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Media center

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Category: DIY Projects
Published on Wednesday, 01 February 2012 09:49
Written by DIY-GreenEnergy
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Media center

Last year I had a little more time and the funds necessary to make a media center / HTPC.

The requirements:media center

  • Look good, to integrate with the rest of hifi audio,
  • Play 1080P HD movies, MKV, MOV, AVI HDMI video output,
  • Dgital audio output (AC3, DTS, RAW),
  • Watch TV and listen radio channels on satellite (DVB-S2),
  • Silent operation, without being disturbed when listening to music,
  • Low power consumption, green PC,
  • Fast enough for other applications.

Most important for the design of a media center / HTPC is the case. I choosed a dedicated HTPC case from Zaman HD 160. It also has a very useful remote control from IMON. Why a large case like that? because I wanted to be able to mount full ATX motherboards with more features

 

  • Results:
  • The system is working very quiet, you can sleep peacefully in the same room with this media center.
  • Power consumption in idle mode is ~ 80 watts (without the LCD monitor), while watching  MKV HD 1080p movies is around 110 watts. CPU usage is no more the 25%.
  • I chose the Windows 7 operating system for my media center, but exists very good open source solutions like Ubuntu Linux.

System description:

Media center Case: Zalman HD 160

  • Optimized for high performance and ultra quiet HTPC operation.
  • Opening the Air Vent on the top of the case will facilitate the inflow of cool air from the outside for cooling the CPU. The 2 ultra quiet, high-capacity fans are designed for the quick discharge of heated air. In my case the fans run on 5 volts, and they are really quiet.
  • Designed for HIGH Performance Power supplies with 12cm fan. A Dedicated Air Vent allows cool air intake from outside the enclosure directly into the power supply, minimizing its noise level and facilitating the highest possible efficiency.
  • The front panel DFSTN LCD provides user access to various features such as the Graphic Equalizer, Volume, Power, HDD Operation, Time etc.
  • The front panel’s USB, IEEE 1394(Firewire), and audio I/O ports, provide easy access to a variety of media content and facilitate the connection of headphones and a microphone.
  • Pure aluminum Components including the Front Panel Volume Knob allow the enclosure to easily blend in with other home theatre and Hi-Fi equipment.

Media center Power supply: Cooler Master RP-550-PCAA-E2

  • Compliance with intel atx 12v V2.01, rated at 550 Watts
  • More than 70% effiency at typical load operation
  • High reliability (MTBF  > 100,000 hrs)
  • Green power design to meet Energy Star and Blue Angel requirements
  • Silent operation (sleeve bearing 120mm silent fan) with intelligent fan speed control (20dBA)
  • Multiple protection design (OVP/OCP/OPP/SCP)
  • Active PFC

Media center Motherboard: Asus P7P55D-E

  • Intel LGA1156 Platform / Intel® P55 Express Chipset ( support: Core™ i7 Processor/Core™ i5 Processor/Core™ i3 Processor)
  • True USB 3.0 or SATA 6Gb/s Support
  • ASUS 16 Hybrid Phase Design, 16 Hybrid Phase = 12+2 Phase x T.Probe
  • Realtek® 8112L Gigabit LAN controller featuring AI NET2
  • VIA® VT1828S 8-Channel High Definition Audio CODEC, BD192/24, DTS Surround Sensation UltraPC, Optical S/PDIF out ports at back I/O
  • IEEE 1394
  • ATX Form Factor 12 inch x 9.6 inch ( 30.5 cm x 24.4 cm )
  • ASUS Quiet Thermal Solution , ASUS Fanless Design: Stylish Heat-sink solution , ASUS Fanless Design: Stack Cool 3.

Media center CPU: Intel® Core™ i5-750 Processor

  • Number of Cores 4, number of Threads 4
  • Clock Speed 2.66 GHz
  • Max Turbo Frequency 3.2 GHz
  • Intel® Smart Cache 8 MB
  • Bus/Core Ratio 20
  • Instruction Set 64-bit
  • Instruction Set Extensions SSE4.2
  • Socket LGA1156, Lithography 45 nm
  • Max TDP 95 W

Media center CPU Cooling: Cooler Master Hyper TX 2

  • I slightly modified this cooler, to be able to mount on socket LGA1156.
  • I removed the fan from it, because it provides enought cooling, maximum CPU temperature is around 70 degrees Celsius.
  • Universal Design for Intel LGA775 and AMD AM2/754/939/940 socket.
  • Complete Cooling Solution: Cools CPU and the surrounding components.
  • New 90 mm fan blade and frame design produces greater airflow as 100 mm fan.
  • Easy installation design without removing the motherboard.
  • Copper-based and aluminum heat sink with 3 embedded heat pipes design provides excellent heat dissipation.
  • Super silent CPU cooler at only 22 dBA

Media center Video card: AMD ATI Radeon HD5450

  • HD 5450 Graphics cards are the only graphics cards under 20 Watts at full load to provide full support for DirectX® 11.
  • Engine clock speed: From 400Mhz to 650Mhz
  • Processing power (single precision): 104 GigaFLOPS
  • Data fetch rate (32-bit): 12.8 Billion to 20.8 billion fetches/sec
  • Texel fill rate (billinear filtered): 3.2 Gigatexels - 5.2 Gigatexels/sec
  • Anti-aliased pixel fill rate: 10.4 Gigasamples/sec
  • Memory clock speed: up to 800 MHz DDR3
  • Memory bandwidth: up to 12.8 GB/sec (DDR3)
  • Integrated HD audio controller •Output protected high bit rate 7.1 channel surround sound over HDMI. Supports AC-3, AAC, Dolby TrueHD and DTS Master Audio formats
  • ATI Avivo HD Video & Display technology. Dedicated video playback accelerator. Support for H.264, VC-1, MPEG-2, and Adobe Flash11, Dual-stream (HD+SD) playback support12,13 , DXVA 1.0 & 2.0 support
  • Typical power usage: 19.1Watts
  • DVI, HDMI, DSUB out

Media center satellite receiver: Tehnisat SkyStar HD2

  • The SkyStar HD2 is a TV card for your PC that allows you to receive TV broadcasts in both PAL and HDTV formats. The abbreviation HDTV stands for High Definition TV. This is a worldwide digital TV standard that provides sharp contours, rich colours and tremendous depth. In addition, HDTV broadcasts very often provide impressive surround sound. Naturally, the SkyStar HD2 also supports Dolby AC 3.

System memory: A-DATA Vitesta Extreme Dual 1600+ DDR3 (2x2GB)

  • DDR3, PC3-12800
  • unbuffered, Non-ECC
  • frequency 1600 MHz,
  • latency 8-8-8-24
  • 1.65V ~ 1.85V
  • aluminium heatsink

System storage for OS: Corsair F60GB SSD

  • Maximum sequential read speed 285 MB/second
  • Maximum sequential write speed 275 MB/second
  • Random 4K write performance of 50,000 IOPS (4K aligned)
  • Latest generation SandForce controller and MLC NAND flash for fast performance
  • TRIM support (O/S support required)

Data Storage: Western Digital 1TB SATA-II 64MB Caviar Green

Photos with this media center you can find in my photo galley section.