Overkill system?

[Farley]

I am finally trying to break into the HTPC arena, I have had 2 ReplayTV's and a 60inch Sony LCD for several years and have not tried HDTV. Trying to sift thru all the different info has been a chore so I just started trying to build a system I can have use of for the next 3-5 years without upgrading.

Here is what I have picked out so far:

M/B ASUS M2N32-SLI DLX WIFI
CPU AMD AM2 X2 dual core 4600
Video - 2 of these for SLI- eVGA 256-P2-N567 Geforce 7900GT KO Superclocked 256MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail
Hard drives 4 - 500gb drives (probably Seagate)
HDTV Tuner VBOX Cat's Eye DTA-150 ATSC Terrestrial HDTV Receiver, PCI
SD Tuner - MCE500 dual tuner
Memory- 2 of these for a total of 4 gigs - Corsair TWINX2048-3500LLPRO 2GB Kit DDR433 XMS3500 ProSeries
Case - Atech 6000
MCP for 2nd bedroom

Comcast Digital cable for SD tuners
OTA HDTV antenaa DB4 for OTA HDTV

Is this way overkill? At about $3500 - 4500 bucks it's a chunk of change. I am going after a clean look and feel and ease of use for wife factor.

Thanks.

Farley

[teknubic]

Originally Posted by Farley

Is this way overkill?

*Way* overkill. Surf the forums looking at peoples sig lines to get an idea of what people are using. I doubt you'll find anyone running 4gigs of memory and dual 7900GTs.
GL

[stanger89]

Is this just for SageTV/HTPC/PVR or gaming as well?

For that, yes, it's overkill, there's no reason to do SLI unless you're gaming, it won't do you any good for SageTV.

The 7900 is great, but overkill, of course, nothing wrong with overkill, within reason.

I'd suggest turning your focus from raw power to "efficient" power. Look for ways to quiet your system, like getting the storage out of the room, using passively cooled video cars, quiet CPU fan, maybe a fan controller.

Take a look at the AN8-Ultra motherboard, it's completely passive and offers temperature-regulated fan control.

Maybe opt for a passively cooled 7600GT vs the 7900. And make sure you get a video card that actually offers HDCP output.

[Farley]

Yes this is only for SageTv, I have a gaming machine already.

The objective of this machine is to be the main media server. I have lots of DVD's that will be stored on this media sever, I want HDTV recording and playback on the 60" Sony LCD, bedroom will have the MVP. The MCE500 will cover the SD recording for overflow and bedroom viewing.

4 gigs of ram is overkill for HDTV tuning/recording? 2 gigs?

I will get rid of the SLI video cards.

I opted for the Atech fabrication case because it is extremly quiet and cool and offers heat pipes and a quiet PS.

I will also probably get the Atech hard drive enclosure which is also quiet and cool.

Are the motherboard and CPU way overkill, even with HDTV?

I am trying to avoid massive tweaking, I am a techy geek (Network Engineer) but the WAF is very important. She is very used to ReplayTV's ease of use. I don't want to have to constantly tweak video settings (PureVideo, FFDshow etc) to get the PQ right. Hoping I can set it all up once and be done.

Thanks.

Farley

[KarylFStein]

I'm personally running at 2.26GHz with 512M RAM and OTA HDTV recording and playback is working fine in 1080p with a 6600GT video card. It took a while to iron everything out, but I don't think it was due to inadequate hardware since it's working now. I agree with stanger89. Try to get quiet components.

Personally, I have a single 250G HD for video in the man DVR, but all my "long term" storage things are on shared drives and served by a computer in the basement. That gets rid of the hard drive whine...

[blade]

Capturing the video requires very little power or memory the demanding part is processing, transcoding or playback.

IMO your better off building a true server to handle capture, storage and any processing or transcoding so that you can tuck it away somewhere so that noise and size isn't an issue. Then build a truely dedicated and quiet HTPC for playback. Just depends on what you want out of the system though.

Also regardless of how much you spend on hardware you're still going to have to do a good bit of tweaking to get good PQ. Once you get it setup though you shouldn't have to mess with it much.

[Humanzee]

Originally Posted by Farley

Here is what I have picked out so far:

M/B ASUS M2N32-SLI DLX WIFI
CPU AMD AM2 X2 dual core 4600
Video - 2 of these for SLI- eVGA 256-P2-N567 Geforce 7900GT
KO Superclocked 256MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail

Why go with AMD at this point? The new multi core stuff from intel is out and getting great press. With regard to the video processing, I ran across this article, (see link) that suggests that a 7600 might actually be better for video than a 7900 because of differing clock speeds. And you can get a passively cooled 7600GT

Originally Posted by AnandTech article

As PureVideo HD performance is dependant on the GPU's core clock speed, the impact of PureVideo will vary depending on the speed rather than the 3D power of your graphics card. For example, our MSI 7600 GT HDCP runs at a default 580 MHz core speed. This makes it a more effective PureVideo card than a 7900 GT running between 450 and 500 MHz. NVIDIA allowed us to underclock the MSI graphics card and test a variety of settings between 350 MHz and 580 MHz in order to fully understand the way performance varies versus GPU clock speed.

from http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2798

Originally Posted by Farley

Hard drives 4 - 500gb drives (probably Seagate)

You can never have too much, especially with HD recording and DVD archiving.

