Saint AAI

Following on from my thread about needing a replacement PVR after cancelling Sky. I've decided to build a media PC based on a mini ITX format. Was thinking about waiting for the Haswell based Mac mini to arrive, but I enjoy messing with stuff so thought I'd build my own. Not done a full build before so not sure if I've chosen the correct hardware, but I suppose I'll find out. As well as media duties, I'll be using a USB based DVB-T2 tuner and using the PC as a PVR.

I know some people are interested in this sort of stuff so I'll post pics and things in here.

Right, so far I've ordered the following:

Lian Li PC-Q02B case with 300w PSU
Gigabyte GA-H87N-WIFI motherboard
Intel Core i3 4340 Haswell CPU
Noctua NH-L9i low profile CPU cooler
4GB Corsair DDR3 1600MHz dual channel RAM
120GB Kingston SSD
1TB 2.5" HDD
Slim line slot loading Blu-Ray optical drive.

I'm hoping it will be quiet without getting too hot. The case is designed to have no fans, but with what it will be doing I doubt it will use much of the CPU.

I'll update with pics as soon as stuff starts to arrive.

Beef

I'll be interested to know how you get on - I'm thinking of treading a similar path myself

CREWJ

Subb'd

I'm looking at getting a completely silent passively cooled media PC. Would be interested to see how you get on.

Saint AAI

Most of the bits for this turned up on Monday, only thing that was missing was the optical drive.

All bits together:




The case unboxed, quite happy with it. Nice and compact, comes with 300W 80 plus PSU which sits inside the case. Could have gone for a smaller case, but didn't want an external PSU. I also wanted to get an optical drive in as well as a SSD and an HDD. You can fit 3 HDDs in this case if you don't put an optical drive in and if you want to use a 3.5" HDD it takes up 2x2.5" slots.




Motherboard. Went for the H version over the Z as I've no intention of doing any overclocking and I'm not really sure what other differences there are.




Next is the CPU and cooler. I didn't realise it came with its own cooler, but the case has a maximum requirement of 65mm for cooler height. Space is tight in there so still decided to use the low profile one I bought.












Fitted the cooler along with the "silencer" which I guess is a resistor or something.




Fitted the RAM:




Then opened up the case:








The hard drives fit on a tray at the bottom:










This is where I got my first problem, the thumb screws for holding the HDD tray in can't go in because of the drive connectors. Tried to fit them the other way round, but then the motherboard mounting gets in the way of the connectors. I just used some of the other HDD mounting screws that came in the box.




Fitted the motherboard to its bracket and put that in the case and attached all the connectors. This was a bit fiddly as there is not much room. I ended up taking the PSU out, fitting the MOBO and everything, then putting PSU back in.








All done, quick power up with no OS just to see if it works.






I'll write some more up soon.

Graz

Nice, been planning to do something similar myself for a while, just waiting for the funds to allow it. Your spec. seems spot on and I'd be using something similar, the on-board graphics on the i3 are more than capable for handling full HD + 3D over HDMI as well as bitstreaming the sound as Dolby HD or DTS HD.

Personally was planning for a micro ITX build (which is weirdly bigger than mini ITX) using this case http://www.silverstonetek.com/produc...id=233&area=en

Has a couple of 120mm fans, hooked up to a motherboard with decent fan control should be virtually silent.

Aside from that it would be a Haswell i3, micro ATX H87 motherboard, 120 - 250GB SSD, 2TB HDD, 4 - 8GB DDR3 1600, Blu-Ray burner, and a dual DVB-T2 (HD) tuner.

Useful stuff here: http://assassinhtpcblog.com/
And here: http://www.avsforum.com/f/26/home-theater-computers

CREWJ

Nice!

Saint AAI

My Blu-ray drive has turned up, but I need an adapter cable. I didn't realise there were different types of SATA connector. The other issue with the drive is there is no eject button on it?? There is a small hole on the front, but are you supposed to have a front faceplate with the eject button on and do they normally come with the drive?

Takes around 11 seconds to boot to the desktop and around half that time is from when you first power it on and you see the BIOS boot screen. I haven't been in the BIOS yet to look around, but I think I can get it to boot quicker. Took me a while to get audio to work over HDMI. Tried to download drivers from Gigabyte, but they didn't seem to work. Used my laptop in the end to transfer the contents of the DVD that came with the MOBO to a USB stick, then installed everything from that. All appears to work normally now.

There is the CPU fan and the PSU fan in there so it's not completely silent, but it is very quiet. Only noticeable when there is no other background noise. It's quieter than a PS3 slim and highest CPU temps I've recorded are 40 degrees.

Total build was around £560, that was without shopping around for lowest prices or trying for any discounts. Everything was bought from Scan and Overclockers.

As I don't know a lot about motherboards, RAM, CPU's and things. It would have probably been better value for me to wait for the Haswell MAc Mini to arrive and get that. I've spent around 3-4 hours trawling the net for info on all the bits I've bought to make sure they work together. Building it took longer than I expected because it was fiddly. Trying to get online drivers to work wasted loads of time. Mac mini would have been smaller too. I would have had to ditch OSX though and wouldn't have had the SSD.

Next steps are to order the cable I need for the BR drive, and I might get shorter SATA cables for the hard drives and try to tidy u the cabling a bit. Then get a DVB-T2 tuner stick and see what sort of media software is around. I'm also looking for a new wireless keyboard remote thing, but I'm struggling to find everything I want from it. I want it to be small, with full keyboard, rechargeable, backlit with an air mouse.

wrx5343

What OS are you useing, have you thought about XBMCBUNTU or they have a windows .exe that you can run if your not confident with linux. If you have an android / iphone you can remotely control it all.

Have you flashed the firmware on your ssd yet ?

What blu ray drive have you got, there is a simialr slot to sata called sas that looks like sata but isnt or Is it possible you have a esata drive ?

Saint AAI

It's some kind of SATA for a laptop, I've found a cable for it. I've not flashed the firmware on the SSD no, didn't know you could. At the min I'm using an evaluation version of Windows 8.1 as it's free, but that will stop working in Jan. Got XBMC installed on it. Was thinking about XBMCBuntu, but the girlfriend will be using it and she only knows Windows. I've got the Android app for XBMC too, but not set it all up yet.

wrx5343

My Gf does not know linux at all, but XBMCBuntu boots straight into the application and ive set her phone up so she can just press the icon for what she wants to watch, there is now 4od plugin for it and itv aswell for catch up. Advantage is no windows licence needed.

I cant see you exact model but this might be what you need for your SSD

http://www.kingston.com/en/support/t..._128g_e120506a

Saint AAI

Is there an advantage to using XBMCBuntu over the XBMC for Windows? Another thing is I use Netflix, so need Windows as I think it uses Silverlight. I could dual boot, but is there a need if I have it installed just as a program on Windows?

wrx5343

The main advantages are no windows licence required and it works alot better on older / low power kit but i cant see that being a problem for your rig.......You may be better off with windows if you are usng netflix. You can use it on ubuntu but that takes a bit of configureing to set up, and you would have to log out of xbmc and into ubuntu

Graz

For once it would seem Microsoft have actually done a nice job of something as Windows Media Centre (built into Windows 7) is actually quite a highly rated front end for these sorts of media systems. Handles all the TV recording functions really well. When I build mine that's what I'll be going with initially.

Out of interest is anyone using Window 8 yet along with the media centre download? It's not there by default in Windows 8, you have to get it from the app store or whatever it is.

Littleted

i used this
http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/E45M1I_DELUXE/

totally silent... runs plex and boxee fine on windows 8.1 with an SSD and 8 gig ram

NAS for films