Gaming HTPC Build

[Silmano]

I'm planning on building a Gaming HTPC for the living room TV and mainly use it as media center with XBMC, but also be able to play to games from time to time.

 

This is my actual part list (still in planning stage):

Case: BitFenix Prodigy (68€)

CPU: Intel Core i3-4360 (124.90€)

CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-L12 (49.99€)

Motherboard: Asus H81I-Plus (68.90€)

Memory: Corsair Vengeance (2x4Gb) DDR3-1600 (74.90€)

Storage: Mushkin Chronos 120Gb SSD (51.90€)

Video Card: Asus R9 280 DirectCU II TOP (199€)

Power Supply: Corsair VS450 (34.99€)

Optical Drive: BluRay reader (~30-40€)

The total is around 510€

 

The idea I have in mind is not to get the best performance, but to balance the parts performance with its power consumption (and within the budget if possible ). Also it would be great if it could maintain 1080p@30fps while playing games with decent graphic requirements (doesn't have to run all in ultra quality). As sugested, the idea is to mainly use as HTPC with XBMC for example and then use Steam In-Home streaming to run the games from my main PC to the HTPC.

 

I would greatly appreciate any comment or suggestion regarding the build.

 

P.S.- The second part of this project will involve adding a water cooled solution to the HTPC, including blocks for CPU and GPU, so it will be best if the suggested GPU could mount a full waterblock cover. 

[FusionBlitzx]

Well for a HTPC that is a very nice build.

[Held657]

With a Noctua NH-L12 (and later watercooling) you will have no problems using the normal i5 4590 or a 4690 (K). If you go for a K CPU you will obviously need a Z97 board.

If you want to watercool don't get a sapphire card. I love sapphire cards it's my favorite brand for AMD GPUs along with ASUS but you will run into trouble with a watercooling block. I would get a R9 280X DCII from Asus. It's a great card and there are many waterblocks for it.

Anything else looks great so far. Altough personally I'd take a Samsung 840 EVO instead of the Mushkin SSD.

 

EDIT: The waterblocks for the ASUS DCII R9 280X will also fit the ASUS DCII R9 280 if you want to save some bucks.

Edited July 8, 2014 by Held657

[Cacao]

Why not just go for a Prodigy M? It's hardly bigger but has much more room for expansion.

[Held657]

Why not just go for a Prodigy M? It's hardly bigger but has much more room for expansion.

 

If you want to use custom watercooling the normal Prodigy is the obvious choice because there is much more room for the watercooling loop, room you will need.

[Cacao]

If you want to use custom watercooling the normal Prodigy is the obvious choice because there is much more room for the watercooling loop, room you will need.

And why in the world would you do custom water cooling on an HTPC with non overclockable parts??

[Silmano]

And why in the world would you do custom water cooling on an HTPC with non overclockable parts??

Mainly to achieve a quieter, cooler PC, but also cause its fun to build it!

 

@Held657: I take note on the R9 280, I've found the ASUS DCII TOP for just 10€ more.

[Cacao]

Mainly to achieve a quieter, cooler PC, but also cause its fun to build it!

 

@Held657: I take note on the R9 280, I've found the ASUS DCII TOP for just 10€ more.

You would hardly be able to get it quieter in such a small case and marginally lower temperatures aren't a big deal. Nevermind the fact that the loop would cost as much as the whole PC. So buying the case over the other one just because of the option to do an internal water cooling loop makes absolutely 0 sense...

[Silmano]

You would hardly be able to get it quieter in such a small case and marginally lower temperatures aren't a big deal. Nevermind the fact that the loop would cost as much as the whole PC. So buying the case over the other one just because of the option to do an internal water cooling loop makes absolutely 0 sense...

That's not the reason why I'm choosing the Prodigy over the Prodigy M. I've been checking several mini-ITX cases for this build and the one that I liked the most was the Prodigy, that's why I'm choosing it. Of course the extra of the case is that it has enough room to build a water cooling loop, but that is a phase of the project that will also require some study and research from my part before starting it.

 

If the PC stays quiet and cool with the current configuration or adding a bigger extra fan, obviously there is no need to watercool. But since we haven't discovered how to grow money, I prefer to pay for a component that I could apply a waterblock without issues instead of paying for another that I would have to change in case I need to watercool.

 

Also I don't need the extra PCI of a microATX board.

[JAKEBAB]

why not just have a low powered i3 machine and when u want to game just use steam in home streaming from your main pc?

