austrian otaku

 

After three weeks I’m finally able to write about my HTPC building process. Was a little bit delayed because of a shipment fail and a slow parcel service, but since yesterday it’s finally completely finished.

 

Bunch of boxes get! Now let’s take a look at the components:

 

ZOTAC ION ITX-A mainboard

- Intel Atom N330: 2×1.6 GHz, hyper threading, 8W TDP

- up to 4GB DDR2 6400

- GeForce 9400 IGP: DX10, max. 512MB shared memory, CUDA capable

- Wifi 802.11b/g/n

- 90W power supply

- external: 1x VGA, 1x DVI, 1x HDMI, 6x USB 2.0, 1x Gb LAN, 1x eSATA, 5.1 Audio, 1x PS/2

- internal: 4x USB 2.0, 3x SATA II RAID 0/1/0+1, 1x PCIe Mini Card

 

Inside the box you will find:

- CPU heat sink fan

- I/O back plate

- 3x SATA cables

- 1x SATA power connector (for 3 SATA devices)

- WIFI antenna

- Manual, driver CD, ZOTAC sticker, Quick install leaflet, a rori, some packaging material

 

- and the 90W external power brick. Just like from a random laptop.

 

Size comparison (CPU fan and RAM already installed): ITX is really compact. There are already Socket-1156 ITX boards out there which means you could build a really compact Core i7 machine too. Quite funny considering what kind of main boards were needed just to get a small amount of that power just a few years ago.

 

The rest of the internal components (a few more are actually built into the system now but more about that later):

- Western Digital Caviar Green 750GB, 32MB Cache, 5400rpm-7200rpm (WD7500AADS)

- Vivanco High Quality HDMI 1.3 cable

- LiteOn iHOS104, Bluray drive

- Kingston 2GB DDR2 PC2-6400 800MHz CL6 (KVR800D2N6/2G)

 

And of course the case housing all of those parts: The LianLi PC-Q07

(LianLi is the Aston Martin among PC cases for those not familiar with the name.)

 

Some product details in this quite gay sounding product video:

Ährm, yah sorry but I don’t want to make love with the case…

 

Comes with all accessories needed to mount components inside the case.

 

LogiLink Wireless Desktop 2.4 GHz (ID0013): Yah, it’s not a Logitech diNovo Mini but thanks to that it costs only 18€. Works well even from over 10m away. (Unlike some more expensive Microsoft wireless desktops which fail at 1,5m distance).

 

 

Now let’s put that thing together. How hard can it be?

Installation of the motherboard is easy as you can unmount the left side panel of the case too.

 

But after placing the Bluray drive inside the 5,25” bay I came across the first problem:

As Zotac used default SATA connectors the connector barely fitted. The SATA connector didn’t fit at all. Luckily I had some angled SATA connectors from my main machines ASUS main board lying around.

Mounting the hardisk is quite stress free. You just have to use those rubberized screws , screw them into the HDD…

 

… and place the hard disk on the hard disk bay. An easy, vibration preventing system.

 

Unfortunately the SATA power cable is nearly too short here too. The guy who came up with the length for those cables deserves to be punched in the face in my opinion. And the “I never heard of angled SATA connectors” guy too of course.

 

HTPC Revision 1.0 ready to launch:

 

… and lift off, SSMEs throttling up to 104%, igniting SRBs, all system working, so far so good.

 

Installed Windows 7 Ultimate (x64). Everything worked out of the box but I installed the newest drivers of course. Updated the BIOS and increased the framebuffer size from 256MB to 512MB which is necessary to use CUDA.

 

But there were two problems:

The stock CPU fan was quite noise and running at 3000RPM without a possibility to control it. The temperatures where around 60°C.

 

Replaced the stock fan with a SilenX iXtrema Pro (60×60x25mm, 1600rpm, 16.89m³/h, 8dB(A) (IXP-34-08)) and attached a Scythe Slip Stream (120×120x25mm, 500rpm, 41.6m³/h, 7.5dB(A) (SY1225SL12SL)) at the back to get the warm air out of the case.

 

That’s how Revision 1.1 looks like:

The case wasn’t designed to mount a fan at the back but works quite well by using the grill next to the I/O shield. To cover the hole (designed for a full size PSU) and to secure the other side of the fan, I used some perforated metal plate from an old speaker cover. ^^; The while system is cooler now and completely silent (The only part you would notice right next to the case would be the harddisk.)

 

You might notice the second RAM DIMM in the picture above too. My HTPC has now 4GB RAM. Why?

Because 1080p playback wasn’t smooth with MPC-HC and CoreAVC 2.0. Surprisingly it was way better with the integrated DXVA decoder (a GPU using decoder included in Windows).

I ordered a second 2GB RAM DIMM and playback is now smooth by using DXVA. CoreAVC still lags so I uninstalled it right away.

Maybe the 2GB RAM running in single channel mode was a bottle neck? Not so sure about that, as this is my first integrated graphics card. Any ideas?

 

Playback of 1080p material with CoreAVC:

Uses more GPU and more CPU which leads to higher temperatures but the playback isn’t that smooth.

 

Playback of 1080p material with DXVA:

Smooth playback, lower usage of system resources (besides the memory which isn’t that important in that case)  and for free. The way to go on Windows for now.

A detailed guide on how to configure MPC to use DVXA can be found here: http://nunnally.ahmygoddess.net/watching-h264-videos-using-dxva/

 

Watching 1080p stuff since a few days now on the TV. Really awesome as I used to watch HD movies on my PC monitors since many years. But 52” > 24”

Bluray playback works great too using TotalMedia Theatre 3 Platinum. Way better than PowerDVD which became some sort of spam filled crap. TotalMedia Theatre uses CUDA too and even uses it’s power to upscale DVDs to 1080p. Integrates itself into the Windows Media Center software too.

 

Speaking of Blurays: Looks like a GITS Bluray set (contains GITS 2.0 and GITS Innocence) fell from the ceiling lately.

 

So yah, I’m completely in love with my HTPC setup at the moment. ^_^

I prefer this over a bunch of boxes with limited functionality. If you are looking for a way to watch Blurays, DVD, fansubs and what not or for a cheap PC for daily computing tasks I can highly recommend Zotac’s ION series. You could even play some newer games, not at highest settings of course. The fan should be replaced though if you want a silent system but everything else works out of the box.