I usually used my old obsolete PC for Home Theatre.

Last I had in Melbourne:

Pentium 4 2.533Ghz with Zalman CNPS 9500LED
1GB DDR Ram
ATI Radeon 9550
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Platinium
Enermax 400watt PSU
Pioneer DVD-Writer 16x
Lite-ON CD-Writer 48x
2x 80GB Maxtor HDD (IDE)
Lian-Li Casing
Logitech Z-560 THX Certified 4.1 Speakers (not as good as the 5.1 version but decent enough for a good movie)

All this connected to an old 17inch Hitachi Monitor and a 29inch Sony CRT TV.

PS. I probably built a cheap HTPC next via using a portable Laptop, with Logitech speakers for a small room next time.

IMHO, the most important part for a HTPC is the TV and the speakers.

hi, i have been eyeing this Acer Aspire L3600, saw it in lowyat selling for round RM2k, issit worth it or it can be cheaper if i assemble it myself?



This post has been edited by beebee: May 4 2008, 09:43 AM

mine

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600
Gigabyte G31MX-S2 mother board
2 GB Ram
ATI 2600XT
Onkyo PCI 2100 sound card
Silvertone LC03 casing
Asus DVD rom
Silvertone 520w power supply
660 GB HDD
Window XP Pro
HTPC software : Media Portal, VLC, FooBar, Media Player Classic
Connect to 32" LCD TV
Sound down mix to stereo, output to Audio Lab amplifier and AE floor standing speakers


IMHO, HTPC spec is depend on what kind of media files we want to play, if just some RMVB/DVD/AVI file, a pc with less than RM1000 (minus monitor and good looking casing) will do the job just fine. The real challenge is to play those 720p or VC-1 file.

This post has been edited by kepco: May 4 2008, 09:50 AM

My office is using that PC with the exception of the speakers.

A decent PC but sometimes things run quite slow doing spreadsheets and stuff. I think it's due to overheating because it has a powerful CPU yet it is the airflow of the casing doesn't seem to be good enough.

I think you are better of buying a clone one with RM2k.

Cheers

eh i bought two of those
one for my parents and the other for a friend's parents

friends parents using the amd x2 5000..

its fast..
and the cpu cooler on it is awesome..
opened up and tested..

u cant custom build something like that size cheaper..
i can confirm with u on that..

I intend to setup HTPC for HD with resolution 1920x1080. File play mostly TS, vob and blu ray. In this case, are the graphic card more important than the cpu, ram or the MB?

Maybe my work one isn't well configured or just have too much dust on it.

I don't think it's worth the money, first it collects lotsa dust, has a tendency to overheat and have a brick for a PSU (like those laptop) creating heck lotsa wires everywhere.)

Yes you are correct in terms that you can't make one as small as this or as powerful (unless you have a lot of time on your hand). However there are lotsa are slightly bigger version which runs just as fast and runs a lot cooler.

Cheers

Mine:

- CPU: AMD Athlon64 X2 3800+
- Mobo: Biostar T-Force TF-560 (NForce560 board)
- VGA: Biostar V8402GL26 (GeForce 8400GS, 256MB RAM)
- RAM: 2GB Kingston ValueRAM in 4x512MB configurations (running dual channel)
- Sound: Well-loved SBLive! 5.1 for MIDI, Onboard RealTek ALC881 for HD audio
- Tuner: LiveView FlyDVB-T Duo TV card
- Additional cards: Sonnet Allegro Express FW400 Firewire (just there because the case has a firewire port and I didn't want to waste it)
- HDD: Seagate 250GB SATA2 hard disk
- Optical drives: Samsung DVD-ROM drive, Imation DVD+/-RW drive
- Speakers: SonicGear Enzo 4000 speakers
- PSU: Antec TruePower 2.0 480w
- Case: CoolerMaster CM-282 HTPC case with Media kit (lousy kit, VFD giving all sorts of problems with the provided iMon software, at the end using LCD Smartie with it)
- Display: Dell 24" Entry level 1920x1200 (good enough for me, dun need the pricey HDMI functions, and the monitor can do HDCP through DVI).
- Keyboard: Logitech EX-111 wireless
- Mouse: Logitech EX-111 wireless


This post has been edited by RAMChYLD: May 5 2008, 12:48 PM

are HTPC and SFF are d same?

Similar but not the same IMO. HTPC focuses on being silent and an all round media solution, small size is prefered but its not necessarily so. SFF....IMO again....is more about being as small as possible

so performance wise, HTPC should perform better than SFF ? coz HTPC have room for customize rather than SFF which was built in wif mobo that limit ur room customize

Mine:

Core2Duo T7600G, Aopen i945GTt-VFA mini-itx, 2x512MB DDR2 667, Seagate 5400.3 120GB SATA, LG slim DVD Super Multi, 90W AC adaptor, Morex 3688 casing

Dunno about you guys lar but form factor (small) is more important to me since my wife is mainly using it to watch DVD niah. Low power and silence is more important for me.

If it's a budget issue, just get Intel's mini-itx board and do a DIY casing lor. Small and nice. No need to be powerhouse to sit in the living room lor.








This post has been edited by sniper on the roof: May 5 2008, 03:45 PM

Nice... But the problem is it's only good for DVDs and probably 720p material. I think it'll choke with 1080p mkv stuff and Bluray/HDDVD.

errr...theres already a HTPC THREAD in the audiophiles section guys...

Graphics card would not be so important when playing ts / mkv files because the are not hardware accelerated. They rely solely on raw CPU power. So CPU is important in his case. If you only play Bluray / HDDVD material, yes, graphics card is important.

But why worry? Just get a ATI 2400 Pro / XT or ATI 3450 and ýou're good to go for Bluray / HDDVD playback for HTPC purposes. If you plan to playback 1080p mkv files, be prepared to have a high end C2D or C2Q CPU in addition to the graphics card suggested above.

Not too big with HD stuff but I did try out most of the 1080p stuff from MS's HD site. No frame drops from there.

The beer looks better than the PC hahaha, can't wait to have a drink.

Anyway, what kind of remote control you use for that setup?

I got my remote control from Logitech and one from Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Platinium.

Cheers

anyone tried mobo with 780G chipset ... is it (built-in GPU) powerful enough to play 1080p with AM2 X2 5000+ ?
plan to start funding for one HTPC with this mobo.....any comment?

from some website..
it was able to play blu-ray movie

1080p and i vs blu ray
which one is greater?

I use Compro's remote

http://www.comprousa.com/en/product/k100/k100.html