Super budget HD playback PC

[mardon]

I’m trying to build a new PC for my friend who is on a very very tight budget. The main use of the PC is to be hooked up to his 52” 1080i/720p HD TV for Bluray/HD-DVD playback as well as 720p .mkv’s
I’ll be cannibalising his old PC for its:

> Case
> DVD drive
> 200gb HDD (probably IDE)
> 2.5gb of Ram. I’m unsure if its DDR or DDR2.

It was an old PC so the Motherboard and the PSU unit are useless. I want to add the following

> CPU E2160 with an aftermarket cooler to OC from 1.8Ghz to 2.2Ghz or possibly 2.5Ghz

Or a Pentium 4 3.1ghz OC’d to 3.5 – 3.7ghz Depends on what we cab scrounge for free )

> Asrock 4CoreDual-SATA2 Rev2 (Socket 775) PCI-Express/AGP DDR2 Motherboard
> Dabs Value 400W PSU Gold 12cm
> LG GGC-H20L Blu-Ray Reader & HD-DVD ROM Serial ATA Drive – Retail
> Radion HD3400 or 3600 depending on what I can source (They have onboard Bluray playback)

The guy only has £150 ish to spend so this is really the best I can do. Do you think this spec will be adequate for his needs? Running on Vista 32bit Home Premium?

 

[mardon]

Double post

 

[Wolfshadw]

Remember that the Intel versions of these hybrid (AGP + PCI-E) boards has the PCI-Ex16 slot hard wired to x4 speeds. Not sure if that's going to affect Hi-Def output

If you can scrounge a low-end dual-core AM2 processor, you might want to look at the 780G AMD motherboards with integrated HDMI output. That erases the need for a hi-def capable graphics card.

-Wolf sends

 

[jeb1517]

If you can scrounge a low-end dual-core AM2 processor, you might want to look at the 780G AMD motherboards with integrated HDMI output. That erases the need for a hi-def capable graphics card.

+1

Get a low end 45W rated dual core and the 780G mATX mobo if you can.

 

[mardon]

The Dual Core is out of my work PC. I'm asking for an upgrade. The Pentium 4 he already has at his house.

Bluray is pretty intensive unless the GPU has on chip support like NVidia's PureHD or the ATI equivalent. Programs like Power DVD 8 can be utilise these functions so they decode the h.264 etc on the GPU taking the strain away from the CPU. I think .mkv's are different, I’m not aware of a codec pack or player which supports hardware decoding.

Don't think 4x's is really going to bottle neck a GPU of that standard. It is something I will look into though. Thanks.

Any suggestions in the £30-£40 price bracket. This is quite a fun challenge lol.

 

[superfuzzy]

+1

Get a low end 45W rated dual core and the 780G mATX mobo if you can.

Agreed. I just built a system with a Gibabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H RS780 mATX and and AMD Black Edition 5000+.

It plays h.264 1080p without a hitch!

 

[mardon]

Just checked the price's on those. Sounds good. What graphics card would you recommend. The HD3400 should be fine i'd think.

 

[Wolfshadw]

That was the idea behind the 780G motherboard recommendations (like the one Superfuzzy's using). You don't need a graphics card. The on-board HD3200 plays Blu-Ray discs without a hitch. Problem is you have an Intel Processor and I'm not sure when the Intel motherboards with similar capabilities will be available.

-Wolf sends