• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

HTPC with gaming / high-end internals?

K

Krosan

n00b
Joined
Aug 26, 2009
Messages
14
Hi,

I am planning on buying the FT02 for my gaming pc. However I'm going to use my pc as a mediatank for my TV. Now I was wondering if it's possible to stuff all my gaming parts into an HTPC case.
Therefore, I'm now not sure if I should go for a tower case and not an HTPC case.

Is it possible to buy an HTPC case with support for normal sized parts, such as a normal ATX mobo + normal graphics card (high-end)?
Would making those parts silent by passive cooling prove to be a major pain in the ass?
And as a last question, would it cost me a lot to do all this?

Thanks in advance !!
 
Krosan said:
Is it possible to buy an HTPC case with support for normal sized parts, such as a normal ATX mobo + normal graphics card (high-end)?
Would making those parts silent by passive cooling prove to be a major pain in the ass?
And as a last question, would it cost me a lot to do all this?
Click to expand...

Yes, Yes, and Yes
 
Some "HTPC" (LOL fuck that) cases are bigger than a mid tower case. Hell, just buy a full tower or mid tower and flip it side ways and you have a "HTPC" (LOL) case.
 
Well, at least it didn't go in the HTPC forum... :p

Basically build yourself a gaming PC and hook it up to your preferred display. The best route for silence is water cooling with quiet fans, SSD hard drive, silent PSU, and other sound/vibration dampening material.. but of course that carries an additional price tag. In order to avoid tons of noisy/hot hard drives in the case for video and media storage, it would be best to stream them over the network.

The project is very possible and do-able. It would be fun if you wanted to put the money into it. Your modern gaming graphics cards also support hardware video acceleration for HD video content, so you'd be all set. An ATI card would probably be preferred so you could utilize their built in audio+video via HDMI whereas Nvidia uses an internal SPDIF connector that goes to the graphics card from your sound card which then converts and passes over HDMI as well. Either option is suitable though.
 
Oh dang, didn't know there was an HTPC forum :<
My bad!

Very interesting reply w1retap, I'll definitely look into that!

You seem to know a lot about making a build designed for great cinematic experiences.
Is a soundcard a necessity when your mkv contains the special surround sound like Dolby Digital etc?
Now I can watch everything on my CRT, but could that differ on my 1080p tv?
 
Last edited:
HTPC does not mean you have to use a SFF case. Most people just use a case that blends with their entertainment center.

But if your question is can I fit a lot of power in a SFF system the answer is yes.
 
Krosan said:
Oh dang, didn't know there was an HTPC forum :<
My bad!

Very interesting reply w1retap, I'll definitely look into that!

You seem to know a lot about making a build designed for great cinematic experiences.
Is a soundcard a necessity when your mkv contains the special surround sound like Dolby Digital etc?
Now I can watch everything on my CRT, but could that differ on my 1080p tv?
Click to expand...
There are basically two methods for audio. Let the computer decode the audio via software, or let the receiver decode the audio.

When the computer decodes the audio, you can use whatever audio cables hooked from the computer to your speaker set. When you want the receiver decoding the audio, you should be using either HDMI/optical/coax cable and have your computer set to pass-thru the audio (DTS and Dolby pass-thru).

When it comes to your TV, you can hook your computer up and watch movies the same way as on your monitor, but that of course depends on your video inputs and what resolution your TV is. You have to make sure the TV can display the video modes you want. For HDTV's, it varies.

For 720p HDTV's, you usually run 1280x720 or 1366x768.
For 1080p HDTV's, you usually run 1920x1080.

Some HDTV's like rear projection DLP's or CRT based HDTVs have overscan issues where the picture needs to be scaled down to fit on the screen so you can see the start menu and stuff. My preferred options for computer-->TV hookup are
- 1080p LCDs or Plasmas
- 720p or 1080p projectors
- 1080p DLPs
I stay away from 720p LCDs due to the large majority of them having an odd native resolution that isn't a multiple of 8. On some of those 720p LCD's, you can get funky text issues and some driver sets giving you problems wanting to display the right resolution. I recommend DVI or HDMI to hook up a computer to your display. VGA if you're in a crunch.. component as a last resort, but that's a very rare case.
 
Wow thanks a lot w1retap, that's some very valuable information!

I don't have a soundcard in my pc, so my question is whether the pass-thru audio will be rightly decoded by my TV without lag? And if so, I suppose I have to plug my speakers to my tv? I have a Sony 40Z5500, very recent model. It has Dolby Digital Plus. It also has 1080p/24 resolution :)
 
When hooking up to a 2ch audio television, the best option is for software decoding of all your audio streams. That way it properly decodes the audio for all the different audio streams and gets them downmixed to your TV on the right channels.

Otherwise, hooking up to a receiver with surround sound is the best option, and you could bitstream Dolby and DTS directly to it so the computer doesn't have to do any work.. the receiver does the decoding of the audio streams.
 
I'm sorry, I'm not really following. Does my Sony Z5500 have 2 channel audio, is that good or bad? Software decoding of audio, is that done behind the curtains? I use Media Player Classic with K-lite codec pack. Then I use a DVI cable from my graphics card to my TV.

I don't really have a receiver in place now but I could connect a pretty old analogue one. How do I get the audio from my PC to the receiver then? I don't really have a clue about all this, I'm sorry :(
 
When you pass audio to the TV, usually it always puts it in 2ch mode for the TV speakers. That is unless it has an audio pass-through output so you can hook it to the receiver via optical or something along those lines.To get audio to a receiver from a PC, there are several ways.. optical audio, coaxial audio, HDMI, or analog.

To get you started on media playback to your TV, you can refer to my guide in the HTPC forum.
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1443403
It goes over the basics and should point you in the right direction.

I should probably make a more basic "building and hooking up a home theater pc" guide.. :p
 
Thanks a lot w1retap! You saved me a lot of future headaches :)

I'll surely read your guide!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top