The quest for the near perfect HTPC continues...

My quest for a perfect (or as close to perfect as possible !) HTPC has made me change my HTPC setup multiple times over the last few years to find the right balance between power consumption, noise, size and flawless 1080p movie play. After the last upgrade this month, I think I have the almost perfect HTPC player.

CPU/Motherboard : AMD Fusion E350

The AMD E3509 is the perfect CPU and motherboard for media playback. A 1.6ghz dual core processor combined with the AMD Radeon HD 6300 on-board graphics takes care of any media that you throw at it, more importantly has on board component and optical outputs for Audio and HDMI that is capable of doing Video+Audio.

It is important to note that XBMC live works by default with a Geforce based solution because of native geforce drivers, butI prefer the Windows 7 combination with DVXA2. The second option works perfectly with both Radeon and Geforce solutions.

The best part of the solution is that the whole platform takes a measly 19watts of power. It is really unbelievable that such a powerful HTPC can work off just 19watts for the CPU and motherboard.

I got the MSI E350 board, available everywhere for less than 7k :

Msi E350IA-E45--AMD Fusion Platform | eBay

Note that when I got the motherboard from the shop, the fan was running really fast and making more noise that I liked. After a BIOS update to the latest on the MSI speed, the fan is hardly heard and is really silent now.

RAM : 2gb or 4gb DDR3

DDR3 is dead cheap now and it makes a lot of sense to get 4gb of memory to run Windows 7 comfortably.

The cheapest ram I got, 1600 for two sticks of 2gb each : EVM Strontium 2GB DDR3 Desktop RAM Memory Module | eBay


Cabinet :

Choice 1 : CFI Cube A8989

This is a beautiful cabinet that is really small and absolutely cute. It comes with a 150w PSU and is perfect as a HTPC if you intend to use a large (3.5") hard drive.

If you want some specific details of the cabinet, look at this site:
CFI Cube Casing for Intel Atom | Surfnux's Weblog

Choice 2: PANACHE T3311 : Panache

This is the one I choose. It is a really small cabinet and is very cramped, but works very well if you have a external hard drive to store your movies and only need a 2.5" small drive to boot Windows 7 and XBMC. More importantly, it comes with a DC power convertor in the small chassis that provides power via a laptop like adaptor. So no fans and zero noise from the PSU.

Hard drive : Determined by the cabinet choice above !

I went for a Kingston 30gb SSD for Rs 3300 from Primeabgb. Loads Windows and XBMC in less then 10 seconds and browsing movies is instant. This ia a perfect choice with the Panache. If you went for the CFI cabinet, you can get a 2tb internal hard drive for cheap and add a 30gb partition for Windows 7 and XBMC.

Getting it all together

Assemble the above, install Windows 7, the ATI drivers and XBMC 10.1. Start XBMC and enable DVXA2 in the system settings and you will find that every movie plays flawlessly over HDMI and CPU consumption never exceeds 15%.

Add a good media remote control for about Rs 1000 and it all works flawlessly.

It is now almost perfect HTPC solution :-)

A 110v surge protector instead of isolation transformers ?

I have been reading up a lot on step down transformers since I intend to get a Pioneer receiver from the US and am looking to see how to get a good deal.

Almost every thread on this in various forums has details on how to get the best transformer and more importantly, to get isolation type transformers. Comments like these abound : You need to get "Isolation Type" Step down Transformers. Now the reason given for getting a isolation type transformer is that the normal transformers can go bad and start supplying 240v directly instead of converting the voltage, thus bringing down the entire system.

Im thinking, how about getting a normal good brand (Maxine ?) transformer of 1kw/Rs 1k and take the output of the transformer into a US surge protector ($10) and then pass the output of the surge protector to the AV receiver. A good US surge protector comes with ample guarantees of coping with high voltages. So if the cheapo transformer does go bad and supplies more than 120v, the surge protector will kick in and protect the attached device.

Obviously, I could be missing something fundamental here in this line is thinking since folks spend 3-5k on isolation transformers. So Gurus, what am I missing here technically ? Can a surge protector NOT work with a transformer ? Any holes in the theory ?

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