Hey everyone,
I am hoping to build a low budget home theater PC with the Black Friday sales coming. The configuration I am looking at currently looks like this: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/b4dgqs
What do you guys think about this list? Price is really the bottleneck here. I am trying to get the most out of my budget while remaining in the Intel and Nvidia realm. What would you change/improve/add?
A few things about the build:
- I am looking to keep the cost around $700 USD
- The SSD for the OS is a must, and the additional storage is ideal, although I could easily scrounge up some old HDD's I have laying around.
- A GPU is necessary since I will be gaming through Steam, emulators, and other similar gaming platforms.
What are you going to be using this for in particular?
-Playing games?
-Steam In-Home streaming or straight off the pc?
-Will you be suing a controller for the HTPC for gaming?
-Is case size of concern or is case looks/easy to blend in-ness?
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/gxRHJx
Why the love for Intel/nVidia? I mean Intel is understandable because they have most of the options in mITX but to stick with nVidia at this price point is stupid.
The Pentium is okay but it isn't great and at the end of the day is a dual core with no hyperthreading. It is most definitely not a powerhouse and some of the emulators (PS2 emulators and Dolphin) take a decent amount of CPU power. It will struggle.
The 750 Ti is good but the R9 270 is way better and pretty much the same price. Maybe a little more. The 265 is faster too and the same price.
The WD Black is silly. The Caviar Blue is cheaper and basically the same. If this is gonna see constant use you may want to look at a WD Red or similar but the Black? No.
The only thing I could see if your into saving huge movie files is you can get a seagate 4TB for around 144 dollars. Don't know if WD Black still run hot. I have 2 old ones in my brother's PC and they produce more heat than the OC'ed CPU.
I will be using this for both Steam in home streaming as well as playing from the machine itself, using wired/wireless Xbox 360 controllers as well as USB GameCube adapters, Wii controllers with a sensor bar, and other miscellaneous USB devices.
I would like to stick with the Fractal case mainly because of the size and aesthetic.
My reasoning/justification for Intel and Nvidia comes from performance and noise level. I have had some louder AMD cards in the past, but after reading some more about specific 270's, it appears that the performance increase would definitely justify a little more noise.
The hard drive capacity is up in the air at this point. It will really just boil down to what is cheap and huge when the Black Friday sales start.
Updated Questions:
With some updates applied, the build is looking more like this: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/9w9FHx
Would you guys realistically go with the Pentium Anniversary Edition or go with an i3/i5 for better performance? (provided the budget would increase a bit)
I'm not decided about the GPU yet, but these cards look pretty tempting: https://teksyndicate.com/forum/buysaletrade/wts-ton-r9-270s-and-couple-am3-motherboards/188048
I would really try to move up to an i3. Still dual core but the HT gives you a bit of a bump in speed. Especially when streaming. The Pentium is pretty weak.
Those ICEQ are pretty good. Logan tested the 7870 version a while back (same thing) and he said they were cool and quiet and performed quite well.
The only thing you need the CPU for is using steam big picture, my laptops i3 doesn't do much when streaming on max settings and it's only 1.8Ghz.
Thanks for the suggestions! I was also thinking of getting a non-reference cooler to complete the build.
If you get the Pentium then you don't need a non-reference cooler as you can still OC it as far it can go and it'll be fine, but a non-reference will make it quieter. Same goes with the i3, it'll just make it quieter because you can't OC that chip.