Over the weekend I finished my first attempt at building a Home Theater PC. I've built desktops for years, my first one was a 200 MHZ. system when the ATX format was released. The primary pourpose is to rip my cd collection in a lossless format and play them back. Also I enjoy gaming so I wanted some performance. Ok, my mom just bought a new system and there is no way I will have a slower computer than her. I'm the geek in the family and have to protect my honor.
The case is probaly the most important componet in this and I used a Silverstone Garaunda 5.
Pros:
Looks good, mounts for your dvd/bluray drive and 2 3.5 hard drive or 1 can be used for a 2.5 SSD. The power supply can be mounted in 2 different orientiations. Takes full height cards.
Cons:
A bit light. They provide some rubber feet to support the power supply. Mine was only 450 watts and still flexed the back wall a bit. Hard drive mount had a rubber baffle to help with cable routing but press quite tightly on the connections of a 2.5 ssd. Being small is a bit of a pain to work in and if you use a graphics card make sure any power connection face to the back not the top. The DVD drive will hang over the cpu socket so becareful about which cooling fan you use. The bluray drive is about an inch and a half longer.
Motherboard. Asrock 890 GM Micro Atx socket am3.
Pros: everything worked on first test so reliable. 6 core cpu works out of the box no bios upgrade.
Cons: cooling sink for chipset is close to cpu socket so take care putting the fan on. Not a con but it has 1 pci express for grahpics card with a 1x pci-e and a pci slot availble after install a 2 slot graphics card.
Cpu: An AMD 6 core 1090T and a Scythe Big Shuiriken cooler.
The cooler is low profile but still very big. Tip, install ram first then cpu and cooler before mounting the board in the case. There was only 8mm of clearance between the top of the cooler and the bluray drive. Also ram with a large heat sink won't fit under it.
Video: I wanted a bit more than the chipset on the board so I installed a 5770 Ati card.
It uses 2 slot and needs a 6 pin power connection.
Storage: 128 gb Cosair SSD and 1tb green label hard drive. I caught the ssd on a clearance speacial so still not cheap but atleast acceptable.
Odds and ends: 4 gigs of ram and I replaced the stock fans with 3 ultra quiet low flow fans, only 500 rpm.
Results: Performance is quite good but just a touch loud for htpc. In a quiet room you can still barely hear it at about 20 feet.
The main villian is the cpu fan but there isn't any options really available to fix that. The graphics card has some room to play with. I could try just the motherboard set to see how it works, I'm not very hopeful. Second install a 5460 which is passivly cooled. the performance is a bit better than the main board and can be set up in a crossfire configuration with it for a bit of minor kick. But just a minor one. Lastly just wait until next month. The buzz is that Ati will launch the 6000 series and they will be more energy efficent.
Tips and lessons. To build a system strictly for home theater I'd use the AMD 605e series cpu. You can use use a passive cooler that Silverstone sells. And the onboard graphic is good enough for bluray play back. Just don't expect to do much fragging on the big screen with it. You would need to keep the stock fans in the case to give you the needed air flow.
Well time to go and meet some friends online for a quick frag fest. It's so cool to gib your bud on a 52" screen and real 5.1 sound.:brew
The case is probaly the most important componet in this and I used a Silverstone Garaunda 5.
Pros:
Looks good, mounts for your dvd/bluray drive and 2 3.5 hard drive or 1 can be used for a 2.5 SSD. The power supply can be mounted in 2 different orientiations. Takes full height cards.
Cons:
A bit light. They provide some rubber feet to support the power supply. Mine was only 450 watts and still flexed the back wall a bit. Hard drive mount had a rubber baffle to help with cable routing but press quite tightly on the connections of a 2.5 ssd. Being small is a bit of a pain to work in and if you use a graphics card make sure any power connection face to the back not the top. The DVD drive will hang over the cpu socket so becareful about which cooling fan you use. The bluray drive is about an inch and a half longer.
Motherboard. Asrock 890 GM Micro Atx socket am3.
Pros: everything worked on first test so reliable. 6 core cpu works out of the box no bios upgrade.
Cons: cooling sink for chipset is close to cpu socket so take care putting the fan on. Not a con but it has 1 pci express for grahpics card with a 1x pci-e and a pci slot availble after install a 2 slot graphics card.
Cpu: An AMD 6 core 1090T and a Scythe Big Shuiriken cooler.
The cooler is low profile but still very big. Tip, install ram first then cpu and cooler before mounting the board in the case. There was only 8mm of clearance between the top of the cooler and the bluray drive. Also ram with a large heat sink won't fit under it.
Video: I wanted a bit more than the chipset on the board so I installed a 5770 Ati card.
It uses 2 slot and needs a 6 pin power connection.
Storage: 128 gb Cosair SSD and 1tb green label hard drive. I caught the ssd on a clearance speacial so still not cheap but atleast acceptable.
Odds and ends: 4 gigs of ram and I replaced the stock fans with 3 ultra quiet low flow fans, only 500 rpm.
Results: Performance is quite good but just a touch loud for htpc. In a quiet room you can still barely hear it at about 20 feet.
The main villian is the cpu fan but there isn't any options really available to fix that. The graphics card has some room to play with. I could try just the motherboard set to see how it works, I'm not very hopeful. Second install a 5460 which is passivly cooled. the performance is a bit better than the main board and can be set up in a crossfire configuration with it for a bit of minor kick. But just a minor one. Lastly just wait until next month. The buzz is that Ati will launch the 6000 series and they will be more energy efficent.
Tips and lessons. To build a system strictly for home theater I'd use the AMD 605e series cpu. You can use use a passive cooler that Silverstone sells. And the onboard graphic is good enough for bluray play back. Just don't expect to do much fragging on the big screen with it. You would need to keep the stock fans in the case to give you the needed air flow.
Well time to go and meet some friends online for a quick frag fest. It's so cool to gib your bud on a 52" screen and real 5.1 sound.:brew
