HTPC under $500

[piplupgao]

Must be small (nothing above m-atx) and have a good sound card that supports 7.1 (preferably with optical out)

[CoolBeans]

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1xQB0 just add a sound card

[nsyedhasan]

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1xQB0 just add a sound card

I would recommend this but with a Fractal Node 304.

[ejm_110]

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1xTYr

 

for cpu comparison:

 

http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Celeron-G1610-vs-AMD-A10-5800K

[t0wer]

skip the sound card, use hdmi or optical.

and for pure media, you could lower the cpu to even an a4, but if you plan on light gaming you'll probably want the a8 or a10.

[dalekphalm]

Must be small (nothing above m-atx) and have a good sound card that supports 7.1 (preferably with optical out)

You made another thread about how to setup a Home Theatre system. Does that system have HDMI passthrough and True HD/DTS HD support? Can you post the model number of your receiver?

 

If it does indeed support HDMI passthrough (Most do these days), then you don't WANT a soundcard in your system, because you want to Bit Stream your audio to the receiver and let it do all the work.

[simtransporter]

Must be small (nothing above m-atx) and have a good sound card that supports 7.1 (preferably with optical out)

If you plan to use optical out than the 'quality' of the sound card is irrelevant as you would be feeding the digital signal into a separate DAC. Just get any sound card that has optical out and supports 7.1 and all the features you may want such as DTS and DD support.

[dalekphalm]

If you plan to use optical out than the 'quality' of the sound card is irrelevant as you would be feeding the digital signal into a separate DAC. Just get any sound card that has optical out and supports 7.1 and all the features you may want such as DTS and DD support.

Most likely he already has that. Many motherboards have optical out and has support for those things. What would be even better is if his receiver supported HDMI passthrough and Bit Streaming (Which would let him do DTS HD and True HD in addition to the older non HD audio signals.

[piplupgao]

If you plan to use optical out than the 'quality' of the sound card is irrelevant as you would be feeding the digital signal into a separate DAC. Just get any sound card that has optical out and supports 7.1 and all the features you may want such as DTS and DD support.

Will there be a difference in quality if I use the normal (What ever its called outputs)

[piplupgao]

You made another thread about how to setup a Home Theatre system. Does that system have HDMI passthrough and True HD/DTS HD support? Can you post the model number of your receiver?

 

If it does indeed support HDMI passthrough (Most do these days), then you don't WANT a soundcard in your system, because you want to Bit Stream your audio to the receiver and let it do all the work.

this one http://www.amazon.com/Yamaha-RX-V675-Channel-Network-Receiver/dp/B00B981F1U/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1377563884&sr=8-6&keywords=7.1+reciever

 

[dalekphalm]

Will there be a difference in quality if I use the normal (What ever its called outputs)

You mean the Analog outputs? (The 3.5mm plugs on the back of your soundcard?) Yes, there will be a difference in quality.

 

Quality goes like this:

Analog -> Optical/Digital SPDIF -> HDMI

 

Analog is decent for a low end Home Theatre setup, but is susceptible to signal degradation and offers the lowest sound quality you can get.

 

Optical (Or Digital SPDIF, they're very similar and offer the same features) is digital and offers excellent sound quality for LEGACY sound systems. It DOES NOT support True HD or DTS HD sound.

 

HDMI Bit Streaming is by far the best system to use. It is a digital connection, and thus doesn't have signal issues or interference. It also is the only method that supports True HD and DTS HD properly.

 

Your Receiver supports HDMI Bit Streaming AND True HD + DTS HD. You should use HDMI from your HTPC to the Receiver, then passthrough from the Receiver to your HDTV (Or projector, whatever your "screen" is). In fact, that is a fairly good Receiver in general, so you want to give it the best possible input you can.

 

[EDIT]

I just checked to verify, the AMD A10-5800 (And the other Trinity APU's) support HDMI Bit Streaming with 7.1 and HD audio (PCM, True HD, DTS HD, etc), with up to FOUR separate 7.1 audio streams (Not that anyone would ever need this).

[piplupgao]

You mean the Analog outputs? (The 3.5mm plugs on the back of your soundcard?) Yes, there will be a difference in quality.

 

Quality goes like this:

Analog -> Optical/Digital SPDIF -> HDMI

 

Analog is decent for a low end Home Theatre setup, but is susceptible to signal degradation and offers the lowest sound quality you can get.

 

Optical (Or Digital SPDIF, they're very similar and offer the same features) is digital and offers excellent sound quality for LEGACY sound systems. It DOES NOT support True HD or DTS HD sound.

 

HDMI Bit Streaming is by far the best system to use. It is a digital connection, and thus doesn't have signal issues or interference. It also is the only method that supports True HD and DTS HD properly.

 

Your Receiver supports HDMI Bit Streaming AND True HD + DTS HD. You should use HDMI from your HTPC to the Receiver, then passthrough from the Receiver to your HDTV (Or projector, whatever your "screen" is). In fact, that is a fairly good Receiver in general, so you want to give it the best possible input you can.

So how do I set it up just plug it in or what?

[dalekphalm]

So how do I set it up just plug it in or what?

For the most part, just plug HDMI from your HTPC to the receiver, then another HDMI from the receiver to your TV.

 

On the HTPC you'll need to make sure Bit Streaming is enabled in the settings menu in whatever programs you are using to play video (TotalMedia Theatre, PowerDVD HD, XBMC, etc). Also make sure that Windows Control Panel for Sound has HDMI Audio as the DEFAULT audio output, and make sure that Sound is configured for the same setup as your Home Theatre (7.1, 5.1, etc. Whatever your speaker setup is, make sure Windows is the same).

 

There MAY be some configuration required on the Receiver itself, but I have no knowledge of that. Perhaps someone who has a similar Yamaha receiver can comment?

[simtransporter]

Most likely he already has that. Many motherboards have optical out and has support for those things. What would be even better is if his receiver supported HDMI passthrough and Bit Streaming (Which would let him do DTS HD and True HD in addition to the older non HD audio signals.

Yes quite right! HDMI would be best if you plan to plug it into a AV receiver. You could take advantage of the DTS HD and True HD that HDMI can carry.

At the time that I wrote my reply I didn't know that the user was planning to plug it into a receiver that would supports this.

[silencerbob]

I was unaware spdif cables supported more than 5.1 audio. For bluray audio (7.1) u need hdmi.

[dalekphalm]

I was unaware spdif cables supported more than 5.1 audio. For bluray audio (7.1) u need hdmi.

Well that statement is not entirely correct. SPDIF cables can indeed support 7.1 audio. However, it cannot support uncompressed (or lossless) audio in any form (5.1 or 7.1). It's maximum bit-rate is just slightly over 3 Mbps, which is far too low for lossless audio (For comparison, True HD is up to 18 Mbps and DTS-HD MA is up to 24.5 Mbps).

 

Typical Blu-Ray movies use lossless audio, either DTS-HD MA or True HD, but whether an audio track is 7.1 or 5.1 is a completely different issue compared to whether it's lossless. Many Blu-Ray movies in True HD or DTS-HD MA were also 5.1, despite being lossless.

[solomongrundy]

Whatever the OP decides to get, this is probably the only usage scenario(HTPC) where I would recommend getting an AMD APU or AMD dGPU. I run an old Radeon 6670 with a Core2freakin'Duo and let the GPU do most of the grunt work and it does an awesome job with anything I throw at it and it bitstreams DTS MA and Dolby HD over HDMI to my Denon. It's awesome.