Category: Geeks r Us
Hi,
I want to build a home theater PC, which will be connected to my TV via HDMI; that way, I can play a lot more than just AppleTV. Thus far, I've looked at two capable systems, which are barebones. One is the Nuc from Intel, though you have to pay a little more money, because you have to get an MSata drive instead of a regular 2.5 inch laptop one. Then, there is the Zatok or something similar, may have the spelling wrong. The Nuc, the latest model has a core I5 at 1.3 GHZ with Turbo boost up to 2.6. The Zatok has a core I3 with 2.5 GHZ. Which one is faster? Also, I want a large drive to store things on like files and other items; I was thinking of Solid State, but those are too small. When I checked Amazon, I couldn't find a 4 TB type laptop drive. I want the computer to be capable and not have to be upgraded for a long time. I guess I could also get one of those network drives. Any suggestions, let me know.
There is a board on this topic here someplace. Look that one up.
Okay
Sorry, I've looked that up on the Boards but there isn't any entries
Okay. I’ll put my opinion in here for you.
We talked a little in publics about this.
If you are just looking to manage your video library and be able to stream your content, all is required is a PC with about 6GB ram a quality video card with HDMI, not one that is integrated with the mother board, and enough hard drive space to store stuff for a while. Most computers are coming with 1TB drives anyway, so this setup is easy.
All the systems you posted yesterday would fit the bill.
Now, if you are talking a serious home entertainment PC this is different.
You want to go custom build, because you’ll need to address some accessibility requirements, and you want it to make your sighted guest drool and smile.
The pretty.
I’d start out with a mini tower, or flat case, so it blended well with the rest of my gear. The companies I’ll list at the bottom have several models, and they can be had in different color schemes.
These cases are designed to keep the components cool, so will have extra vents, or liquid cooling.
You can order them with your monogram and such things. Some will be lighted as well to show off the components.
These cases will have slots for expanding, or using dual sound and video cards, and other accessories.
They will also have extra sound deafening materials, so you don’t hear the hum from the components. When these machines are powering, they crank up, and you can feel and hear them working.
Power supply.
Get one with over 500 watts if you plan on expanding.
The mother board should have good expanding abilities as well.
Processor, I’d go with an i7, and these gaming PC’s run some pretty heavy power. These are not like the I7 you see on box PC’s, you’ll understand when you see the sights I’ll suggest.
I’d not waste money on a card that had 7.1 audio, because you don’t find anything decoded that way. 5.1 is good.
You’ll want to make sure it is accessible, because all of them are not. M- Audio, and Sound Blaster, are good choices.
You might contact dancing Dots, for suggestions on this as well, or ask the company you choose to build your PC their change policy. You want good sound delivered to your gear, so spend some money on this.
A second card inside the case is an advantage you’ll want as well. That will allow for using your screen reader without it coming over your speakers, and having it inside the case is nicer.
I’d choose an external tuner, not enter grated, because you can feel it, and it will be easier to control.
All these companies will offer video cards with dual monitor abilities, and this would be a feature useful. You can use your computer online, while you are streaming a video for your guest. What you are doing won’t show in the movie.
Get at least 16GB ram. Some of these games really eat memory, so you’ll want to have plenty. These types of games are normally not accessible, so this is a concession for sighted guest, not you.
Windows 8 requires you purchase the media center separately, and I’d have this feature. It also is not accessible, but for your guest or a friend, it can be used to benefit you in recording shows when you aren’t home and other things. The add on cost about 9 dollars when I purchased it, but you’ll just tell your builder to add it for you.
A machine like I’m describing will cost from 1300 and up depending on how you decide to option it. Many of these dealers as you will see, have systems already configured, so all you’ll add is the second sound card mostly.
Here’s a list.
HP Elite. Great machines, but you’d need someone to add the second card inside if you aren’t able.
Dell. Same thing.
On both these companies, the cases won’t be as pretty, so I’d skip them.
o Custom Pcs - Get Customized High Speed Gaming PCs.
www.CyberPowerPC.com
These folks have it! Trust me! This site might be a bit difficult to use, but it is accessible. You’ll need to call, or ask for sighted opinions on the cases.
o Custom Desktop PCs | computerlx.com
http://www.computerlx.com/
1. Gaming PCs | Velocity Micro
www.velocitymicro.com/PC.php
I like these folks, because you can call them, and it is easy to configure your system online.