[MEC-777]

why not just have a low powered i3 machine and when u want to game just use steam in home streaming from your main pc?

+1

 

This is what I did. Built a cheap little APU system with an SSD and threw Linux/SteamOS on it.

[Silmano]

+1

 

This is what I did. Built a cheap little APU system with an SSD and threw Linux/SteamOS on it.

 

I haven't though of that. The only drawback on that solution is that both PCs should be powered for it to work...

 

MEC-777, how's the gaming experience? Does the game run fluent with a decent graphic settings?

 

I still have a GTX 570 on my main PC, but as suggested I could disasemble this build for a more modest one and use some of the spare budget to upgrade my main graphics card.

[MEC-777]

I haven't though of that. The only drawback on that solution is that both PCs should be powered for it to work...

 

MEC-777, how's the gaming experience? Does the game run fluent with a decent graphic settings?

 

I still have a GTX 570 on my main PC, but as suggested I could disasemble this build for a more modest one and use some of the spare budget to upgrade my main graphics card.

I'm just running the Athlon 5350 quad core APU with no GPU. It handles HD video playback and streaming no problem (as it should). For gaming, all the "work" is being done on my main gaming rig (specs in sig), so all the HTPC has to do is decode and display it. It helps to have both machines connected via Ethernet (no wifi) and some games run better than others. 

 

Running In-home streaming using SteamOS works very well from what I've seen thus far, though I haven't spent a lot of time on it (still working out some issues with bad audio). I've tried streaming various games like; Castle Crashers, Betrayer, Assassin's Creed Black Flag, DoD:Source, Metro Last Light, Far Cry 3 etc. to test a wide rang of games and all of them ran fairly well with reasonable latency and frame rates in the mid-high 50's. All games were running at ultra 1080p. In general, the more demanding the game, the more latency. Since I consider gaming on the TV to be a casual experience, I don't mind or notice the latency much.

 

SteamOS is far from perfect and the same goes for In-home streaming. But they are constantly updating and improving it. 

 

As for having both PC's on - my main rig is always running 24/7 and my HTPC uses so little power (runs on a laptop power brick) that it near as makes no difference. With an SSD in both, I probably should just turn them off, but I'm lazy. lol. Modern PC components are very efficient. Everything clocks down and sips power at idle/sleep mode. The only time they really suck the juice is during gaming/heavy usage.

[Held657]

Steam In-Home Streaming works suprisingly well, but the two pcs must be connected by gigabit lan to work properly on 1080p. I streamed Call of Duty Ghosts @ highest settings 900p from my gaming rig to my laptop and got about 50-70 fps. (only 900p because my laptop only has a 900p screen and if you run the game on 1080p it really screws with inhome streaming and you only get about 20fps; also I should mention that my laptop does have a core i7 2670QM and did need to use it to achieve this. I can't say anything about the performance with a desktop i3, but it seems to me that an i5 would be my choice for a good Steam In-Home Streaming maschine)

 

And watercooling doesnt have to be that expensive. He needs a 180mm radiator and a 240mm radiator, a cpu and gpu block, a pump, a reservoir and some fittings. About 400€ would be enough for a proper watercooling loop for this system.

[MEC-777]

Steam In-Home Streaming works suprisingly well, but the two pcs must be connected by gigabit lan to work properly on 1080p. I streamed Call of Duty Ghosts @ highest settings 900p from my gaming rig to my laptop and got about 50-70 fps. (only 900p because my laptop only has a 900p screen and if you run the game on 1080p it really screws with inhome streaming and you only get about 20fps; also I should mention that my laptop does have a core i7 2670QM and did need to use it to achieve this. I can't say anything about the performance with a desktop i3, but it seems to me that an i5 would be my choice for a good Steam In-Home Streaming maschine)

 

And watercooling doesnt have to be that expensive. He needs a 180mm radiator and a 240mm radiator, a cpu and gpu block, a pump, a reservoir and some fittings. About 400€ would be enough for a proper watercooling loop for this system.

Make sure you have hardware decoding enabled. You shouldn't need that much CPU to stream a game at 1080p. I was able to do this smoothly with a 2.0GHz low-power quad-core AMD. 

[Held657]

Make sure you have hardware decoding enabled. You shouldn't need that much CPU to stream a game at 1080p. I was able to do this smoothly with a 2.0GHz low-power quad-core AMD. 

 

Yeah I red your post just after posting mine and was very suprised. Hardware decoding is enabled but it's a while ago I tested and CoD Ghosts seems not to be the best game for testing anyway. But I'll test again in the next days I think. Anyway if you have that performance with this nice little Kabini APU there should be no problem, especially with an i3.

