Hi Folks

We'll I'm feeling dead chuffed at the moment as I have finally assembled my HTPC and it works. At least I've managed to install an operating system and do some very basic stuff, but all the playing around to get it to be an HTPC is still a little way away. I'll post back with an update on that in due course.

But I think the hardware stuff is all done (of course I could find out I'm totally wrong about that when I try to configure it for HTPC functionality ), so here's what I've done so far.

My requirements were to have a PC that would look good in my living room, be very quiet, and allow me to watch DVD movies in surround sound, record programs from the TV, pause and rewind live TV, play music, and let me look at photos. I'm not going to watch any Blu-Ray movies for the time being, but I also want it to be HD-ready so that if I want to watch them at some stage in the future it would simply be a matter of swapping the DVD drive for a Blu-Ray one. I'll be running Linux, and at the moment watching Blu-Ray under Linux is a total pain. According to Sony, it's also illegal (although it really beats my why they think it's good for business to tell me not to buy their disks).

Anyway, here is the hardware spec I eventually came up with:

Case: Silverstone Grandia GD02 MT (silver)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-M78SM-S2H
Power supply: Corsair 450W VX Series
HDD: WD10EACS 1000GB x 2
DVD drive: Samsung SN-S083A Notebook 8x DVD±RW
RAM: OCZ Reaper HPC Edition Dual Channel - memory - 4 GB DDR2 1066
Keyboard: Keysonic 2.4Ghz Wireless Compact Keyboard with Integrated TouchPad
TV tuner: Hauppauge WinTV-NOVA-T-500
Speakers: Logitech Z-5500
CPU: AMD Phenom X4 9350e
Memory card reader: Ebuyer Extra Value ALL in 1 Internal Card Reader Silver
CPU cooler: Silverstone NT01-E Fanless Heatpipe Cooler

Note that there is no graphics card or sound card: the motherboard has fairly high-spec graphics and sound on board. I guess I'll find out soon if they are good enough.

I ran into a couple of problems on the way. Raffles has already posted about them, but they're worth repeating. I originally bought a different PSU, and it didn't fit. Although the literature for the case boasts that it can take a full size ATX PSU, that's not entirely true. If it's more than about 140 mm deep, there isn't enough space between the PSU and the HDDs to plug the necessary cables in. The Corsair one is only 140 mm deep and it fits, but some PSUs are bigger than this.

I also missed the fact that it needs a slimline optical drive (ie one designed for laptops). I'm sure it's made clear somewhere in the documentation for the case, but somehow I managed to miss it the first time round. Anyway, the drive above fits. However, there is no flap to cover it, and the front of the drive is black, which looks rather ugly in the middle of the nice silver case. It might be an argument for buying the black version of the case, as I failed to find a slimline optical drive with a silver front.

You also need to be careful with the CPU cooler. The Silverstone one is designed specifically for use in this case, and fits nicely. It's also fanless, which is a bonus if you're trying to keep the noise down.

Annoyingly, there are also some cables you need which are not included with any of the bits. The case only has 2 SATA cables, so with 2 HDDs and a SATA DVD drive, you need another one. You also need to buy a cable for the DVD drive, as it's not included with it (Samsung, if you're reading this, WTF not???). That was a bit of a pain, as they're not all that easy to find. The only place in the UK I found selling them at all was this one: http://www.span.com/catalog/product_inf ... s_id=22745. Take careful note that slimline optical drives have different power connectors from the standard ones. I also had to buy and HDMI cable to connect up to my TV.

Anyway, after 4 weekends of playing with bits of computers, I now have a nice shiny new computer. I have managed to install Ubuntu 8.10 on it, and will no doubt spend the next few weekends trying to get the software to work. I'll be installing MythTV for the HTPC functionality.

This wasn't a cheap system, as I have mostly gone for quite high-spec kit. Total cost about £1200. If you want something similar for less money, an obvious place to save money would be the case: my one has a snazzy little touchscreen display on the front. If you are prepared to do without that, there's an alternative version of the case without it which is £200 cheaper.

It's reasonably quiet, although to be honest not quite as quiet as I'd hoped it would be. I may think about replacing the case fans with some quieter ones in due course if the noise turns out to be a problem.

I'll post back with some updates once I've got the software working.

