HTPC + Download Rig

S

sg3707

Adept
Hi folks,

Q: What is your budget?

1. 10-12K

Q: What is your existing hardware configuration (component name - component brand and model)

1. 4 GB DDR2 RAM

Q: Which hardware component are you looking to buy (component name).

Cabinet + Power Supply - No Idea - Looking for a compact one around 1-2K
Hard Disk - 1 TB WD
Mobo + Procy - Should be capable of handling 1080P and also used for torrent downloads. Mobo should have a PCI & PCI-E slot for sound card. Also should be very efficient since it will be used as 24/7 download rig. Optical out is a Must for the MObo. If there are no good DDR2 ram based boards then I have to sell them.
Keyboard+Mouse - Logitech basic wireless. Please suggest if

Q: Is this going to be your final configuration or you would be adding/upgrading a component in near future.

No upgrade. only a sound card may be added latter.

Q: Where will you buy this hardware? (Online/City/TE Dealer)
SP Road, Online, TE Dealers..

Q: Would you consider buying a second hand hardware from the TE market

Yes

Q: What is your intended use for this PC/hardware
HTPC + Download

Q: What is your preferred monitor resolution for gaming and normal usage
1920*1080

Q: Which operating system do you intend to use with this configuration?

Win 7/ Win XP

Other options I looked at was
Amazon.com: Zotac IONITX-A-U Atom N330 Dual Core 90-Watt PSU WiFi ITX Intel Motherboard: Electronics
HD Media Players - But they lack complete torrent downloading support and they have their limitations.

Please suggest a good config or any another alternate sollution.

Thanks in Advance.....
 
Components Description Price (Rs.)

Processor AMD Sempron 140 1650

Motherboard Gigabyte M61PME-S2P 2000

HDD 1 TB Seagate 7200.12 2700

Cabinet Cooler Master Elite 310 1500

PSU FSP saga II 350w 1500

Mouse Logitech M215 950

Keyboard Logitech KB 500

Total 11000


Atoms can never be upgraded, so very bad option. Here you have a PCI-E GFX Card (SVideo Out) and a PCI Wifi Card attached.

It also have 4 SATA and 1 IDE Port. If you want you can get the DDR3 RAM. With a 8600GT you can even game a bit on it.

Works brilliant, has optical out, so you can connected to your sound system. Works as 24/7 Download Rig/HTPC.
 
Check thsi out
http://resources.mini-box.com/onlin...-ION/MBD-I-ASUS-AT3N7A-Atom-330-ION-specs.pdf

The Zotac is costlier with same specs xcept for wifi I guess.
http://techshop.in/store/motherboards-atom-cpumotherboards-buy-online-india-c-320_21_336.html
BTw the cost in techshop is way higher compared to smc or Lynx but I could't find the atom rigs there
is ur sound card a PCI one or PCI-ex one?
coz both of these mobos have only PCI slot
U can use ur existing RAm with thsi config too
1 TB seagate is 2650+ VAT
For the requiremenst u have might hav to stretch a bit if u plan to go for ION platform.
U can also go for this
http://www.techenclave.com/pc-buyin...an-technology-community-pc-buying-178097.html.

But Can the Gigabyte M61PME-S2P play HD videos?
Don't think so that it cando that w/o a dedicated GPu coz it has a Nvidia Geforce 6100 chipset which does not support GPU acceleration afaik.
U can also go for the above config witha zeb kite+smps as suggested by DarkAngel and spend the reamining money on a el-cheapo GPu with video acceleration
 
@OP : Config given by XTech is a pretty good option , and the only option given the budget , also I'd suggest going with a 2-Core like an Athlon X2 245 (~2.5k) -- This will come in handy while doing other stuff - (other than d/l and movies) with your PC.

For more you could refer Gannu's guide on HTPC Builds

:cool2:
 
@ Xtechmaniac

The problem with the mobo is it is outdated and it doesnt have an optical out. Even Gannu's guide is a little old. There must be some new alternatives now.