So, there you go. My 4 cents
I'm not trying to impress sighted folks, so I will probably go with one of the systems I posted earlier. All I'm wanting to do is be able to store files, play videos through HDMI, and maybe have dual displays and support for a 4K display when, and if I have enough money to get one when they come out.
For the dual display, just make sure the system has a PCI video card, not entergraded and you got it going on.
You can always upgrade the PCI card for anything you want to use later.
The systems you posted I believe fit the bill as I said.
All that power on the other systems I talked about is simply not useable to us.
If you do music, you benefit from an i5 or i7 processor, but not to the point these bad boys have.
I always joke that blind people with all that power systems probably never wake up from sleep mode for the things we need.
Hi,
First off, congratulations on choosing to go the build it yourself root. You may run into problems along the way but we / I can help if you get stuck. If you're worried I'd advise picking up an old used computer to practice on.
The main things you'll want to be paying attention to when building a HTPC are IO throughput - E.G. the speed of your storage devices, noise & the decoding ability of your GPU:
Storage:
If you opt for local storage - E.G. if you don't store your content on a NAS, your best choice would probably be one of the Zotak barebones systems. If you post a link to the one you're thinking of I can advise. The reason why I say this is due to the NUC not having any other drive bays - if you did opt for it, you would have to use external drives which whilst practical is just a bit messy.
Typically one would install a small SSD (probably no larger than 80GB) for the OS & core software but then have larger drives for content. In this instanse, since you're after quiet operation, I would suggest Western Digitals Caviar Green (or Red if you have the money) as these drives have been designed to be used in always on systems & run very quietly.
This however assumes that your case will have room for 3.5 drives, which is by no means always the case if the case has been designed to look appealling along side other AV equipment. Whilst there are Green 2.5 drives, they're quite expensive, so I'd suggest sticking to standard Scorpio Blue drives or any other drive that you can find at a good price as 2.5 drives really aren't that noisey these days.
Noise is a tricky one; unfortunately I rather like quiet computers & whilst quiet heatsyncs can be had rather cheaply, case fans & power supplies are noticeabley more expensive. One downside to buying a barebones system is that they sometimes include quite cheap PSU's which apart from being unreliable are usually pretty noisy. To make things worse, given the formfactor of your case, you may not be able to replace it with a quieter model. Baring this in mind, I would make a point of finding other people who are using the same PSU & reading their reviews so that you can gage how much of a problem the noise is.
I would advise against watercooling for your first build, partly because you'll have so many other things to worry about, partly because unless you use a closed loop system building & testing the rig may prove problematic and partly because it can sometimes be quite hard to fit watercooling systems into cases - especially small ones. Spend a small amount of money on an aftermarket heatsync to replace the stock one & you'll be surprised at how much quieter it is.
Decoding is easy; every modern CPU will come with a GPU that is more than capable for your needs, although in this regard AMD are noticeably better than Intel.
I hope this has answered some of your questions but if not let me know & I'll try to clarify.
Cheers,
Ben.
Hi Ben,
This does answer some of my questions; the reason I'm considering a barebones system is because I don't want to attempt a build of such a small caliber. There are lots of things that could and would go wrong if I were to do that without any sight; for instance, I could bend some pens on the CPU E.T.C. If you bend one pen on a CPU, your done for. The Zotac I was thinking of is the core I 3 model (sorry, I don't have the link), but you can find it on Amazon. The thing is, it doesn't support 3.5 inch HDDS, but it does have a slot for 2.5 inch ones. I saw one of those green drives you were referring to, but a lot of reviews said it wouldn't fit their computer; i'm a little bit hesitant about this. The plan is to either use some birthday money I receive from cards or to get my mom to just give me money, something she's short on now because of my brother's wedding planning stuff. I could afford it on my own, but you know, credit cards and the like. However, what I did is try to find acomporable HTPC on Ebay; it's the Dell Hybrid 140G. Dell doesn't make this line of computers anymore, and it is 32-bit. But hey, it weighs 4 pounds, features a 2.0 GHZ core 2 Duo, has 4 GB of ram, and a 250.00 GB HD with Windows Vista, which I don't mind. This is just to see what an HTPC is capable of, and while I wait on the money from cards/family members. If I can get it for $53.00, it's a great little deal! I still plan on building one, but I'm just waiting on my mom to have a little more money, or my birthday cards to come pouring in. Sometimes, I get around $200.00, which is a start to buy some of the parts at least.
