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HTPC mobo/CPU advice

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djBon2112

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Jul 29, 2006
Messages
5,279
Hey guys, I'm building a quasi-HTPC/gaming rig at the end of April/beginning of May, and I'm currently looking at components. I've got my video card sorted out (most likely a 9800 GX2 or the next series of nVidia cards if they're out in early May), but I need to know which motherboard/CPU to go for. Intel's got so many choices, and now AMD is (kinda) back on the scene, and I'm not an expert on HD playback requirements, so I'm looking for your advice. I've got 5 big requirements:

1. Have excellent HD (h.264/x264 mkv mainly) playback capabilities, with the possibility of an internal Blu-ray player/burner eventually..
2. Be decent for gaming.
3. The motherboard must be an mATX form factor (for the cases I'm looking at).
4. The motherboard must have either optical or coaxial S/PDIF out.
5. Be as cheap as possible while retaining the above qualities.

This thing will be run stock clocks with the stock cooler (most likely; water is a possibility but depends on the case). I'm not as concerned about noise as most people are, but it can't be a blow dryer (I don't know how loud the 9800 GX2 is but I'm sure I can work around that).

Thanks in advance for any advice.
 
Have excellent HD (h.264/x264 mkv mainly) playback capabilities
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If these are rips you are doing yourself then lookup on the encoding options before you start so that all you encodes have the greatest chance of getting GPU accleration, otherwise it will have to be offloaded to the CPU.
 
Toytown said:
If these are rips you are doing yourself then lookup on the encoding options before you start so that all you encodes have the greatest chance of getting GPU accleration, otherwise it will have to be offloaded to the CPU.
Click to expand...

They're not done by me (but obtained completely legally, of course), but let's just assume then that they will be offloaded to the CPU in most cases. What type of power am I looking for in the CPU? (I found a motherboard)
 
Toytown's advice is exactly right with respect to rips/transcodes. If it weren't for the gaming requirement, I'd suggest the 780G chipset + decent/cheap AMD dual-core CPU. But since you're buying a high-powered video card, you have complete flexibility for choosing a CPU and MB.

Unless you're overclocking, the motherboard will not have any noticeable impact on your gaming performance. So this slims down the list of requirements to 1) mATX, 2) S/PDIF, and 3) cheap. On newegg, here's a list of AM2 motherboards and LGA775 motherboards that meet the first two. You'll have to decide what qualifies as "cheap enough" for you.
 
I havent tested any AMD x2 cpus for playback but cant see why they wouldnt do well.

If it helps my E2160 (well e2140 overclocked to 2160 speeds) can playback my 1080p rips with a bitrate of between 8-10Mbit of band of brothers using COREAVC with between 40-60% total cpu usage. Of course this is with the HTPC doing nothing else in the background like livetv etc etc etc.
 
Toytown said:
I havent tested any AMD x2 cpus for playback but cant see why they wouldnt do well.

If it helps my E2160 (well e2140 overclocked to 2160 speeds) can playback my 1080p rips with a bitrate of between 8-10Mbit of band of brothers using COREAVC with between 40-60% total cpu usage. Of course this is with the HTPC doing nothing else in the background like livetv etc etc etc.
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Alright, this is what I'm looking for. So an E2180 (next one up) should be generally sufficient for 1080p content? I'm basically looking for the level where knowing how the rips were encoded doesn't matter anymore, and it'll play pretty much everything fine ;)

And, the mobo I selected is this one: http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=27546 Anyone have any better suggestions, or should this be sufficient?
 
It's certainly sufficient, but you could get a motherboard that meets your needs for considerably less.

It bears repeating: whether or not your computer can play back the video smoothly depends on how it's encoded. As long as you have a video card that can accelerate playback of that codec, the CPU becomes almost irrelevant. So if you stick with H.264, x.264, VC-1, MPEG-2, etc, you'll be fine no matter the CPU.
 
Mohonri said:
It's certainly sufficient, but you could get a motherboard that meets your needs for considerably less.

It bears repeating: whether or not your computer can play back the video smoothly depends on how it's encoded. As long as you have a video card that can accelerate playback of that codec, the CPU becomes almost irrelevant. So if you stick with H.264, x.264, VC-1, MPEG-2, etc, you'll be fine no matter the CPU.
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Makes sense, but I will also be gaming on this computer so that's a factor as well.

