card first and test it out. Emulation is still secondary to MKV playback and LiveTV.
This will eventually hook up into probably a Denon receiver via HDMI, and through that to a 2D 1080P Samsung or Panasonic Plasma I'll probably purchase next month. I'll also be purchasing a Homerun Dual networked TV tuner, and a monoprice indoor antenna--hopefully that will pick up what I need (I live in Manhattan).
The software I'll be using is either 7MC Mediabrowser, XBMC, or some combination of the two. And TotalMediaTheatre for bluray playback.
Thanks.
Goals
- Playback of 1080P MKV
- Playback of 2D Bluray
- Emulation of NES, SNES, N64, PSX, PS2
- Playback of music
- Live TV/DVR from OTA HD broadcast
Build
$150 - Lian Li PC-C37B
$125 - i3 2100
$80 - Asus P8H61
$30 - G.Skill Ripjaw X DDR3 1333 4GB (2GB x2)
$45 - Antec Earthwatts 380W
$95 - Intel 320 Series 40GB
$80 - Samsung F4 2TB
$55 - Lite-on Bluray Reader 4x
----------
$665 (b/f tax/shipping)
Thoughts
Case was the big splurge as I can get an uglier case for $60. But the Lian Li speaks directly to my soul and since my fiance is an interior designer I decided to splurge here to make it high on WAF.
I want a more powerful HTPC because I'd like it to excel at emulating the systems mentioned above with high WAF. My question is what extent this will suffice with onboard graphics for emulating. My suspicion is that emulators are largely CPU dependent for stability and use GPU for flair. I'd like some tips here in terms of when/if I would need a graphics card, and I assume I'd need a half height one to fit in the case. Either way I'll probably get it without the card first and test it out. Emulation is still secondary to MKV playback and LiveTV.
This will eventually hook up into probably a Denon receiver via HDMI, and through that to a 2D 1080P Samsung or Panasonic Plasma I'll probably purchase next month. I'll also be purchasing a Homerun Dual networked TV tuner, and a monoprice indoor antenna--hopefully that will pick up what I need (I live in Manhattan).
The software I'll be using is either 7MC Mediabrowser, XBMC, or some combination of the two. And TotalMediaTheatre for bluray playback.
Thanks.
Last edited: