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Kind of off-topic, but I bought an OEM Intel processor off of Newegg for my HTPC. Does it come with a fan/heatsink for it or do I need to buy one separately? I haven't built a computer in years and can't remember 
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Feb 8, 2008 19:41
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ashgromnies posted:Kind of off-topic, but I bought an OEM Intel processor off of Newegg for my HTPC. Does it come with a fan/heatsink for it or do I need to buy one separately? I haven't built a computer in years and can't remember It comes with a heatsink/fan combo. It'd be a good idea to get an aftermarket cooler that will run cooler and quieter than the OEM one. The Zalman ones are really nice, IMHO
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Feb 8, 2008 19:50
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vanilla slimfast posted:It comes with a heatsink/fan combo. It'd be a good idea to get an aftermarket cooler that will run cooler and quieter than the OEM one. Uhm, OEM usually doesn't come with a heatsink/fan combo, the retail box comes with that stuff. I've only built a handful of machines recently, but that has been the case in my experience.
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Feb 8, 2008 20:02
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dfn_doe posted:Uhm, OEM usually doesn't come with a heatsink/fan combo, the retail box comes with that stuff. I've only built a handful of machines recently, but that has been the case in my experience. poo poo, you're right. I thought that when I had bought my CPU I got OEM but I actually did get retail.  So yeah, go order a Zalman cooler to go with your heatsink-less OEM CPU
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Feb 8, 2008 21:47
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vanilla slimfast posted:It comes with a heatsink/fan combo. It'd be a good idea to get an aftermarket cooler that will run cooler and quieter than the OEM one. the retail intel heatsink/fans are fine if you arn't overclocking. Just enable fan throttling in your motherboard bios.
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Feb 8, 2008 22:50
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vanilla slimfast posted:poo poo, you're right. I thought that when I had bought my CPU I got OEM but I actually did get retail. gently caress I am so excited to get this built I don't wanna wait argghhh I am going to see what they have at MicroCenter. Thanks.
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Feb 9, 2008 00:12
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Gromit posted:I have a 50" Panasonic plasma, and run my HTPC at 1280x720 via HDMI. I use onboard ATI graphics, and use the control panel to get the picture to fill the screen (otherwise I get a small black border around it.) If your HDTV has a native resolution of 1366x768 I would suggest using that instead of filling the screen. If you can't find 1366x768 as an resolution option use Powerstrip which lets you output at any crazy resolution you want to.
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Feb 9, 2008 12:33
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Wood for Sheep posted:If your HDTV has a native resolution of 1366x768 I would suggest using that instead of filling the screen. If you can't find 1366x768 as an resolution option use Powerstrip which lets you output at any crazy resolution you want to. I can't pick 1366x768, otherwise I would have, so I'll have to try Powerstrip. I'll give it a shot and see if I notice any difference, cheers.
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Feb 10, 2008 00:07
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The nvidia drivers are pretty drat cool. They have a "adjust tv size" setting or something that basically let me choose my res, which ended up being some crazy rear end 1216x668, but looks great!
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Feb 10, 2008 02:14
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EC posted:The nvidia drivers are pretty drat cool. They have a "adjust tv size" setting or something that basically let me choose my res, which ended up being some crazy rear end 1216x668, but looks great! So do ATIs'. My older Panasonic plasma doesn't have a setting to eliminate overscan so i'm running like 1220x700 or something and it looks great. You guys just need to play around with your drivers more.
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Feb 10, 2008 03:05
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As far as I can tell, messing with Powerstrip or using the ATI control panel doesn't help me at all. I think I'll stick with just using the ATI scale option to fill the screen. If I mess with that ATI thing where you resize a grey square until it fits your screen, I end up with sometihng weird like 1216x688. Considering my TV is a 720p-rated plasma, this doesn't seem right. I think I'm in the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" area right now. It plays movies fine, and I can use the internet okay even if it isn't really sharp. Thanks for the pointers, though.
