Good specs for a home theater PC?

[TeXXaS]

Hey yall,

I'm thinking about building a home theater PC. I saw those Zalman cases, it would be really cool to build one.

Can anyone suggest what would be good specs for a home theater PC? Or is it just a medium/high end build with a lot of storage?

Thanks in advance!

 

[alcattle]

The keys to a good HTPC are cooling and quiet. You will need to add a TV tuner. Then decide what functions you need, Time shifting , recording, DVD playback, Video editing, and general computer use. On mine, My wife will play her internet games and her card games. You need a good amount of HD space and 1 or 2 DVD's. Otherwise a good processor and 2 gb of RAM.

 

[nukemaster]

I would suggest almost ANY dual core to help the computer multi task(record/watch/stream/game). Since quiet is all. Lets say a E4300 or X2 4200+ based on your preference.

Lets start with your TV card for standard definition. The WinTV PVR 150 is a good single tuner option and can be purchased with a MCE remote if you plan to use Windows Media Center Edition. If you want a Dual tuner standard def setup the PVR 500 is a good option. I recommend those cards based on there hardware tuner. This means that your card does all the work for you. All your computer has to do is playback the file. As far as i know all current ATI(maybe even all companies now days) tuners have hardware compression now too. Just don't get sucked into a software based card as dropped frames suck. I have no experience with HD cards(since there is NO hd here yet) so maybe others will have info there.

If you are not playing games look for a passive(fanless) video card with TVout and HDCP((via DVI or HDMI) for high def). If you play games look for the same things but fanless may be out.

Next you need somewhere to store all this stuff. Seagate's latest drives are fairly quite and have good capacity for the price. I would suggest at lease a 320 if not 2. Video recording also tends to cause fragmentation so in the case a 80gig(you can still get some games in there..i would say raptor, but they are not quiet for this kind of setup) drive for windows and a 320 for recordings might be an idea to look into.

Now its time too cool it all down. Your case will have no problems cooling a moderate system. but for noise concerns you may want a Freezer7 cooler @ 9 or so volts or if you want to stick with zalman the 9500(i think the 9700 is too big for that case) @ 9 volts(or use motherboard based fan controls) is quiet as well and should cool the cpu within sepcs

Sound. Well some may say onboard, however on board tends to be susceptible to poping/cracking sounds and that can ruin your movies. basic X-fi models can be had for around 70-80$(less if you shop around a bit). The new X-fi's also have the front port audio header on them to make use of such ports on your case and are low profile for better air flow you your video card.

I hope these basics get you on the way to a good HTPC experience.