The Boss Stooge and a new HTPC

[ratdude747]

Re: The Boss Stooge and a new HTPC

^
I don't have any RST software installed at all (just the intel chipset driver), and I've never had a problem with my SSD crashing when coming out of standby.

My Lenovo P400 did under 7 like crazy... I read it worked for one guy, tried it, problem solved.

[kc8adu]

Re: The Boss Stooge and a new HTPC

this i gotta see.soundesign/electrophonic were the diablotek of audio in the 70's

its one of the half decent ones that if you beef it up its a really good unit. and beefed up it is

[kc8adu]

Re: The Boss Stooge and a new HTPC

Ohh I'm totally diggin' that!!

I just remembered I have an Asus RoG Maximus2, with the sound add-on card. Has a C2D @ 2.2 and 8gb of ram. Got it in a goodie box some time back, works fine, but missing the IO shield......that might do the HTPC trick....

that will do the job with plenty of headroom.

[Topcat]

Re: The Boss Stooge and a new HTPC

Yeah, that sound system looked nice when I saw it in that "What I've been up to..." thread. If it's got digital inputs (S/PDIF, optical, etc.), use those vs. the analog L/R/C/Woofer outputs on the audio card. Probably not that much noticeable difference in the sound quality, but you'd have a lot less cables to deal with.

Wow, thanks for that suggestion. I checked, the marantz does have digital in (2 of them actually), and the asus Maximus formula has digital out..... Never used this before.....from the red light inside, I'm assuming its a fiber connection....that should be a nifty looking cable...but if that works, one cable versus about 6.

The Marantz is model SR4300.

[momaka]

Re: The Boss Stooge and a new HTPC

^ You're welcome.

Yeah, that connector with the mini "doors" and red light inside is optical S/PDIF. I've never used it for any of my setups either, but I have for others. Some receivers also have coaxial S/PDIF. Uses a standard RCA cable. I prefer this over optical S/PDIF, just because I have so many spare RCA cables (most of them good quality too).

I'm sure some audiophools want to jump in now and tell me that optical S/PDIFis SOOO much better over coaxial .

Now, as far as cable quality, I can't tell you if it's better to spend the money and buy a "reputable" optical S/PDIF cable for $10 or more or just go with whatever is the cheapest of the cheapest on eBay (seems like $3 to $5). Looks like the prices do vary quite a bit.
Personally I think it's just like with HDMI cables - the cheap ones will work just as good as the more expensive ones. The only difference is how durable the cable contruction is - but this probably only matters if it will be connected/disconnected or moved around alot.

[kaboom]

Re: The Boss Stooge and a new HTPC

I'm sure some audiophools want to jump in now and tell me that optical S/PDIFis SOOO much better over coaxial .

What's the difference? It's the same bitstream, after all. Fools...

They all listen for "ghosts in the machine," supposedly one-cable-vs-the-other, all the while playing shitty MP3s and other lousy sources...

Either that or they'll play uncompressed via optical and MP3 over coax, "proving" that optical is better.

Fools, no, lunatics.

[Topcat]

Re: The Boss Stooge and a new HTPC

I got a perfect HTPC, for free....in the form of a Gateway DX420S (Intel motherboard, 965 chipset). No onboard graphics (has a PCI-E 7300LE), SPDIF fiber out/HD audio, C2D @ 1.86/1066. I robbed the 8gb of RAM from the asus RoG. HDD was bad, stuck a seagate 500gb 7200rpm I had on hand. I just need to get a GPU with an HDMI out and we're ready to rock!

I removed the GPU and stuck the last remaining 7600GT in it....a DVI to HDMI adapter should be sufficient.

[momaka]

Re: The Boss Stooge and a new HTPC

I think you are better off with the 7300LE (if it has a DVI connector, that is). It may be less powerful than the 7600GT, but for video it doesn't really matter. Also less heat to deal with inside the case.
I would say get a Radeon HD2400 or HD3450, though - those have built-in H.264 decoding so CPU should barely do any work even for HD movies. They are usually cheap on eBay. The ones with built-in HDMI may be a bit more, though. But non-HDMI are usually $10 or less and DMS-59 low-profile can be even much cheaper (since there is hardly any demand for them... I got 5 like that for $10 total + shipping).

So the last of the 7600GT's huh. I guess they did run out finally .
By the way, you still have the dead ones?

[shovenose]

Re: The Boss Stooge and a new HTPC

The Optical SPDIF cables are awesome becuase you can get really long ones for really cheap and you don't have to worry about quality. I love fiber optics

[Topcat]

Re: The Boss Stooge and a new HTPC

Just an update.....I finally got around to testing it... The rear surround speakers aren't connected....just fronts + center channel + sub...and wow!! Sounds sooo good!! This is VERY temporary, I am building a massive home theater system to go along this wall, so ignore the chair and everything sitting on the floor.... I'd also like to kiss the guy that created SPDIF sourcing.

[momaka]

Re: The Boss Stooge and a new HTPC

This is VERY temporary... so ignore the chair and everything sitting on the floor

Oh, I think we could have figured that out .
It'd be too funny if that was your complete setup. Maybe passable for a dorm room, but for a big game room...

I'd also like to kiss the guy that created SPDIF sourcing.

Too easy, isn't it?

[Per Hansson]

Re: The Boss Stooge and a new HTPC

I'm sure some audiophools want to jump in now and tell me that optical S/PDIFis SOOO much better over coaxial .