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Feb 10, 2008 03:21
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So I got that OrigenAE X11 case and it has a fancy shmancy MCE Remote, but whenever I hit the power button on it it turns on my Xbox 360 instead of my HTPC. What do I need to do to reconfigure it? edit: blargh i don't know what's going on i installed LCDd and I can't seem to get anything to print to my LCD. `echo "balls" > /dev/ttyUSB0` doesn't work either. It always just says "Welcome To HTPC" I also can't get the remote working, or my audio output via either HDMI or optical coaxial. I want to try installing Vista Ultimate, but the blank DVD's I bought won't work in my computer
ashgromnies fucked around with this message at 01:41 on Feb 11, 2008 |
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Feb 10, 2008 22:13
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Gromit posted:As far as I can tell, messing with Powerstrip or using the ATI control panel doesn't help me at all. I think I'll stick with just using the ATI scale option to fill the screen. I had the same problem with my plasma an the built in graphics card. First thing I had to do was update the ati drivers, I also went from using HDMI to using VGA and I think ultimately that allowed me to choose the true native resolution of my plasma.
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Feb 11, 2008 14:07
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mattfl posted:I had the same problem with my plasma an the built in graphics card. First thing I had to do was update the ati drivers, I also went from using HDMI to using VGA and I think ultimately that allowed me to choose the true native resolution of my plasma. Yeah, looking back I really should have picked a tv with vga input. I hooked up my father-in-law's laptop up to his new lcd and it worked perfectly, even with the built in Intel graphics chip.
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Feb 11, 2008 17:16
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EC posted:Yeah, looking back I really should have picked a tv with vga input. I hooked up my father-in-law's laptop up to his new lcd and it worked perfectly, even with the built in Intel graphics chip. I'm having a friend do a test for me though, he's running HDMI and I'm running VGA, I see a slight almost overlay of vertical bars using VGA, they can't be seen at all times, but every once in a while I see them. He's got an identical setup as me, same plasma and same pc hooked up so if these bars aren't there on HDMI I'll probably go back and just live with the resolution I can get over HDMI.
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Feb 11, 2008 17:38
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ashgromnies posted:So I got that OrigenAE X11 case and it has a fancy shmancy MCE Remote, but whenever I hit the power button on it it turns on my Xbox 360 instead of my HTPC. What do I need to do to reconfigure it? I don't know about the PC end, but in the 360 settings there's an option for whether to respond to any MCE remote or just the 360 one. I had the same problem and stuck a post-it over the 360's IR receiver until I found this 
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Feb 11, 2008 18:42
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ashgromnies posted:So I got that OrigenAE X11 case and it has a fancy shmancy MCE Remote, but whenever I hit the power button on it it turns on my Xbox 360 instead of my HTPC. What do I need to do to reconfigure it? You're running Linux currently right? Grab the irtrans server and LCDd build (their driver doesn't work with the current version of LCDd unfortunately so you have to essentially grab their custom build). http://www.irtrans.de/en/download/linux.php It took me a bit to figure out how to get it all working for Myth, but this wiki page was helpful (different case but it uses the exact same VFD/IR): http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Zalman_HD160
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Feb 11, 2008 18:56
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I'm just buying a new HDTV and came upon this thread looking up info on audio systems and was amazed at the idea of HTPC. Also amazed I never thought of such an idea before. My question: I want to use my current PC as an HTPC. My motherboard has something like 8 SATA ports and if I keep buying bargain hard drives, I could accumulate quite a bit of memory for storing media and connecting to my HDTV. My problem is, I don't want to use these hard drives all the time for fear of prematurely ending the life of my power supply (especially when playing video games). Is there some kind of hardware out there that will selectively allow me to turn on certain hard drives while leaving others off until I want to use them?
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Feb 12, 2008 02:18
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Kiriyama posted:I'm just buying a new HDTV and came upon this thread looking up info on audio systems and was amazed at the idea of HTPC. Also amazed I never thought of such an idea before. Running all your hard drives is not going to make a lick of difference to the life of your power supply.
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Feb 12, 2008 14:39
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Kiriyama posted:Is there some kind of hardware out there that will selectively allow me to turn on certain hard drives while leaving others off until I want to use them? I doubt it'll help extend the life of your psu, but there's a windows option to turn off hard disks after XX minutes of inactivity. It's in the power options (the same section as the standby/hibernation options). I think it selectively shuts off the individual hard drives that aren't being used
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Feb 12, 2008 17:49
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Kiriyama posted:My problem is, I don't want to use these hard drives all the time for fear of prematurely ending the life of my power supply (especially when playing video games). Is there some kind of hardware out there that will selectively allow me to turn on certain hard drives while leaving others off until I want to use them?