[MEC-777]

Yeah I red your post just after posting mine and was very suprised. Hardware decoding is enabled but it's a while ago I tested and CoD Ghosts seems not to be the best game for testing anyway. But I'll test again in the next days I think. Anyway if you have that performance with this nice little Kabini APU there should be no problem, especially with an i3.

Some games work better than others. Online multiplayer games will take more of a hit as the input/output latency between the slave and host machines will create more "choppyness" to your gameplay experience. I did notice that even though DoD:source is far from graphically demanding, the latency when trying to play a 32-man game was just too much to play smoothly and competitively. 

[Held657]

Some games work better than others. Online multiplayer games will take more of a hit as the input/output latency between the slave and host machines will create more "choppyness" to your gameplay experience. I did notice that even though DoD:source is far from graphically demanding, the latency when trying to play a 32-man game was just too much to play smoothly and competitively. 

 

I just tried the singleplayer of Ghosts, but that's interesting. I will look into that too, maybe the i7 will help here?

[MEC-777]

I just tried the singleplayer of Ghosts, but that's interesting. I will look into that too, maybe the i7 will help here?

Yeah, some will run better than others, single or multiplayer. I'm not sure what effects how well a particular game runs, but I doubt an i7 is required or will necessarily improve performance. I'd guess the encoding/decoding process just needs to be better optimized for that particular game? I don't really know that much about it, but I do know that I've run some of the more demanding games streamed at 1080p ultra on this little Kabini and it ran fine. 

 

Just as a side note: I know one thing people have been saying, and it's what the Steam devs recommend, is to not run a dual-core for in-home streaming - at least not a lower-end dual-core. I'm guessing it's a very multi-task intensive process to decode on the slave end, hence a lower-power quad-core can handle it for the most part. An i3 should handle it no sweat.

[Held657]

Yeah, some will run better than others, single or multiplayer. I'm not sure what effects how well a particular game runs, but I doubt an i7 is required or will necessarily improve performance. I'd guess the encoding/decoding process just needs to be better optimized for that particular game? I don't really know that much about it, but I do know that I've run some of the more demanding games streamed at 1080p ultra on this little Kabini and it ran fine. 

 

Just as a side note: I know one thing people have been saying, and it's what the Steam devs recommend, is to not run a dual-core for in-home streaming - at least not a lower-end dual-core. I'm guessing it's a very multi-task intensive process to decode on the slave end, hence a lower-power quad-core can handle it for the most part. An i3 should handle it no sweat.

 

Yeah video decoding generally is a multithreaded workload and even with the i3 being a dualcore, it's hyperthreading will fill that hole  .

 

@ Silmano: What are the specs on your primary build? Maybe an upgrade on that with using the old parts for the HTPC would be an option, too?

[Silmano]

@ Silmano: What are the specs on your primary build? Maybe an upgrade on that with using the old parts for the HTPC would be an option, too?

I've updated my signature to include my main PC specs. I've thought of that too, to upgrade my GTX 570 for example.

 

I've been checking AMD and Intel processors and between the AMD A10-6700 and the i3-4360, I choose the second because AMD motherboards in ITX format are more expensive in the shops I usually buy. I've also checked the AMD A10-5800k, but it has a huge TDP. I'm updating the first post with the changes made.

[MEC-777]

I've updated my signature to include my main PC specs. I've thought of that too, to upgrade my GTX 570 for example.

 

I've been checking AMD and Intel processors and between the AMD A10-6700 and the i3-4360, I choose the second because AMD motherboards in ITX format are more expensive in the shops I usually buy. I've also checked the AMD A10-5800k, but it has a huge TDP. I'm updating the first post with the changes made.

Yeah the current selection of FM2+ mini-ITX motherboards from AMD are on the pricey side, especially if you're trying to build something on a lower budget. They start at over $100 here in Canada. That's part of the reason I went with the new low-power AM1 socket. I got a decent quad-core APU and mITX motherboard with plenty of features for not much more than $100 combined. I'm not doing any gaming directly on this but for what I need it to do, it works quite well. Otherwise, yeah, Intel is the way to go for a budget mITX system.

[Held657]

The more I think about it the more I tend to buying a new graphics card for your main rig and getting a HTPC that is capable of Steam In-Home Streaming being the best idea.

And if you want to build a watercooling loop you could still do this with your main rig.