[loveheadphones]

hey guys,
I already have a DAC and T.V.-
what's the cheapest way to do a home theater pc?
looking for <$500?
I figure the soundcard should be a chaintech av710, but other than that I'm clueless
TIA

 

[Jasper994]

Talk to Edwood about his mini me pc...

Other than that, just have a look at some of the mini barebones kits. Look specifically for one that is very quiet. Add very quiet hard disk (Seagate) and ultra quiet heatsink. Throw in >256 MB RAM and a quiet DVD drive and you should be good to go. I don't think you'll have much trouble hitting your budget. Check out Newegg.com. Oh, and talk to Iron_Dreamer about underclocking the processor so it'll run cooler.

 

[Mr.Radar]

Check out www.silentpcreview.com. You can get a lot of help making silent computer on their web forum. Another good place might be the HTPC section at AVS Forum.

 

[bg4533]

Mobo:nforce2 (Maybe Asus A7N8X)
Processor:Mobile Athlon XP 2400+ or whatever fits your price range (fits normal Socket A and runs cooler. Also nice for insane overclocks

)
Heatsink:Thermalright SLK900 with 92mm Panaflo L1A (HS is $19.99 at SVC.com)
RAM: 256MB-512MB PC 2700 (do not get generic memory!)
Graphics: Try to find a used Matrox G400 (mine was $30)
Audio: Chaintech AV710
Hard Drive: Seagate-Whatever size you need, now has 5 yr warranty. 200GB drives can be had for ~$100
LiteON DVD player or NEC 2510 DVD burner

Make sure to get a decent PSU also. The Antec 3700 case w/PSU goes on sale at Newegg for around $70 regularly. The Antec Sonata is nicer and quieter and goes for $100.

Good deals for pretty much all of this at Newegg.

If you plan this out well, you can build quite a fast, silent system without needing to underclock the processor or anything. I run a XP1700 (1.47GHz) overclocked to XP2400 (2GHz). I have to focus to hear the system from my desk 3 ft away and it is extremely stable.

 

[MikoLayer]

actually, my new(er) seagate is noticeably louder and somewhat slower than my samsung. hitachi(ibm)s are definitely the fastest, samsungs are quietest. seagates had their reputation for being quietest, but that trend doesnt seem to apply on the latest drives. for most things, all these drives should be sufficiently fast, so i say go for samsung for less noise.

 

[proxops-pete]

For SFF, I've heard that Antec and Shuttle make good barebones.

Get one of those, add cheapo Athlon XP series CPU, 256 MB to start you off, a good cheap DVD-ROM drive, Chaintech AV-710, onboard video, and you are off!

Oh, and don't forget HDD...

 

[Edwood]

As long as you don't need to play games or WM9 HD movies, then your best bet is a Shuttle Epia Mini-ITX motherboard. It's an All-in-One solution. One PCI slot for a sound card of your choice.

Unless you go with old, slightly obsolete handmedown components, you will be hard pressed to get such a compact and easy to install setup that an Epia motherboard will provide you.
They have onboard CPU, video, and sound. All you'll need is a case, RAM, and the various accessories (mouse,. keyboard, monitor, etc.

Check out:

www.mini-itx.com
www.epiacenter.com

One really nice thing about the latest Epia's is the "Castlerock" chipset give you hardware Mpeg 2 decoding, for perfect DVD playback.

-Ed

 

[MikoLayer]

Edwood, if memory serves me right, the newer generation of EPIAs are shipped with S3 unichrome video controller - the identical one used in via KM400 chipsets. before i broke down and got me a rad 8500, i gave it a try. while IQ was better than most nvidia cards, the card stuttered somewhat for vmr9 renderless with xvid/divx5.0/wmv9 files. it ran perfectly fine in overlay mode but IQ difference was so huge I could never go back

this was with mobile barton @2100 and tweaked up XP with minimal resource consumption and most useless services disabled, so hardly cpu/os related issue. to sum it up, it works fine for dvds, but kinda sluggish for xvid/divx5.0/wmv9 in vmr7/9. older EPIAs use something presumably worse so no point looking into those.

btw, i am using soyo-k7vm (free after rebate) + antec aria. you could try to find something better for the mobo, as the FAR deal is no longer available. aria is a nice lil case with enough room for expansion card. atm i fitted it out with modded EMU1212M (takes up like 3slots combined) + radeon 8500. wiring inside is bit of a mess and airflow isnt all that great. its quite enough for general use, although i am thinking of replacing the PSU fan with something quiter like panaflo. make sure you get a 120x120x25 for the mod, i am stuck with a 120x120x35 sitting around collecting dust

basically i with everything proxops-pete said, except i strongly urge you to double up the ram and go with 512mb.

 

[PooJou]

HTPC need not be a beast.
something like a S370 PIII 1ghz or so even 800mhz.
Passively cooled, some kind of dual head video card, perferably passively cooled (like a Radeon 9000PRO or similar)
A new quiet hdd, like a Seagate 7200.7 8mb cache 80gig or something.
Then choose your own case.
Cheap and quiet.... don't be fooled into needing "OMG MHZ"

 

[MikoLayer]

Quote:

Originally Posted by PooJou HTPC need not be a beast. something like a S370 PIII 1ghz or so even 800mhz. Passively cooled, some kind of dual head video card, perferably passively cooled (like a Radeon 9000PRO or similar) A new quiet hdd, like a Seagate 7200.7 8mb cache 80gig or something. Then choose your own case. Cheap and quiet.... don't be fooled into needing "OMG MHZ"

thats about exactly what i had at home, tualatin 1.1 + radeon pro9000 with samsung hdd (that seagate hdd is what i am using for my current machine)

added speed of barton is nice, and with addition of a decent vid card the rig could turn into a gaming box as well. IIRC, you only need something around a pii-450 for fluid software dvd playback, and something like duron 800 and higher for basic divx/xvid/wmv. unless all your videos are limited dvd, older machines are somewhat underpowered for higher IQ wmv/divx (thats not even considering wmv-hd, these need something better than my barton setup). seeing how sdram price has never really gone down, doesnt make much sense to plunk down money into s370 platform now. even for a used machine (which is what i highly recommend) better performance more than justifies tiny price difference they may have.

 

[PooJou]

Quote:

Originally Posted by MikoLayer seeing how sdram price has never really gone down, doesnt make much sense to plunk down money into s370 platform now. even for a used machine (which is what i highly recommend) better performance more than justifies tiny price difference they may have.

True, SD ram price is always sky high now, but then, to run with the least noise and heat, it'd be better to run a PIII or similar. Although i guess you could run one of those new Applebred based Durons with a big heatsink and incredibly low powered fan. I spose, that, a Micro-ATX sized Nforce 1 or 2 board would provide the basis of quite a mean HTPC setup. Slap in some PC2700DDR and you'd be right to go.
Cheap too. Thanks for pointing out the ram thing

But then i've seen a lot of entire PIII setups being sold, as opposed to seperate chips etc. Your mileage may vary.