Originally Posted by Farley

HDTV Tuner VBOX Cat's Eye DTA-150 ATSC Terrestrial HDTV Receiver, PCI

Make sure these can do QAM over cable, you might be able to get a signal off your comcast hookup. At least for the channels you could get OTA anyway.

Originally Posted by Farley

MCP for 2nd bedroom

If you mean MVP, I would skip it and build a quiet client pc. The MVP's work but have limits and can be tricky to get working. (at least from what I have read.) They don't readily do DVD's or HD recordings. Not even sure about music, so those items might effect your WAF.

Originally Posted by Farley

Comcast Digital cable for SD tuners
OTA HDTV antenaa DB4 for OTA HDTV

You might check the comcast boxs for your area, you might be able to record HDTV over FireWire with out the need for dedicated HDTV tuners. There is a huge thread about it somewhere in the forum.

Originally Posted by Farley

Is this way overkill?

Not at all, if its what makes you happy. Id skip the second video card and extra ram and build a second machine to act as a client. You can go super quiet with it, just a proc, laptop hard drive and a good passively cooled video card.

[Humanzee]

Originally Posted by Farley

I will also probably get the Atech hard drive enclosure which is also quiet and cool.

Hard drives are just noisey, don't put a 4 hard drive machine in your bedroom. True, you can buy parts and select drives that are quieter but its probably cheaper in the long run to just keep the spining noise makers in another room.

Originally Posted by Farley

Are the motherboard and CPU way overkill, even with HDTV?
Farley

In my experience always get the best you can afford, HDTV taxes things, especially if you add commercial detection. If you build a server that isn't hooked to an HDTV then you don't need much to just record to disk as others have said. Put the big proc and big video card where ever you intend on watching HDTV.

If the big guns will be in the server connected to your HDTV, you can build a lesser client for the 2nd bed room to do just SDTV. Just build that client in such a way that you can upgrade it to handle HDTV in the future. I.e. no mother boards with only AGP video card slots, no pentium II processors.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by Farley

Yes this is only for SageTv, I have a gaming machine already.

The objective of this machine is to be the main media server. I have lots of DVD's that will be stored on this media sever, I want HDTV recording and playback on the 60" Sony LCD, bedroom will have the MVP. The MCE500 will cover the SD recording for overflow and bedroom viewing.

You will be playing from this machine too right? To the LCD? Because when I think "media server" I think of a headless box in the closet.

4 gigs of ram is overkill for HDTV tuning/recording? 2 gigs?

I've got 512MB in my server. Recording uses squat for memory.

I opted for the Atech fabrication case because it is extremly quiet and cool and offers heat pipes and a quiet PS.

They are a very nice case, that said, there only so much you can do, 4 7200 RPM drives will be rather noisy. I personally would take some of the money you save by dropping SLI and look into something like the ReadyNAS NV.

I will also probably get the Atech hard drive enclosure which is also quiet and cool.

That's another option.

[QUOTE]Are the motherboard and CPU way overkill, even with HDTV?

Well and SLI board is pointless if you're not using SLI, I really like my AN8-Ultra. CPU is overkill, but probably not in a bad way. My 4200 is nice and quiet in my AN8-Ultra, and that's with the stock fan. The second core will be nice if you decide to run comskip/SA on that box.

I am trying to avoid massive tweaking, I am a techy geek (Network Engineer) but the WAF is very important. She is very used to ReplayTV's ease of use. I don't want to have to constantly tweak video settings (PureVideo, FFDshow etc) to get the PQ right. Hoping I can set it all up once and be done.

Assuming you have quality hardware, that's more a function of self-restraint than anything else.

If you don't have quality hardware, then no amount of tweaking will fix it

[Humanzee]

Originally Posted by stanger89

If you don't have quality hardware, then no amount of tweaking will fix it

I second that.

[AndyS]

I'm running with a 3.2GHz Intel processor with Hyperthreading, and 2GB memory. The server is headless so uses the on-board video simply for server maintenance. The reason for the extra power and memory is to support transcoding, including driving a MediaMVP. You don't want other processes (such as commercial-skip processing and transcoding) to disturb your recording processes.

I felt that it was worth an extra investment in more memory now, so that I have an expandable system for the future. It's a peace-of-mind thing as much as anything.

Someone mentioned steering clear of the MVP. As long as your server has sufficient headroom to drive it, I'd heartily recommend this unit for SD viewing. Very responsive, small footprint, silent, no upgrades/maintenance involved, and works out of the box (at least for me). As always, YMMV, but I'd suggest you don't strike this off your list just yet.

Andy.

[mayamaniac]

dont listen to these people, as long as you can afford it, its not over killed to me.

But I do agree that the SLI cards are unnecessary. And I would go with intel's just released Core 2 Duo (Conroe) instead of AMD's X2, although either would be fine.

2Gig of RAM is fine.

I actually think 4x500G is not enough, you should get 4x720Gs (seagates SATA2 Perpendicular drives of course)

How come only one HD tuner?

OT: this reminds me, what ever happened to that one guy who wanted to build a 40 tuner system?