Noob; HTPC

Forums › Home Theatre (including HTPC and EPG Collector) › Noob; HTPC

BreaKer

36 posts

Geek

#136209 18-Nov-2013 23:24

Looking to get an HTPC for under 600$ can anyone recommend, needs to run windows 7 and have room for added internal hard drives :) Thanks for help

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Gilco2

1555 posts

Uber Geek

Subscriber

#937104 19-Nov-2013 06:38

first would help if we knew what you intended to do with it. Do you want to watch freeviewhd or freeview satellite or both. Do you want to also play games on it, if so low end middle range or top end games or just watch movies off hard drive or also use it to paly dvd/blu-ray disks. Or so you want to stream from home server/nas or internet.

I built one a couple years back and this year upgraded it to AMD Trinity. It does everything I listed above except for top end games perhaps. I dont play games apart from dropbox and POPULOUS. I also watch Quickflix with it and it is a good all rounder.

I have bought parts when sales on to save a few bucks. Like last night bought trinity cpu and motherboard for $157 inc shipping from playtech in their 9pm to 11pm sale. will be ideal for my brother

HTPC Intel Pentium G3258 cpu, Gigabyte H97n-wifi motherboard, , 8GB DDR3 ram, onboard graphics. Hauppuage HVR 5500 tuner, Silverstone LC16M case, Windows 10 pro 64 bit using Nextpvr and Kodi

BreaKer

36 posts

Geek

#937213 19-Nov-2013 11:35

No games, more twitch streams isky + blueray and movies I have no hdd.

Gilco2

1555 posts

Uber Geek

Subscriber

#937224 19-Nov-2013 11:51

I have the AMD A4-5300 and I love it. It works flawlessly for me. You will find many will tell you AMD is not good but it is excellent value and ideal for your purpose. EVen the A4.4000 will be great and Playtech have it for $66 at present. I just use a laptop hard drive for my OS which is Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit and have Powerdvd which came with DVD drive. I have a Western Digital greenpower drive for movies. Works well. Look for sales for parts and you could meet your budget okay.
Thats my experience and I can watch Blu ray and dvd from any region and I stream Quickflix no problem and also movies over wifi from the home server I built earlier this year. So really all I need now is just the laptop hard drive for the OS and powerdvd.

HTPC Intel Pentium G3258 cpu, Gigabyte H97n-wifi motherboard, , 8GB DDR3 ram, onboard graphics. Hauppuage HVR 5500 tuner, Silverstone LC16M case, Windows 10 pro 64 bit using Nextpvr and Kodi

BreaKer

36 posts

Geek

#937242 19-Nov-2013 12:23

Damn mistype on phone will be watching movies from hard drive and would like windows 7 on it

turb

844 posts

Ultimate Geek

#937342 19-Nov-2013 15:02

Gilco, what software are you using for bluray?

Interests: HTPC, Web App authoring.

Gilco2

1555 posts

Uber Geek

Subscriber

#937407 19-Nov-2013 16:28

powerdvd for bluray. Still using version 10 that came with my bluray drive. I dont have a lot of blu ray movies, mainly dvds which have also magically put themselves on the hard drive. Still works fine for me so havent updated it

HTPC Intel Pentium G3258 cpu, Gigabyte H97n-wifi motherboard, , 8GB DDR3 ram, onboard graphics. Hauppuage HVR 5500 tuner, Silverstone LC16M case, Windows 10 pro 64 bit using Nextpvr and Kodi