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Feb 12, 2008 20:26
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Saukkis posted:A harddrive uses maybe 10 watts when running, a PSU won't even notice that. I would think the sudden current spike when starting a harddrive would be more damaging. This is exactly correct, the inductive load of spinning up a hard drives uses WAY more juice than the average draw once it is running. Spinning drives up and down as needed will demand more of your PSU (especially if a bunch spin up at the same time) than just having them stay spun up. Also, I question your choice to put as many as 8 drives into an HTPC box, aside from the heat, noise, and space requirements of 8 "bargain hard drives", the scale of increases in size/cost ratio means by the time you are buying a fourth or fifth drive you will be more than doubling you capacity with each additional drive (unless you are REALLY download crazy) this pretty much means that 2-3 drives if judiciously upgraded as prices fall and sizes increase will provide you with nearly identical actual utility while at the same time not present any of the caveats I've listed. From your post I take it you haven't really been in the loop on the whole htpc thing, but generally these machines are setup with only 1 or 2 local drives in order to minimize sound pollution in your theater space and any additional storage needs above and beyond what can be accommodated by local storage is usually put off on a network fileserver of some sort which can be geographically separated from the HTPC box.
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Feb 12, 2008 21:07
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I switched to Windows and MediaPortal. Eek. So I am trying to figure out how to get the best quality from all these lame Xvid rips I have sitting around... I checked avsforum.com for ffdshow settings and found some, but most of them look like rear end and I'm not really sure what I'm doing with ffdshow. Plus, reading avsforum gives me a headache, people are so bad at writing coherently there Any tips/suggestions for ffdshow settings for upscaling?
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Feb 12, 2008 23:10
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dfn_doe posted:From your post I take it you haven't really been in the loop on the whole htpc thing, but generally these machines are setup with only 1 or 2 local drives in order to minimize sound pollution in your theater space and any additional storage needs above and beyond what can be accommodated by local storage is usually put off on a network fileserver of some sort which can be geographically separated from the HTPC box.
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Feb 13, 2008 11:17
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I am not sure if this really should go here, but I don't think this needs an entire thread. Does anyone here rip their HD-DVD (or Blu-Ray's) to their hard drive and make iso's out of them? If so, what do you use to create the iso? I tried using imgburn but that only handles regular dvd sized iso files, nothing over 10 gigs. I am using Vista32. shaitan fucked around with this message at 02:58 on Feb 14, 2008 |
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Feb 14, 2008 02:46
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shaitan posted:I am not sure if this really should go here, but I don't think this needs an entire thread. What about this? I need a power supply that has the 24 pin power connector, 4 pin CPU connector, a few molex and a ton of SATA connectors. Any suggestions? Modular would be a huge bonus!
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Feb 14, 2008 03:19
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shaitan posted:I am not sure if this really should go here, but I don't think this needs an entire thread. Any particular reason you need an iso file? Why not just leave it as an intact directory structure? I believe the various programs that can play back content can handle being pointed to a VIDEO_TS folder
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Feb 14, 2008 03:22
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vanilla slimfast posted:Any particular reason you need an iso file? Why not just leave it as an intact directory structure? I believe the various programs that can play back content can handle being pointed to a VIDEO_TS folder HD-DVD doesn't have a VIDEO_TS folder and the latest powerdvd won't play the files directly off of the hard drive anyway. I get the dvd's to my hard drive with no problems, creating the iso is the problem.
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Feb 14, 2008 04:04
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In case anyone cared, I figured out how to do it in Imgburn. I changed the file type to just UTF and it worked fine.
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Feb 14, 2008 06:50
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I think I have specced out a pretty solid system for 1080P'in it on the cheap. This price total does not include a hd (i have an extra 250gb lying around) or DVD-ROM (ditto): GIGABYTE GA-MA69GM-S2H AM2 AMD 690G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard - 74.99 A-DATA 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) - 45.99 AMD Athlon 64 X2 5400+ 2.8GHz Socket AM2 65W Dual-Core Processor - 99.99 Scythe SCMNJ-1000 80mm Sleeve "NINJA MINI" CPU Cooler - 34.99 ANTEC New Solution Series NSK2480 Mini Case Retail - 79.99 Microsoft Xbox 360 Wireless Gaming Receiver for Windows - 16.99 Logitech Infrared Universal Remote Control for the Xbox 360 - 77.99 Total: $430.93 The motherboard has HDMI & optical out, and the remote is the harmony remote with special buttons for the xbox. It's also the cheapest harmony remote. I will eventually get a blu-ray drive and one of the passively-cooled GeForce 8500s to run it, but the drives are a little pricey at the moment. I have an extra usb-IR thing from my current ABIT motherboard that should work just fine.
