HTPC discussion

[CyberWolfDev]

Hi LTT People

 

I was recently was gaming on my HTPC when I thought that it would be interesting to learn what the community uses as their living room driver so please participate in the poll.

 

CyberwolfDev

 

 

[Necrodead]

I think your budget option is a bit high, especially if this is USD. Including a 3tb drive I spent about $400 CAD on mine, using a dual core athlon with the integrated gpu. I think you could get away with a decent HTPC for less than $300 if you were really budget conscious.

[SonoDanshi]

Well I currently have a budget build (~ $450 USD), but I am moving at the end of the month and as soon as I get to my new apartment I'll be ordering a replacement Skylake i5 system for the living room but I'll most likely suck it up with the integrated graphics for media playback until I see what Pascal / Poalris are up to as I'm looking to drop $400 on a GPU because I will be using it for sim racing and the like as well.

[DragonTamer1]

My HTPC isn't meant for gaming directly on it, I do use Steam streaming to play games on it though.

 

The HTPC came about from a computer that I inherited that wasn't really powerful enough to sell to anyone and was only marginally more powerful than what I was using at the time. It was suggested that I use it for a theater PC which it actually does really well (after some slight upgrades, the integrated graphics were garbage).

 

-AMD Phenom 9100e (1.8GHz quad core)

-Generic motherboard from Gateway (I'm waiting for it to catch fire)

-HD 6450 silent edition (low profile passive cooler from Asus)

-640GB HDD (big enough for now but would like a larger one)

Still looking at buying a new case for it as well as a dedicated Blu-ray drive. The only video playack that it struggles with is YouTube 1080p60 or any resolution over  1080p.

 

[Steve.604]

I use an alienware alpha as my htpc, i5 something, with I think a GTX860m equivalent,

I was looking for compact, quite and didn't plan on gaming with it. 7.1 audio was highest on my want list.

 

I was surprised to find Hivemind was just kodi with a skin and a few tweaks, which works out nicely.

The tweaks and Xbox controller hot keys are pretty slick.

 

Now that I have a real gaming tower I stream games to the alpha almost daily.

[ShaithEatery]

I ended up using my old main-rig hardware for my HTPC when I upgraded:

 

CPU: i7 2700k

GPU: EVGA GTX 680 4gb

mobo: P8Z77-I DELUXE (purchased for HTPC)

RAM: 8gb Corsair Dominator DDR3

PSU: Silverstone SX500-LG SFX-L 500w (purchased for HTPC)

Storage: Samsung 840 Pro 256GB + 1TB WD Velociraptor 10k rpm drive

Case: Silverstone FTZ01 (purchased for HTPC)

 

I love being able to play most games at 1080p 60fps like fully modded Dark Souls, Resident Evil re-releases, etc. running natively without any streaming needed.  Also have Kodi setup for all my video/media playback needs, all running with a wireless 360 controller.

 

[MarcWolfe]

Dont have one yet, bit I'll be getting an old Dell (and i mean OLD). I plan to integrate it into my Samsung AV-R720 if it works well enough hooked up out side the reciever. Overall budget would total $0.00. If it doesn't perform, then a low powered GPU should be all I'll need for it.

[Atlant]

i think that for mid range u should put a entry 4k 60fps htpc (would require a gtx950)

[LordLeewee]

i use an AMD athlon 5350 2.0ghz quad, asrock itx board, 8gb ram, and an old gtx 650 i had. with a silverstone sg13 case, 128gb kingston ssd and corsair psu it came in at £205 (cost of gpu not included obv) 

handles video effortlessly in any res, very quick startup and app switching thanks to ssd, and handles multiplayer rocket league natively and streams gta from my main system very well.

[BrightCandle]

I built mine a while ago and it has an i5-2300 (2.8Ghz) in it with just 4GB of RAM on an MITX board. I don't have a GPU in it, if I was to try and game on it then I would stream, its about running the TV for movies and such not gaming.