After my old CD-Player broke down I decided that it would be time to replace the 20 year old ancient HiFi rack with something more suitable. Either an universal player or a self built HTPC. The HTPC won obviously...
Contents
Hardware
I built the PC based on a recommendation from c't Magazine 26/2012 -not the most recent hardware (from a mid-2013 point of view) and not the cheapest possible system and also not the most silens solution, but a good overal setup:
- CPU: Celeron G1610 'boxed' (including cooler and fan)
- Motherboard: Gigagbyte GA-Z77MX-D3H
- RAM: 2x4 GB Transcend JM1333KLN-8GK
- Disk: Samsung 840 Pro 128 GB
- BluRay: Pioneer BDR-208DBK
- Case: Silverstone GD04B
- Power supply: be quiet! Pure Power L7 350W
- Case fan: 2x Scythe Slip Stream 120 500rpm (SY1225SL12SL)
- flirc.tv: IR dongle (shares the remote of my Sony TV)
Surprisingly, there are only very few HTPC cases, which fit in a HiFi rack, while having enough space for regular microATX components, a full size BD-ROM player and USB 3 front ports.
I had a look at the Silverstone GD04B (the only with USB 3 front connectors AND a full size drive bay), the FractalDesign Node605 (only slimline drives) and the OrigenAE H6 (no front USB 3) which I liked the most, but which was unfortunately too large for my cabinet. Finally I chose the Silverstone case. The aluminium front panel is nice, but the overall built quality is not spectacular given the price (and it has only two "HiFi" feet at the front).
I had to replace the fans, which came with the Silverstone case, because they are really noisy. The CPU fan is acceptable. Overall, this makes for a very silent (but still audible) system, which -thanks to the SSD- boots in < 20 sec. to XBMC.
All media data is stored on a home NAS, thus only a small system disk had to be installed.
Assembly
Straight forward, no surprises -although I can't remember when I last had to dig out a screwdriver to fix drives and case lids in place (no thumb screws on the GD04).
Some Images:
FIXME
Software
Operating System
Had to be Linux if possible. The most mainstream Media Center software seemed to be XBMC, which is developed using Ubuntu, so this decided the flavour of underlying OS. To prevent a reinstall every 9 month or so, I decided to go with the current LTS version 12.04 Precise Pangolin.
In case things would not work out (e.g. unresolvable issues with graphics, sound or BD-playback) I had planned to fail back to Windows 7.
Media Center Software
XBMC Frodo
Installation
Things which work
Issues
- BluRay playback: As advertised. BD+ encrypted discs won't play, the others will work more or less (with menus working halfways).
- Hanging system.