The Asus AT3N7A-I Atom CPU/Motherboard is ok. But it does miss the PCI-E slot. Please note that I haven't bought the sound card yet. It is a near future upgrade. This particular model seems to be quite pricy.
 
sg3707 said:
@ Xtechmaniac

The problem with the mobo is it is outdated and it doesnt have an optical out. Even Gannu's guide is a little old. There must be some new alternatives now.
Click to expand...

I really think you should research first before making off-hand comments. The Gigabyte M61PME-S2P has an optical out.
 
Sell your existing DDR2 RAM and buy new DDR3 RAM.

If you look around AMD motherboards with HD 1080p playback support, are well above 3K (no HDMI) and good boards are around 3K to 5K.

Please note 760G AMD chipset doesn't support Hybrid Cross Fire, UVD support for bluray and high definition decoding. Display output will also be limited to only DVI and no HDMI or Display Port support. Minimum is AMD 785G.

Further higher end (MicroATX) AMD or Intel motherboard comes with some useless features (if board is used for HTPC) for e.g., RAID where will you add another hard disk in HTPC case. There are various HTPC cases supporting MicroATX boards.

For HTPC best options is buying either AMD or Inter MicroATX motherboard with PCI-E 16X slot, DDR3, at least one PCI slot and add a low profile HDCP graphic card.

I suggest .45nm processor with at least a Dual Core is somewhat future proof. Sempron is also good option.

Overall power consumption will be higher if you use MicroATX configuration, but the price of fully equipped ION based board is a costly affair. You may also cut Power Bill by power efficient branded PSU these are also costly considering your budget. You have to set a trade off between Power and your Budget, either save power or money.

Go with any 760G motherboard with Sempron buy a Second Hand HD 4350 from our forum.
 
Whoa

Cool down guys :D :D

The mobo M61PME-S2P has internal connectors for SPDIF but the rear I/O has no SPDIF output

better go with sempron +m61pme+2nd hand 4350 for hd playback as suggested by mrRig and xtechmaniac

Processor AMD Sempron 140 1650

Motherboard Gigabyte M61PME-S2P 2000

HDD 1 TB Seagate 7200.12 2700

Cabinet+PSU Zebronics Kite 1100

GPU Powercolor HD4350 1945

Mouse Logitech M215 950

Keyboard Logitech KB 500

Total Damages 10845+VAT @4%

Now be happy :p:p:p:p and shoot away hd videos with DXVA
 
^^ Yes buddy it is true. But the SPDIF bracket costs additional 11$ - 15$ ~ 500 - 800Rs which again increases the cost. Also dont know about availability.

How much could be the overall increase in power consumption practically. Like what could be the increase in electricity bill if I buy the above setup instead of an atom.
 
Go thru these links But the sempron seems pretty low power and is more vfm compared to the Atom.U can even unlock it's second core(But u can't do it on the Gigabyte M61PME-S2P,need a SB 710 at least :()

http://www.techenclave.com/pc-peripherals/lowest-power-consumption-rig-147520.html
TR Forums • View topic - Considering replacing my P3-866 server with Atom rig
For what it's worth, I've currently got two Atom machines running in the house - an older D945GCLF2, and a newer D945GSEJT.

The first machine is running a pair of 1.5TB WD GPs, a single 40gb IDE boot drive and Windows Home Server, inside an old Sonata with a hugely oversized (I think 450w?) Coolermaster PSU. Pulls around 30 watts at idle, and it's never under CPU load. Current uptime is... well, only 10 days, as we had a power cut a while ago but I never reboot it - it lives in the cupboard .

The second one pulls about 11w from the wall running with a 320gb Samsung 2.5" HDD, and can get away with running without a fan if needs be - though I've put one in the thin-client case I got for it just because. Running it from a 60w FSP power brick. Speed isn't great for desktop usage under Windows 7 (single core, and a pretty anaemic one at that), but for file serving it runs really well, with gigabit ethernet being the limitation for serving up files. I imagine the AT5NM10-I would be slightly more capably at the desktop, with an ever so slightly higher power usage - although probably on the order of 1-2w.

