Patrick's Sandy Bridge Test-HTPC build log

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Patrick

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As everyone has heard, Sandy Bridge is a pretty awesome HTPC platform. I will say that power consumption at idle is not a huge improvement which is a bit of a bummer. Anyway, here is my build log for the new Sandy Bridge HTPC, my second Sandy Bridge build.

Leftover Parts:
1x OCZ Agility 2 120GB which will easily suffice for a quiet OS drive.
4x 2GB DDR3 1600 Patriot DIMMs (8GB total)
1x Corsair H50 or Cool-IT ECO ALC (have both unused, may just use stock cooler, still undecided)
1x Windows 7 Pro License (have a few retail boxes sitting on the shelf to use)

New Parts:

1x Sandy Bridge Core i7-2600K (this will probably get replaced at some point but I picked one up anyway)
1x ASUS P8H67-M EVO as it has two x16 slots (x16 electrical and x4 electrical), along with a x1 PCIe slot. I would have preferred two x1 slots or two x8 slots, one x4 slot, and one x1 slot but what can you do this close to release? I had the PRO/CSM version in my hand, and went for the EVO instead because it had the extra x1 slot instead of a legacy PCI slot.
1x Supermicro SC731i-300B Chassis. I was at the store and saw this sitting around so I just picked it up. This may end up one day being a small server so why not? This was admittedly a spur of the moment purchase as I am now thinking that I want a Lian-Li case.

More pics to follow.
 

odditory

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Dec 23, 2010
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yeah thats a pretty big case for an HTPC. Nice topic though, re-doing my HTPC is something on my list, but I'm questioning why I care about upgrading for any reason beyond running the latest gen Intel CPU, since my DH57JG + i5-650 works absolutely perfectly playing back everything including Blurays with full bitstreaming HD audio. My setup is 7MC + MediaBrowser + Arcsoft TMT3, and HDHomeRun for tuners.

i'm looking at Intel DH67CF for board, and maybe a new case from http://www.hd-plex.com/chassis/, OriginAE or A-Tech Fabrication.
 
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Patrick

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Yea that thing looks awesome, but I didn't see it on the Microcenter shelves last night. Then again, I buy enough hardware that I know this is going to change. I have a silverstone HTPC case currently being used as a Mac w/ a i5-650 which is pretty cool, but blu-ray support is less than great. How do you like TMT3? I use Cyberlink 10 but am not a huge fan (then again you have to pick TMT3 or Cyberlink right?)
 

odditory

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Dec 23, 2010
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I like TMT3 and TMT5 well enough, since the last time I reviewed all BD player software out there (about 8 months ago) it was TMT3 that got on my nerves the *least*, and it integrates nicely with Media Center and Media Browser, plus achieves the holy grail of bitstreaming HD audio to my receiver.

Meantime TMT5 is out since a few months ago, I ran a trial of it alongside TMT3 but didn't find anything compelling over TMT3 to warrant a $50 "upgrade" price, since I don't have a 3D display yet. 3D bluray support was the only major thing it added.
 

Patrick

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Yea not sure why but I gave Cyberlink the money for PowerDVD 10 for the 3D support... also without a 3D monitor.

Build went OK today. Have a bunch of pics for the morning.
 

odditory

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Here's one interesting avenue for cheap 3D as I learned today. For about $589 the Acer H5360 3D-DLP Projector is supposedly high bang-for-buck value, at least according to reviews and posts I've read at different forums. One of the Amazon reviews claims its the best projector for 3D under $5k.

While its only 720p, supposedly the wow factor is still huge when watching 3D Blurays on say a 120" screen. Been considering getting one just to play around with.

Back to the topic of TMT3, it and MPC-HC are the BD softplayers that Anand typically uses for HTPC reviews, including the one he did for Sandy Bridge, just FYI.
 
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xnoodle

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8 GB of ram and a 2600K is way overkill hehe. Do you plan on having this machine be a PVR or rip/transcode/encode stuff as well?
 

Patrick

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8 GB of ram and a 2600K is way overkill hehe. Do you plan on having this machine be a PVR or rip/transcode/encode stuff as well?
Most likely this will be running with an i3-2100 at some point. You also underestimate how much hardware I have lying around :) That 8GB came from a 12GB stack so there is

odditory, it is like $550 now on Amazon. I may look into that, however I am on mobile devices so often that a projector is less practical. I may just wait for 3D TV's with passive/ no glasses. Still see that tech as somewhat immature. I will say that the price of Blu-ray software is a bit crazy. If you look at something like the Sony BDP-S470 3D player is ~$150 including all of the hardware. PowerDVD 10 Ultra 3D is $90 and you pay for every upgrade. Seems like the software should be a bit cheaper.
 

odditory

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You'll be waiting 3-4+ years for passive/glasses-free 3D. And I wouldn't call it immature, the effect is actually pretty compelling for as much as I hate 3D for so many other reasons like the sudden trendiness and CE industry being in a frenzy to sell new sets and every movie studio telling their producers "hey that movie you're working on, can we do it in 3D? We heard everybody's doing 3D so let's do 3D."

All that aside if you can get a somewhat disposable display (like a cheap projector) then the only real downside is the lack of content, which again will change somewhat this year.
 

Patrick

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I snapped about 40 pictures during the build... but somehow they didn't save on the memory card. Very bizzare. Initial impressions: the x264 is fast, but basically not worth it because the image quality on the dedicated Sandy Bridge hardware is really poor. That being said, the i7-2600K is pretty fast, and the ASUS P8H67-M EVO does let you go from 100MHz to 103MHz on the FSB which gives you about 100MHz extra. The odd thing is that if you don't use the integrated graphics, and you don't use the poor quality x264 encoder, you basically have a side grade from the 2+ year old i7-920 overclocked since most reach 3.6GHz+. That is a tradeoff between more PCIe lanes and memory slots with the X58 versus more overclocking potential, low power consumption, and a newer PCH as part of Sandy Bridge (and if you use integrated graphics that is a Sandy Bridge plus obviously). Honestly, I am super surprised that Sandy Bridge isn't blowing away the older generation technology.
 

myrison

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Jan 26, 2011
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Great thread guys. Just curious, have any of you considered / tried XBMC? The hardware requirements are extremely modest (i.e. a ~$200 Acer Revo netbook with an NVidia GPU and 1GB RAM). That platform is capable of uncompressed 1080p playback and the UI is gorgeous. With a GigE network connection to your storage, they're cheap, small, and quiet enough to put on several TVs in the house. On top of that, there is a MythTV plugin for XBMC that allows XBMC to serve as a front-end PVR software for MythTV as well. I've been running XBMC happily for a year and a half or so and just implemented the PVR add on this week. I'll leave it at that for now, but if I can provide more info, let me know...
 
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Patrick

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I have used XBMC before as it is probably one of the best platforms for the old NVIDIA ION/ Atom N330's as it was an early adopter of the ION's NVIDIA GPU acceleration. Feel free to make a guide/ writeup as a thread in this forum or to post your build.