Thanks.
Nathan.
Well,
I was trying to compose this post earlier, but My Jaws was acting very strangely and slow.
Here is the update regarding the home theater PC thus far:
For a while, I was doing great on the Dell Hybrid bidding from EBay until the very last minute, when I received a notification on my phone that the auction was about to end. At first, I looked at the bid and it was only at 138 dollars, but then somehow, it went up to 197 dollars. Before I could log onto the Internet, the auction was over; i was so close!! Oh well... There was another machine similar to the one on EBay, but it only had 2 GB of ram, which isn't very sufficient to run Jaws along with Windows 7 I don't think. I could have purchased this and upgraded the ram, but since this was a 32 bit system, even if I installed 4 GB, it would only recognize 3 GB of it.
Then, I kept searching on EBay for other models, but could find none. When looking at the Dell Zino, this too only came with 2 GB of ram. Originally, I was going to get a barebones system, but my mom didn't have enough money to buy it for me. Instead, she got me a NAS, which I really wanted, but the interface, that is, the web portal isn't very accessible, so I'm returning it to BestBuy and purchasing one from Amazon, which she said she would do for me. Therefore, I settled on an Asuss desktop with 4 GB of ram, upgradable to 16GB if I wish later, a 500 GB hard drive, Windows 8, and a 1.5 GHZ core 2 Duo processor. The processor is the most disappointing piece of all, but as long as it is good enough to support Jaws, Windows, playing music, playing video from NetFlix and other sources, then it should work fine for a home theater PC. If not, well then I might just have to return it and purchase the one with a faster processor when I get more money. All of the specs can be found here:
http://www.amazon.com/Asus-VivoPC-VM40B-01-ASUS-Desktop/dp/B00GMONZ28/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1399418220&sr=8-7&keywords=Mini+Pc
How do you think I did? It was definitely a budget PC, only costing me around 289 dollars, plus an additional 5 dollars for one day shipping, and an astounding 15 dollars for tax. I'm not sure why all of a sudden Amazon has increased its taxes on their products, but it used to be zero dollars for this.
Nathan.
Meh it'll do I guess but it's not going to be quick; would suggest doing a reinstall as soon as it arrives. CPU is a celeron and not a Core 2 Duo. If you have enough money buy a hybrid drive for it.
I agree it will do, but I'd want the dual core processor.
2 GB will run music and windows 7. I thought you said all you wanted to do was store and stream some video/movies? Smile.
Why you want 16GB?
If you are talking audio, because you are not visual, 2GB works perfectly.
I don't want 16GB of ram; I just stated that this computer will support it if I want to upgrade in the future. There was a model with a Core I3 processor, but I didn't have enough money to get that particular model. Yes, I understand that the processor is not dual core, but so far, it seems fast enough. After I replace the drive with a solid state, I bet you it will perform just fine. My Lenovo has a dual core processor in it, and it was pretty slow until I upgraded the hard drive. the drive runs at 7200 RPM, which is a lot faster than the regular 5400 ones. I'll play with it for a few days and see what happens. though for right now, it seems like it will meet my needs.
Nathan.
Hi again,
I'm going to test this PC out for a couple of days; however, I will probably most likely return it for a faster model. My mom informed me that she would put one hundred and ninety dollars towards the purchase of a new PC, and therefore, I think I can get the latest model. It is the Asus M60 with a core I3 processor at 2.4 GHZ. What do you guys think about that one? My mom will use the money from the NAS, which I will probably not get another of, as I have an external hard drive that I think will work just fine.
For your actually needs, I'd save the money.
But the I3 will be a better computer generally.
Ah Okay.
Once you have the I3 you could just share some folders on it & turn it into a NAS as well as a HTPC.
Yep, was either thinking of the one I just mentioned or a Mac Mini, which is better?
That there is a matter of opinion. Smile.
If you can afford it go for the mini; even if you don't like OS X you can just bootcamp it.
Alright guys,
Here is my official budget for my home theater capable PC: $644.00.
1. I like the Mac Mini, but would actually love to learn how to use the Mac; thus far, I have found little training for this operataing system and computer.