Oh no no, the audiophools wont have none of that digital witchcraft in their audio stream, all hail the analog connection

As for us "normal people" the digital connection is a godsend.
I prefer the Toslink fibre cable myself because that means you electrically decouple the systems, so there is no risk of that "pop" sound if there is a difference in ground voltage...

The only advantage an analog connection has is if your receiver has a poor DAC setup (digital to analog converter)
Then having the conversion done by a high-end soundcard might be better.
But of course an analog connection inside a PC is never a good idea, too much electric noise in there...
So in my eyes the digital wins 9 times out of 10

The only drawback is if you are gaming and using more than a stereo setup.
Games don't encode the sound to be positional when output via DirectSound.
So even if you have a 5.1 setup you only get stereo...
A DVD wont have this issue of course because it's already encoded for positional audio, your receiver should notice this and display a "dolby digital" or AC3 sound stream when playing back a DVD.
There are soundcards though that can encode the audio on the fly, my Auzentech X-Meridian can for example.
But in my case I actually use analog connections because I'm the "1" int he 9/10 above.
Meaning the DAC's in my soundcard are better than the DAC's in my receiver which is a Logitech Z5500...

As for only wanting DVD playback as you mentioned in the beginning for me that's a no go, it needs to be atleast 720p, prefferably 1080p
There really is a very big difference in visuals and audio compared to a lowly DVD!
That Supermicro board linked previously looked nice, but anything that can do H.264 offloading would get an ok in my book, do note that this article on wikipedia is a bit "kind" on which hardware is able to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/M...tions#Decoding
I can confirm that your shit out of luck using a ATI X1400 for example, it only supports a subset of H.264 decoding... Same with the first implementations from nVidia.

For me in a HTPC a recent Intel or AMD CPU with built in graphics card is the best choice, silent operation, less cable clutter in the system and just a generally stable setup.

It's only if your as anal as me that you start scrutinizing the implementations themself and start realizing that you want perfect 23.976hz playback and the like that things start getting more difficult, but if your set on DVD playback I don't think you belong in that group of crazies (yet)

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7007/i...pc-perspective
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6674/g...madvr-and-more

[momaka]

Re: The Boss Stooge and a new HTPC

As for only wanting DVD playback as you mentioned in the beginning for me that's a no go, it needs to be atleast 720p, prefferably 1080p
There really is a very big difference in visuals and audio compared to a lowly DVD!

There is! But in the end, it all comes down to how interesting the movie is. A good movie will deliver a good viewing experience regardless of whether it's HD or not. Besides, we are still stuck with that retarded 24 frames/second format... but I won't go there as we had a thread on this before. Let me just say that I find HD to be fairly pointless when there is too much action going on.

That said, if you have the HD-DVD or Blu-Ray and want a cheap solution to hardware H.264 decoding, just get a Radeon HD2400 or something equivalent (as a minimum, that is). I bought 5 of them on eBay for $10 total a while back. Just tested one of them yesterday for the first time in Windows, and WOW! What a difference it makes with Flash and YouTube. The test system I tried it on has a S939 Athlon 64 3200+ CPU. With the same rig before, I could never watch YouTube in 720p (and much less 1080p). Now? - 720p has almost no stutter except occasionally until the video loads completely. CPU is not at 100% utilization like it was before either. So obviously there is a big difference. With 1080p, I do get more stutter, but I belive this could be relieved if I tried this on a dual-core CPU or a CPU with 2 threads. Flash just seems to hate single-threaded / signle-core CPUs.

[Uranium-235]

Re: The Boss Stooge and a new HTPC

...and also install the intel RST driver, even if you're not using RAID. Other lise, at least for me (with an SSD), you'll have a crash-o-holic upon wake form standby.

Intel AHCI is actually not an intel driver. It uses Microsofts generic ahci driver and dresses it up with an intel name. XP DOES not have a generic ahci driver so intel provides a fully working driver. But some older revisions of the ICH southbridge chip (and there are many, many revisions of each) can have issues with something like an SSD. Later revisions (I'd imagine sandy bridge and later) should not

TC, my HTPC is a $49 ivy bridge dual core celey (the cheapest one they have-G1610). It runs SUPER quiet (which is necessary in a HTPC), and intel HD graphics are more than powerful enough for 1080p, decoding H264 of which dosen't take up 50% combined core power most of the time. Mind you this was MPC-HC /w the enhanced renderer (DXVA).

my case is an older version of this one
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811163206

I took out the hard drive fan cause it was loud as fuck, and unnecessary for modern medium-range HD's. It now has a BD drive (though no bd software). and Integrated xbox 360 controller support. So far i've been able to play NFS Hot pursuit 2 fairly well with the intel HD graphics and settings mostly turned up

one of the main things I use it for is streaming this at night: http://108.pl

Since i'm using HDMI for my primary audio, I just have winamp waveout set to the realtek analog plug, and have that hooked to my CD input on my reciever (old, cheap, yet reliable and good Yamaha)

[ratdude747]

Re: The Boss Stooge and a new HTPC

Intel AHCI is actually not an intel driver. It uses Microsofts generic ahci driver and dresses it up with an intel name. XP DOES not have a generic ahci driver so intel provides a fully working driver. But some older revisions of the ICH southbridge chip (and there are many, many revisions of each) can have issues with something like an SSD. Later revisions (I'd imagine sandy bridge and later) should not

it was a 7 series ivy bridge laptop.