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Feb 14, 2008 07:37
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I pretty much have the same setup, but with a Athlon X2 5600+ (89w), why the aftermarket cpu cooler? Stock is fine. Also, not sure you'll need a dedicated graphic card for BR with the MA69GM, it does 1080p just fine. Don't forget to get the monoprice sata cables, 2x right angle up and 2x normal, stock won't fit with that case and mobo.
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Feb 14, 2008 08:06
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Mr FancySocks posted:I pretty much have the same setup, but with a Athlon X2 5600+ (89w), why the aftermarket cpu cooler? Stock is fine. Also, not sure you'll need a dedicated graphic card for BR with the MA69GM, it does 1080p just fine. How would that motherboard handle high def? The onboard video card doesn't support HD acceleration, in which case the processor handles all the decoding. That motherboard doesn't factor into Bluray playback at all.
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Feb 14, 2008 14:57
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coreAVC and a good codec pack will do wonders without dedicated HD hardware decoding.
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Feb 14, 2008 15:30
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Randi Challenger posted:coreAVC and a good codec pack will do wonders without dedicated HD hardware decoding. I guess I'm nitpicking, but it's the processor (and software) that's going to determine if you can handle HD. Saying a motherboard can handle HD playback indicates that is has some significant role in determining if you can playback HD, which isn't really true.
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Feb 14, 2008 16:56
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Crackbone posted:I guess I'm nitpicking, but it's the processor (and software) that's going to determine if you can handle HD. I see, althought I am a little confused then. From the MA69GM specs/reviews : quote:"fully support Blu-ray/ HD DVD playback" edit: I understand that the processor + software do most of the work, but surely the mobo's integrated also has work to do? Mr FancySocks fucked around with this message at 18:59 on Feb 14, 2008 |
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Feb 14, 2008 18:54
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Mr FancySocks posted:I see, althought I am a little confused then. I'm not sure why they're claiming that, but the only chipsets that do true hd video processing are the ati 24/2600 (3850?), and the 8500/600/800 GT series. The x1250 video chipset doesn't offer any kind of substantial CPU usage reduction for HD that I've heard of, which is confirmed by a lot of people on avsforum who use that board. Don't get me wrong, it's apparently a great board for HTPCs, but it's still processor dependent for HD decoding. The upcoming nvidia/ati (780g/8200) onboard chipsets have the hd processing capabilities that mimic the standalone cards. Of course those still require playback software that supports hardware decoding (PowerDVD only at the moment). Crackbone fucked around with this message at 19:29 on Feb 14, 2008 |
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Feb 14, 2008 19:09
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Could someone summarize what exactly can be hardware accelerated these days? And can MPC/SageTV take advantage of hardware acceleration at all? Or is it only PowerDVD?
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Feb 14, 2008 20:08
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Kreez posted:Could someone summarize what exactly can be hardware accelerated these days? Well, powerdvd provides the directvideo "codec" which offloads the proccessing to the card. Any software which uses regular directx graphs will be able to use HW accel. Anything which uses it's own codec/video stack won't use it; so things like beyondTV and zoomplayer get HW and VLC get SW only.
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Feb 14, 2008 20:43
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Mr FancySocks posted:I pretty much have the same setup, but with a Athlon X2 5600+ (89w), why the aftermarket cpu cooler? Stock is fine. Also, not sure you'll need a dedicated graphic card for BR with the MA69GM, it does 1080p just fine. The extra cooler is because the cpu is OEM, and doesn't come with a cooler. Plus, I heard the stock cooler was loud...this Scythe has been universally recommended as being efficient/quiet. Also, thanks to this thread: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2771589 I took another $32 off the total price. Edit: Should I just get this instead? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103210 $10 more, but $20 off the total price if I drop the cooler. The reviews say its quiet bacon! fucked around with this message at 00:09 on Feb 15, 2008 |
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Feb 15, 2008 00:01
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bacon! posted:The extra cooler is because the cpu is OEM, and doesn't come with a cooler. Plus, I heard the stock cooler was loud...this Scythe has been universally recommended as being efficient/quiet. Actually you should probably be buying this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103194&Tpk=5000%2bblack The reason being is that the multiplier is unlocked, so with literally a couple of keystrokes you can make this chip run at 6000 speeds with no problem at all.
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Feb 15, 2008 00:26
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