2. Also, I don't think it has the capability of playing full 1080P videos, does it?
3. Can a person who is completely blind set up all of the boot camp requirements and such without sighted assistance?
Other recommendations in this price range, which is a generally small form factor would be appreciated, and that has plenty of power.
Nathan.
Or, I could get a gaming PC; this is designed for games, but these computers often have very fast processors; this one has HDMI and is in my budget: http://www.amazon.com/CybertronPC-Borg-Q-GM4213C-Desktop-Red/dp/B00J9D4MZS/ref=sr_1_15?ie=UTF8&qid=1400142365&sr=8-15&keywords=gaming+pc
You confuse me.
I say, and the other poster agrees, you really don't need much power at all if all you are doing is streaming audio, because you can't see.
Video quality is good with a decent video card.
You already have the sound system, and you don't want to impress anyone, just store some movies, and such.
So, why do you need all the power now?
I'm really interested?
At the price range, and if you shop, you could get an ultra book or the Mac. These will do lots more than just stream video, but be over kill if you aren't in to really high end and you said you didn't require it.
Why waste money on things you don't require? The savings could go in to a better all around machine you use daily, or what I call my working machine.
On that one power and such is good.
Because it's fun to impress sighted folks, I guess. It seems like they have a good graphics card. It seems that all the small form factor pcs don't really have the much of a powerful processors.
Some small PC's can have really powerful processors, but just for video, even for sighted persons, you don't need much.
Just video card quality is all, and the machines marked for home theater have these.
When I was trying to find a home theater pc, it seemed that they were over 3,000 dollars. But, I think I've found a great one here: This is what I'm getting:
http://www.amazon.com/CybertronPC-Hellion-GM1213B-Desktop-Black/dp/B00D1KWS3I/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1400512979&sr=8-1&keywords=Cybertron+PC+Hellion+GM1213+desktop
Over 3thousand dollars?
I lined you up several shops that would custom build a machine from about 600 up, and these were top of the line machines, as far as quality of parts.
for 1300 that machine was powerful enough to run the space station. Smile.
I think this machine I picked will meet my needs and then some. I purchased an adapter with it; it was a little over budget at $772, but hey, it has plenty of ram, a 2 GB graphics card, can play games if my sighted friends want to, can handle my surfing needs, word processing purposes, and my HD and video playback, as well as music files fine. I think it has cool lights as a bonus, smile. I think I did pretty good, considering that the processor in this machine can be overclocked to 4.0 GHZ if desired. There is a fan control pannel (most likely not accessible, but won't need to mess with this anyway), where you can control how fast the fans spin. I guess this is for very intense gaming. I did check into Cyber Power PC; though most of the reviews were negative. Also, checked into Velocity Micro, but couldn't find a comprabable build to the one I purchased. This was the best priced machine I could find. Originally, I was going to have them customize it for a second HDD for 3 TB of storage, but that's insane! And, it's a waste of money. So, I should be getting it on Wednesday, and I have to say, I'm very excited, having had brand-name computers my whole life. I like the fact that lifetime tech support is included at no additional charge, too. And, the folks are really nice at the company. Told me about the configuration and everything.
How did I do this time?
Nathan.
Which one did you go for? Your last post didn't have a link. Fan control pannels usually have nobs so it should be perfectly usable.
Did well.
Just thought you didn't need to empress the sighted company, especially these with female type? Smile..
They play games too.
When I see "life times" anything, I give that a pass. Chances are you won't have a system a life time, so.
At Forreel: Yes, this is true, but it is a nice bonus; smile. Yeah, I love to impress females, if their geeky like me, lol:)
Ben: I went with the following machine; already got an HDMI adapter for it. Here it is: http://www.amazon.com/CybertronPC-Hellion-GM1213B-Desktop-Black/dp/B00D1KWS3I/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1400512979&sr=8-1&keywords=Cybertron+PC+Hellion+GM1213+desktop
Nathan.
Meh it'll do; the RAM doesn't really match the CPU though - E.G. if you really need 16GB of RAM you'll also need a faster CPU. GPU isn't great iether to be honest. You appear to not be following our advice; at least you're not going to put DOS on it though. Good luck & I hope you enjoy it.
Jeez, Ben, what kind of computer do you have? The CPU is great; how does the memory not match it? The CPU can be overclocked if desired; say 4.0 GHZ. I forgot to tell you about that. Yes, I've heard that for gaming, this, the graphics card, is about the weakest component of the machine.
Nathan.