NM

Oh, just an extra thought:

During the build I needed to get in touch with tech support from both Silverstone (the case) and Gigabyte (the motherboard). They both get good marks for replying promptly to my emails with helpful replies. Silverstone were particularly prompt (replies generally within a couple of hours), but Gigabyte also replied to everything in a day or two. Gigabyte get bonus marks for sending a pdf of the appropriate page of the manual for one of my questions which could actually have been answered with some justification simply with "RTFM".

It's always nice to see good service from manufacturers, which sadly isn't a given these days, so it's a pleasure to be able to give some good feedback to 2 companies who deserve it.

Grrr!

And I've just discovered that those aren't the only cables missing. If you are going to take advantage of the digital sound output on the motherboard and the digital sound input in the speakers, you need a digital sound cable to connect them.

Some muppet at Logitech obviously thought they would save a couple of quid by not including said cable with the speakers. OK, maybe I could understand it if I'd only paid 10 quid for the speakers in the first place and they had to keep the costs down, but when I'm spending this much money on the speakers...

Seriously folks, how hard would it be to include the f***ing cable?

Sometimes, I think that the whole computer industry is actually designed specifically to piss off their end users. If it is, then Logitech have certainly succeeded.

Well, I'm making progress. As you can see, it's been a few weeks since I had the hardware assembled, but I now (as of yesterday) have my HTPC to the point where it is actually usable. Hurrah!

I've installed Mythbuntu 8.10 for the operating system and HTPC functionality. To be honest, it's really not very user friendly. It takes quite a lot of fiddling around before pretty much anything will work. However, after a few weeks of such fiddling and some generous help from the folks over on the Mythbuntu forums (part of the Ubuntu forums), I now have some basic functionality. I can watch TV, pause and rewind live TV, schedule and watch recordings, watch DVDs with surround sound, listen to music, and look at photos.

There's still quite a bit of work to do yet. I haven't got the touchscreen on the case even to display anything, much less function as a touchscreen. The remote control doesn't work (probably my biggest priority right now). Despite having a dual TV tuner card which should allow recording 2 programs simultaneously, I haven't yet figured out how to do it. I believe it should be possible for recordings to skip the adverts, but haven't figured that out either. I can't play sound through the TV speakers, so having my surround sound speakers switched on is essential at the moment.

But anyway, it looks great, it's already useful, and I'm sure I'll get all the other bits and pieces working in the end. And it's very satisfying to have got this far without using Microsoft software, although if I'm honest it would probably have been easier to set up.

Hi NautiusMaximus,
I found your posts very interesting, and though the delay, I should copy your configuration. Have you connected touch screen and do it run with Ubuntu? Can you report problems and solutions. Thanks in advance.
mare

Thanks for the interest, mare.

It's still a bit of a work in progress, even after all this time.

I have a perfectly usable system that does many of the things I want it to do, but I still don't have a working touchscreen or remote control (good job I bought a wireless keyboard, or it would have been a real pain!)

I did at one point get the case display to display a very rudimentary display, but didn't figure out how to get it to show anything useful. I believe that this is possible, but haven't had the time to look into it. Whether I would ever get the touchscreen working, I don't know. I'm sure it must be possible to get the remote working, but sadly the standard configurations didn't work, and again I haven't had the time to figure out what I need to tweak to get it working.

To be honest, if I were starting this from scratch again now, I'd probably go for the cheaper version of the case that doesn't have the display. It would be nice to get it working, but it's not really been too great a loss that it hasn't been.

I also never figured out how to get sound through the TV speakers, but I've just got used to firing up the surround sound every time I use it.

The other things I mentioned below, however, I have figured out. I can record 2 programmes at the same time. Automatic advert skipping sometimes works, but is a bit temperamental. As I understand it there's a bit of an arms race between software developers and TV stations: software developers figure out how to identify adverts, so TV stations change the way they display the adverts to make it harder for the software to spot.

What you can do, however, is manually edit out the adverts and remove them permanently, which I do if I'm recording at movie that I might want to watch more than once.

I've made one little tweak to the hardware since I last posted: I replaced the case fans with some quiet ones from Noctua. That made quite a difference, and the case is now barely audible unless you get quite close to it.

The software I'm currently running is Mythbuntu 9.10. It's very powerful software, although getting everything configured right takes a lot of patience. Fortunately there is an extremely helpful community of Mythbuntu experts on the Ubuntu forums at http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=301, and most software problems I've had have been solved there.