|
Teach me about Home Theater PCs. What's the most critical part I should be worrying about? Processors? Ram? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm thinking that in order of most to least importance (In terms of parts): Storage Processor Motherboard Video RAM Audio Does this sound correct?
|
#
¿
May 6, 2016 19:31
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 5, 2024 13:53 |
|
|
I'll just plug the wall cable into the motherboard, no big deal. PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant CPU: AMD FX-4350 4.2GHz Quad-Core Processor ($89.00 @ Amazon) CPU Cooler: Prolimatech PRO-SAM17 Fanless CPU Cooler ($44.97 @ Amazon) Motherboard: ASRock 970M PRO3 Micro ATX AM3+/AM3 Motherboard ($51.98 @ Newegg) Memory: Mushkin Essentials 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($47.99 @ Newegg) Storage: Kingston SSDNow V300 Series 480GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($79.99 @ Mac Mall) Video Card: Asus GeForce GT 630 2GB Video Card ($59.99 @ SuperBiiz) Case: Thermaltake Core V21 MicroATX Mini Tower Case ($39.99 @ Newegg) Power Supply: Rosewill 650W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($94.99 @ Amazon) Total: $508.90 Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-05-06 14:42 EDT-0400 Is currently what I'm looking at for a home PC. This is theoretical, mind -- As apart of my internship, I've been building theoretical computers. Unfortunately, while I can throw darts at a board and get pretty lucky, I still don't know what exactly I'm supposed to be looking for in a "Home Theater PC under 1000$".
|
|
#
¿
May 6, 2016 19:44
|
|
|
snuff posted:Don't want to cover anything specific since everything about this is wrong, just get a NUC it will be faster, more silent and a lot smaller. I'd actually appreciate it if you did go over what's wrong, since that's what I'm sort of lacking knowledge in. 'Buying a NUC and calling it good' may be a proper solution, but I don't really learn anything from that.
|
|
#
¿
May 6, 2016 20:02
|
|
|
I just had someone look it over in person and it seems that I've critically misunderstood what a home theater PC is. 
|
|
#
¿
May 6, 2016 20:20
|
|
|
AVeryLargeRadish posted:The CPU should be plenty for HTPC duty, same for the mobo and RAM, the SSD is for the OS, you could go smaller but it does not get all that much cheaper so I just with went with this one since it should be fine for this sort of thing and is cheap, a 4TB HDD for local storage of media, a good, quiet HTPC case with plenty of room to expand the storage as needed and a good, reliable PSU. A NUC would be much cheaper, maybe an ASRock Beebox with some extra RAM for dual channel and a 2.5" HDD for local mass storage but the above build is far more expandable, exactly which makes more sense depends on your needs. How do you know when you look at a CPU/mobo/computer parts that it'll be 'good enough' for HTPC needs? I know for like, Virtual machines or games, they list out the prerequisites such as minimum requirements and the like. But where do you get that information for HTPC stuff? Is there something specific that I need to be looking at when selecting a processor? Video card?
|
|
#
¿
May 6, 2016 20:35
|
|
|
snuff posted:Maybe you could tell us what you'd like to use it for? 9 times out of 10 the best solution would be a small box like a NUC, or even an android box like the nvidia shield or something as cheap as a raspberry pi loaded with OpenELEC or whatever the cool kids do nowadays. Like I said, it's just some stuff I'm doing at this internship. I've always been weak in the 'Picking PC Parts from a catalog and not loving it up'; so the teacher is having me do this kind of stuff. So far what I need it do: 1) Small form factor (Apparently this is important for the A+ test?) 2) Able to stream to multiple devices (High amount of cores) 3) No network storage (Large internal storage) 4) Capability to play videos directly to a TV (Needs video/audio cards?) I don't expect y'all to do this for me, but if you could spread some knowledge to me about picking parts, I'd appreciate it.
|
|
#
¿
May 6, 2016 20:41
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 5, 2024 13:53 |
|
|
Thanks for the help mates, I think I got it now! Well see in a week or so. 
|
|
#
¿
May 6, 2016 22:43
|
|