# Building a 1080p HTPC from crap



## AshleyAshes (Jan 30, 2011)

A lot of people keep old PCs around but often stuff them into the closet thinking they'll be useful for something later but they just wind up hoarding a pile of junk.  I like to keep stuff but I want to be useful.  With college coming in in September I need a new machine and I was thinking about what to do with my current machine.

Socket 754 Athlon 64 3200+ (Single core)
Asus K8V-X motherboard (AGP)
2GB of RAM.
Radeon X800 XT 256MB

My initial plan was to use this to replace my aging Xbox1 running XBMC which I currently use for a media playing machine.  The Athlon 64 could readily decode 720p but 1080p video becomes a problem.  In researching the topic however I came across DXVA, DirectX Video Acceleration.  Namely, using your graphics card to decode the video stream and the CPU just has to handle audio and subtitles.  Suddenly, an Athlon 64 with one core is MORE than enough power.  The X800 can't do this though so I dug up an AGP Radeon HD 4650 1GB.  http://www.sapphiretech.com/presentation/product/?leg=&psn=000101&pid=275

It's cooler, quieter, and consumes less power than the X800.  It also supports DXVA 2.0 and offers HDMI output so this $87 card will give me some good legs on a new HTPC.  Namely, what was going to be a 720p machine will be a 1080p machine that will last YEARS.  HDMI, DVI, VGA, Component, S-Video, Composite; That's a lot of output options and will ensure the box can connect to basically ANY display.  The graphics card will handle the workload of the video and the CPU will just have to handle the OS, interface, audio and stuff like that.

This is a 2004 CPU and it's 2011 now, as an HTPC however it could be useful without being obsolete in the slightest for 5+ years.  When will h.264/AVC 1080p material be replaced in the mainstream by something else?  5, maybe up to 10 years even.  That entire time this box made of crap will get some great legs and thusly great value.  Ontop of that, with it's SATA ports it can easily store slow 2TB HDDs, so it can double as media storage and network storage/back up.

So there.  We've had a lot of threads about shiney and new things, but I thought I'd make a thread about getting great use out of something you'd otherwise discard.


----------



## Runefox (Jan 30, 2011)

Yeah, we've talked about this a few times. I guess I've got an example, too; I've got an old dual P3-800 system that I'm currently using as a pfSense router, and a P4 1.4 (Rambus) system running as a webserver/fileserver (and on some brave occasions, a Killing Floor server). Yaaaaaaaay. When I finally retire this desktop, I believe I'll similarly be using it as an HTPC.


----------



## AshleyAshes (Mar 5, 2011)

so the machine is more or less done now.  $163 spent, before taxes and shipping on parts.  Namely, a DXVA capable graphics card, remote control, four channel SATA controller card, and a new case so it doesn't look like crap.  My new PC hasn't been built, but I have XBMC mostly configured so it'll be ready to go when I'm ready.

While you could get a typical 'home media player' toy for $100-$200, this one is a bit differnet.  Namely, it can hold six hard drives and with the addition of another $20 controller card, that number can raise to 10.  At that point, the case will run out of mountings.  It'll start life with only a single 2TB drive but that'll expand.  So the storage expansion on this sytem is rather insane and it'll double as a Network Attached Storage box as well.  Lots of storage for college project backups and such.

Here are some screenshots of XBMC actually working on the machine. 
http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/hh100/AshleyAshes2/screenshot004.jpg

http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/hh100/AshleyAshes2/screenshot003.jpg


----------



## Runefox (Mar 5, 2011)

Oh Sky Crawlers. Reviews don't like you, but I do.

Anyway, yeah. The only problem you'll have by comparison to, say, a Boxee is the noise of fans unless you shove it out of earshot (Another room + run the cable through, etc). I never used to think that fan noise would bother me since I usually tune it out, but it really is pretty distracting at times. I don't really have much to build an HTPC out of, so for me, I'm thinking a Boxee would actually be pretty awesome. As you know, I was thinking about an AppleTV jailbroken with XBMC, but it can't output 1080p - Only 720p, which is a problem on the rather large TV I have sitting right next to me.


----------



## AshleyAshes (Mar 5, 2011)

Right now, the machine is hardly louder than my Xbox.  Maybe 50% louder.  And there are some fans in it that I may be able to remove.  It's hard to say.  Right NOW they could be removed, but as the machine gets more HDDs it may form a heat issue.


----------