As for the motherboard, I'm going to keep looking around then. The problem comes from the price discrepancy between Newegg and NCIX. That mobo is $80 US at Newegg. :(
 
what about the ip35-e for an htpc? I was thinking of building one and these are cheap now. If I paired that mobo with some 8600 video card, would a q6600 be overkill for a cpu?
 
yallknowho said:
what about the ip35-e for an htpc? I was thinking of building one and these are cheap now. If I paired that mobo with some 8600 video card, would a q6600 be overkill for a cpu?
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insanely overkill for a htpc.
 
No one's mentioned it, but it's a fairly obvious question: why are you looking at an elite GPU like the 9800GX2 for an HTPC? I can understand if you wanted to build an uber gaming PC that can also do HTPC. That I can understand. But then you say that (1) it's got to be as cheap as possible and (2) no overclocks (3) cheapo stock cooling.

To complicate matters with your uber-cheap, barely working PC that just happens to have the most expensive GPU made in it, you then talk about "watercooling" it (with no overclock!?). All this is hugely inconsistant - what are you trying to do?


...anyway, ignoring all the above contradictions, and giving benefit of the doubt and assuming you simply wanted a strong gaming PC (that just happened to do HTPC stuff):

(1) I'd forget about watercooling altogether. However, I'd toss out the stock cooler and replace it with a 3rd party solution simply to have everything running a bit quietly.
(2) I'd probably get the Asus P5E-VM G35 because it is a decent matx which can be overclocked. Please note that I am biased as I have one, but this is one of the few micro-ATX boards which can be overclocked. It also has optical out.
(3) I'd probably take the E8400 and overclock it. That would give you great gaming performance, at least until more games take advantage of quad core. And if anyone says CPU performance doesn't matter in gaming, they either (A) don't know what they're talking about or (B) they are not looking at a build where you include the fastest (enthusiast) GPU in the world.

That should meet your requirements except for #5 which makes no sense anyway. I'd also be very careful that the mini-ATX cases you're looking at can handle the huge 9800 GX2 - you may wish to consider HTPC cases that take a full sized M/B simply because they may have more space to handle the 9800 GX2.
 
Assuming you're building a "gaming" PC in a small case that can also do HTPC, here's a write-up on the Asus P5E-VM HDMI. Note that I'm assuming requirement 1 is handled by the GPU. (Ignore this if you aren't building a gaming PC and decide against getting the 9800GX2).

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1233021
 
mnewxcv said:
insanely overkill for a htpc.
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what would be a better choice, to mate with an ip35-e and a 8600?


I have an e6300 in my main computer. I sort of want to jump on a q6600 because they are cheap at microcenter, but what do you think? the e2160 is dirt cheap... is that sufficient?

I want to be able to HD dvds and blu ray eventually, and play regular dvds with zoomvideo and ffdshow
 
yallknowho said:
what would be a better choice, to mate with an ip35-e and a 8600?


I have an e6300 in my main computer. I sort of want to jump on a q6600 because they are cheap at microcenter, but what do you think? the e2160 is dirt cheap... is that sufficient?

I want to be able to HD dvds and blu ray eventually, and play regular dvds with zoomvideo and ffdshow
Click to expand...

Sounds reasonable for a cheap HTPC. Don't know much about this MB, but don't see anything wrong with the ip35-e. It's a full ATX board however, not a mini-ATX board. The e2160 seems ok for a dirt cheap CPU if you're getting an 8600 GPU as well. I wouldn't use this for gaming however. (not sure what this has to do with the OP's thread through...)
 
djBon2112 said:
Makes sense, but I will also be gaming on this computer so that's a factor as well.
Click to expand...
You're right--I should have said "for the purposes of HTPC work, the CPU becomes irrelevant". For gaming, of course, you'll want something a bit beefier.
 
How soon are you planning on getting all the components and doing the build?

MSI's new mobo is looking very nice for an HTPC that is capable of gaming.

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/674/3/

uATX based upon 780 chipset so 1080p and Blu Ray are fully supported with no GPU card

Review say that the 780 can do some pretty good gaming without a discrete card as well. Not going to get the 90 FPS type performance but it should work with most stuff.

Rumor has it that MSI added dedicated GPU memory on board as well. Interesting approach and should help with gaming performance.

What is interesting is that they added some audio on the board.

Reviews should be interesting on this one. It is supposed to be available in about 2 months according to news I have read elswhere.

If you are building now, the Gbyte board (Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H) seems to be a great soluiton. Another 780 solution with optical SPDIF out.

http://www.ocworkbench.com/2008/gigabyte/GA-MA78GM-S2H/g1.htm

Both are uATX so should work in the chassis you are looking at. Both have a discrete GPU slot if you want to add discrete graphics. Both offer audio connectivity.
 
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