SPCR • View topic - Sempron 140 power efficiency - do you have one?

have a Sempron 140 and experimented with underclocking and core unlocking.
At stock settings, unlocking the second core (which was prime stable) resulted in an additional 13/20 watts (idle/load) AC input power (80+ rated supply). While I agree that the under-load per-instruction energy is lowered by unlocking the core (or just buying the Athlon II x2), I strongly believe that the idle savings for normal (non SETI/folding/etc) machines means that there would still be net power savings in single core mode. Then again, with the 405E etc becoming available, a 45W x3 may change things a bit. Where is my 25W single core? :)

My Sempron 140 runs a single core at -.3V (1.05V) stable at stock clocking. I currently run it at 1.05V core and 0.975V (-.15V?). I use Cool'N'Quiet under Ubuntu 9.10 to scale from 800MHz to 2.0GHz. With a DVD burner, active PCI wireless connection, 1x2GB DDR2 800 RAM, ASUS M4A785-M motherboard, and a 8GB flash drive (boot device):
41W idle
46W mprime burn-in
Not sure where all those idle watts are going, but I've determined (through removing components) that about 32W is going to the mobo/processor... I'm not sure if a 785G is power hungry in general, or if the ASUS board wastes power. I would have expected this to be closer to the 760G <30W idle setups people have been raving about. Oh well :)

The CPU temperature hits a max of 28C with the stock HSF running @ 1700RPM, which is much quieter than my supposedly (read: not at all) 19dB 120x25mm case fan. I had to take the sticker off the stock fan because it was off-center and causing vibrations. Otherwise the stock HSF is pretty great at low speeds.

To the OP:
It depends what you are doing. If you need multipurpose processing for data, you probably want to look at the 400E / 405E 45W Athlon II X3 which are appearing now (January 2010). If you are just playing videos, you might consider hardware decoding of whatever you want to watch through either a nicer chipset or discrete graphics. But then, these may waste some watts... And if all you are doing is NAS, you probably won't saturate any processor, so think more about idle power + setup costs (and ECC + whatever other features you need).

Sempron 2.7GHz good enough for now? - CPUs - CPU-Components

--- Updated Post - Automerged ---

So tehre it is 11-12 w vs 46 w for sempron 140.But the performance isa bit better with the sempron not to mention the ability to play hd videos will be urs for a cheaper price compared to the ION platform
 
Hi,

I'm in some situation like this.....

I need a 24x7 D/L rig and some basic surfing, but it must consume as much as low power....

I'm currently running 24x7 in:-

P4 3.0GHz>Intel D945>2 GB 400Mhz (512x2 + 1GB x1)>250GB Seagate 7200.9 + WD 500GB Green>500w SMPS>1000VA Microtek UPS (can't ditch this, I'm from the heavy power cut area during summer).

My main intention is to save some power bill, So If I invest in

"AMD Sempron 140 + Gigabyte M61PME-S2P" Am I going to save some power bills ? Or this is the same my P4 Rig ?

Or is it worth to invest in a Netbook solution like Dell Mini ?

please reply.......

I also want to know, If anyone using UPS in my case it is must have, Is it consume more power than without using UPS?
 
Marcus Fenix said:
The p4 has a TDP of 84 w i.e. at 100% load it will consume that much power alone.So i guess your machine will consume arnd 100 W on load
Thermaltake Power Supply Calculator

Whereas a Sempron machine will consume much less
Click to expand...

Thanks for the link......the links shows I need 247w power supply.

Well do I go for Sempron or NetBook solution ? Do you think Netbook will consume less power ?

Asking for NetBook cause my Samsung LCD 17" (5 year) developing some issue with it's backlight, it'll die sooner or later, So invest in AMD+Gigabit combo then another investment in LCD monitor ?

Or

Invest in Netbook and get Benefited with portability,6-7 hours battery life....etc etc.

Which is the best in logical way ??
 
Netbook will be much better in terms of power consumption but u lose out on horsepower.If it is meant to be ur primary machine then u may be put off by the loss of power.But if it is for surfing or d/l then its the best option.In case of the 11k rig u can also play some basic games and hd videos.

The netbook will be a bit costly compared to this
 
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