What are the best upgrades for a current HTPC?

[kingkvndrick]

Hello,

 

I have a pretty old HTPC and I want to know what I can do to upgrade it. I mainly stream HD video at 1080p and I like to do office work on it as well. Gaming is not really a priority...

 

Currently I am rocking:

• Intel Pentium E5500 Dual Core (Would a Q6600 make a difference)
• 6GB DDR2 RAM @800 Mhz (I think that this is alright)
• 250GB Samsung 850 EVO (This is fine)
• Sapphire HD6450 1GB (This could be upgraded, budget is around €100 - €150)
• Windows 10 Home 64 Bit (This is perfectly good as well)

If there are any other suggestions, I would like to hear them,

 

Thanks a lot for your help.

[manikyath]

well.. is anything specific lacking about it?

 

if it aint broke, dont fix it

[The Sloth]

i would get a cheap q6600 and a cheap mass storage solution for media. 

[kingkvndrick]

8 minutes ago, manikyath said:

well.. is anything specific lacking about it?

 

if it aint broke, dont fix it

Haha well right now everything seems to be Ok, it can get a bit slow sometimes and I would like to future proof it for years to come as well.

2 minutes ago, nerdslayer1 said:

i would get a cheap q6600 and a cheap mass storage solution for media. 

Currently, I have a 1TB and 2TB drive for storage. A Q6600 seems to be the way to go in my opinion

[manikyath]

Just now, kingkvndrick said:

Haha well right now everything seems to be Ok, it can get a bit slow sometimes and I would like to future proof it for years to come as well.

Currently, I have a 1TB and 2TB drive for storage. A Q6600 seems to be the way to go in my opinion

if you can get a hand on a Q6600 that'll defenately be a nice upgrade, but i'd say wait out on the GPU until you actually need a more powerful one, because you know as well as i that what you buy now will be outdated next year

[kingkvndrick]

1 minute ago, manikyath said:

if you can get a hand on a Q6600 that'll defenately be a nice upgrade, but i'd say wait out on the GPU until you actually need a more powerful one, because you know as well as i that what you buy now will be outdated next year

That makes sense! Wouldn't a better GPU though result in smoother playback? I mean I am not looking for the latest 1080 Ti, but something basic like a 1050 or the new 1030 which is coming soon...

[The Sloth]

1 minute ago, kingkvndrick said:

That makes sense! Wouldn't a better GPU though result in smoother playback? I mean I am not looking for the latest 1080 Ti, but something basic like a 1050 or the new 1030 which is coming soon...

 

for something cheap get a 750ti. 

[kingkvndrick]

Just now, nerdslayer1 said:

for something cheap get a 750ti. 

Here in Germany, for the same price as a 750ti, I could get myself a 1050... Would that also work?

[The Sloth]

Just now, kingkvndrick said:

Here in Germany, for the same price as a 750ti, I could get myself a 1050... Would that also work?

yes but it might bottleneck, get a 1050ti, it should give you better value. 

[kingkvndrick]

2 minutes ago, nerdslayer1 said:

yes but it might bottleneck, get a 1050ti, it should give you better value. 

Seems good to me. Thanks for your advice!

[Zodiark1593]

Wait until either AMD or Nvidia officially support 4K Netflix (more specifically, the Playready component). Then upgrade. Unless you encode to HEVC a lot, there is no reason not to wait. 

[AshleyAshes]

My vote would be to add a Q6600 for an improvement of overall system performance since they're like $20 on eBay. However to keep that thing 'going' what you really want to do is improve the hardware acceleration, so adding a low end modern GPU like the Radeon RX 560 or GTX 1050 will give you full 4K HEVC 10bit hardware acceleration (Assuming whatever software you're using supports it) as well as HDMI 2.0 or better and keep the box cooking for many many years.  You don't need a powerful GPU at all, any GPU in the same family will offer the same hardware video decoding functions as the top end gaming GPU, so if all you want is the hardware acceleration, go for the bottom rung with that feature set/

[Stagea]

 

 

Agree. The RX 550 and the GT 1030 are currently the cheapest in their respective families. The latter now supports PlayReady 3.0 (requires the latest driver pack).