Building a HD PC

gillette147

Hi,

I don't know much about building PC's (none) but I have read about downloading HD-TV and playing it on my new LCD TV. Also then having a freeview multi-channel recorder (I just bought a dual freeview stick).

I was thinking about buying a dell gx280 (ebay) and maybe souping it up to make a PC suitable for all this.

I am trialling Media Portal at the moment - I would like to use Vista Home Premium to turm the PC into a HDD etc.

I wold prefer to have a desktop case and that it have a horizonal dvd tray.

Anybody built/got a media PC and want to share their experiences and suitable spec PCs.

Cheers

Blacksheep1979

It takes a suprisingly powerful computer to play true hd stuff. For 1080p you're looking at a min of a AMD64 3500 or pref a dual core either AMD or lower end core duo. If you look at radeon 1xxx or nVidia 6xxx/7xxx series of graphics cards they often (not all) have hd decoding capabilities which will take some strain off the cpu.

gillette147

I thought an exciting project like building a media PC would have generated more responses.

I guess you all already have them.
Cheers

Nilrem

For a HD PC you need as mentioned a fairly meaty CPU and a videocard that supports an output that your TV has an an input.

If you want to futureproof the system a bit you'll want a videocard that supports HDMI (Ati's new 2400 and 2900 cards support it for example.

Personally I would steer clear of the Dell's, as they are likely to have problems if you want to change the videocard etc.

What inputs does your TV have, as that can limit what you use for the PC's output.
Does the TV have a VGA input? If so does it support 1:1 mapping (some Sony TV's for example might be able to display 1360x768 via componant and HDMI, but only 1024x768 via VGA*).
Does it have Componant?
Does it have DVI or HDMI that can accept a computer input? (some HD TV's specifically state you cannot use a DVI adaptor to hook a PC up to it).

Once you know that you've got an idea of what videocards you need - if the TV accepts VGA or DVI then virtually any card will do for content that doesn't need HDCP, as long as the CPU and ram are up to the job.

If you do build yourself, I would suggest possibly looking at Antec or Coolermaster (antec have better build imo) cases for specialised ones for PC media center uses.


I'm building a new PC in the next couple of months with luck, and I want it to be HD media able, and to be futureproofed to a degree, for that reason i'm looking at
Intel Dual (or quad depending on price) core CPU
2gb of ram (possibly 4, depending on price).
ATI 2400 videocard at the minimum - it has HDMI/HDCP output, and a hardware X264 decoder so is able to take a lot of load from the CPU with some of the modern codecs.
Vista premium - the reason I'm going for at least 2gb of ram.
Antec P182 or Sonata variant case, because they look nice, are well built and deaden a lot of noise - they are miditowers however.

Having said that, my current PC a 3 year old system based around an intel 3ghz pentium, a gig of ram and an ati x800 just about manages x264 encoded content, but stutters at times.


As a side note, Ati All in wonder remotes are good for PC media centers, and sometimes available very cheaply (they work with any windows PC, and you don't need an ati card in them).

*Sony can be very cheap at times

BarGin

I hope the OP doesn't mind me hijacking this thread with a question of my own but I'm also thinking of building a media pc.

I'm considering using an Antec Fusion v2 case, an Intel Core2Duo processor and a Radeon 2400 HD XT card.

My question is can anyone recommend a suitable microATX motherboard?

BarGin

Blacksheep1979

Can't reccomend any boards (although always like asus's stuff) but that case is excellent - just made a media centre PC for my folks with some bits and bobs I picked up but s939.

gillette147

This is more like it.
Interesting stuff Nilrem.

Money is a concern for me tho.
I went looking for a desktop cases today.
Like rocking horse poo in normal shops or a little place I spotted.
Meanwhile I have just bought a dell gx520 desktop pc tonite on ebay for another purpose. It might be useful in this project at a later date too. At least it's a desktop case.

banger9365

this motherboard looks like it will do the job it has HDMI built in http://www.trustedreviews.com/motherboards/review/2007/03/22/MSI-K9AGM2-FIH/p1
and there cheap for a motherboard http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.asp?product_id=12948&category_id=342
under £50

Blacksheep1979

banger9365 wrote: »

this motherboard looks like it will do the job it has HDMI built in http://www.trustedreviews.com/motherboards/review/2007/03/22/MSI-K9AGM2-FIH/p1
and there cheap for a motherboard http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.asp?product_id=12948&category_id=342
under £50

If you're talking to BarGin

It’s designed for the AM2 socket CPU

may be a bit of an issue

banger9365

AMD cpus are cheap at the moment and the amd6000x2 and 5600x2 are very close to c2ds in performace just,

Nilrem

gillette147 wrote: »

This is more like it.
Interesting stuff Nilrem.

Money is a concern for me tho.
I went looking for a desktop cases today.
Like rocking horse poo in normal shops or a little place I spotted.
Meanwhile I have just bought a dell gx520 desktop pc tonite on ebay for another purpose. It might be useful in this project at a later date too. At least it's a desktop case.

The dell gx520 looks like it should be able to handle hd stuff fairly well depending on the cpu installed.
However I wouldn't recommend installing vista on it if you can avoid it, as the extra overheads could cause problems with some content, you may also want to add more ram depending on what it's got (it looks like many have 256mb, which isn't much these days).

My big worry about Dell's tends to be that Dell motherboards often don't have an AGP or PCI express slot for a videocard (although again that looks like it will depend on which model of dell gx520 you've got).


As general comments for anyone looking into it.

For media center PC's it may be worth searching for HTPC case (home theatre), as a number of manufacturers do cases specifically aimed at this sort of application, although prices do vary so Ebay or second hand from a techy forum may be an idea to keep costs down
They tend to be slightly smaller (matx) than some desktop cases (which can just be a midi tower with the drive slots at 90 degrees;)), and often better looking when put under a TV next to the Sky Box etc.
However they can also come in too small to fit some videocards...

One of the things to bare in mind with home theatre/media center PC's is the noise of the parts and the heat generated (and thus cooling needed).
It can be a real pain in the neck keeping the noise levels down - if you've got the choice between fitting a small cooling fan and large but slower one, go for the bigger one for example (it will move the same amount of air at a slower rotational speed, thus generally being quieter).

It can be a real challange to make a dedicated, quiet, but capable media center PC, especially for HD content but it is getting easier as prices drop and things like the videocards catch up (the ati 2400's I mentioned earlier are about £40-50 and potentially save you having to use a higher spec CPU with the associated problems of heat and noise when decoding some HD content).