buddyweiser 105 Posted December 7, 2013 Share Posted December 7, 2013 (edited) Hello everyone, I'm currently planning my first computer build. I've done a lot of research and checked compatibility for all of my components. I plan on using my computer for a MediaBrowser server and some very mild gaming, mostly nes/snes emulators and such. Also, I'm debating on purchasing a 35ft HDMI cable along with a IR over HDMI kit to add remote capability for viewing in my living room. I tried to leave room for upgrades, though this is a bit of a budget build so I couldn't go all out on the components, but also did not want to sacrifice quality. Here is my build so far, tell me what you think or any suggestions you may have. Cooler Master Elite 431 Plus - Mid Tower Computer Case with USB 3.0 and Windowed Side Panel $54.99 on Amazon MSI Computer Corp. Motherboard ATX DDR3 1333 LGA 1150 Motherboards B85-G41 PC MATE $68.99 on Amazon Intel Pentium Processor G3220 3.0 GHz LGA 1150 BX80646G3220 $59.99 on Amazon Crucial Ballistix Sport Very Low Profile 8GB Single DDR3-1600 1.35V UDIMM 240-Pin Memory Module BLS8G3D1609ES2LX0 $62.99 on Amazon Asus Black 12X BD-ROM 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-ROM SATA Internal Blu-Ray Drive (BC-12B1ST) $47.99 on Amazon Seagate 600 SSD 240 GB SATA 6 Gb/s 2.5-Inch 7mm Z-Height Solid State Drive ST240HM000 $163.13 on Amazon WD Red 3 TB NAS Hard Drive: 3.5 Inch, SATA III, 64 MB Cache - WD30EFRX times two $119.99 each on Amazon Corsair Enthusiast Series CP-9020039-NA650W ATX12V v2.31 / EPS12V 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Modular High Performance Power Supply $99.99 on Amazon Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 32 & 64 Bit SP1 Full with CD & COA Keycode New $79.99 on Ebay I wanted to leave room for future harddrive storage with the case and motherboard, and will eventually add another stick of the same ram(though its not on sale anymore, along with the Red WD drives I purchased), and possibly a GPU if I find that the integrated graphics does not suffice. So what do you think? Any advice/suggestions? Also, I may not go with the Seagate ssd, and instead recycle a Samsung 840 120G ssd that I recently installed in my 6 year old computer. Edited December 7, 2013 by buddyweiser 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gcw07 347 Posted December 7, 2013 Share Posted December 7, 2013 If you can afford it, I'd go with a little more horse power for the CPU. Something along the lines of a: Intel Core i3-4130 Haswell 3.4GHz LGA 1150 54W Dual-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 4400 BX80646I34130 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
buddyweiser 105 Posted December 7, 2013 Author Share Posted December 7, 2013 If you can afford it, I'd go with a little more horse power for the CPU. Something along the lines of a: Intel Core i3-4130 Haswell 3.4GHz LGA 1150 54W Dual-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 4400 BX80646I34130 The motherboard and processor have already been purchased as an early Christmas gift by my girlfriend. I actually thought about going with an i3 or an i5, but ended up going with the Pentium G3220 as it's still a dual core Haswell, but on the lower end of the price range, and I was already over my budget and looking for somewhere to hack down costs. Though if I had added an i3 to my wishlist instead of the G3220, she might have bought that one instead lol. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gcw07 347 Posted December 7, 2013 Share Posted December 7, 2013 Ah okay. Well if that is the case then everything else looks fine. I don't really see anything that stands out. Most of the rest is pretty standard. I might try the existing SSD if your trying to save a little money. Really it will depend upon what you want to do, but for the most part the OS and even the basic programs like MB aren't going to take up 120 GB worth of space. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
buddyweiser 105 Posted December 7, 2013 Author Share Posted December 7, 2013 I was wondering if the power supply might be a bit overkill, as it didnt seem like it's powering much. As you said, it's just a standard system. However for my first build, I wanted to seek out advice. The only other thing I was worried about regarding the power supply was "Haswell compatibility". I saw it in one of the features of a power supply I was considering. But after reading up on why Haswell processors required certain specs of a power supply(the extremely low power state of the processor in sleep mode), I made my decision on the Corsair PSU (Corsair has a list of all of their PSU's and which have been tested with Haswell processors on their website). Also, I suppose the larger power supply might come in handy if I decide to upgrade with a GPU later. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gcw07 347 Posted December 7, 2013 Share Posted December 7, 2013 Yeah the power supply is a bit of an overkill, but I've always been happy with Corsair's power supplies. I've had 5 now I think. Only had problems with one and that was when my machine got shocked. Luckily just the power supply took the hit and everything else was fine. So even if it is overkill, I would rather have more power then not enough. Especially at the cost of what, $10-20? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marc_G 92 Posted December 8, 2013 Share Posted December 8, 2013 FWIW, I run my HTPC off a "64GB" SSD as the boot drive. Though it's quite small, even with a pagefile it's still only half full. No plans to get a bigger one. Obviously, no content or recorded TV is ever stored on it. All it does is run the OS and software. And I've got a 120 GB SSD I just bought for my desktop, and it is only half full despite all the "stuff" on my desktop. It cost ~$60 last week. You could take $100 out of your build by going with a smaller SSD and plug the money into something else. I do think you may in time regret the CPU choice, but if it is still in-box you could sell it and get much of your money back. I'd recommend an i3 4340 as an entry point, particularly if doing any gaming at all. I don't game, but I might want to do MadVR or other CPU heavy playback one day. That said, I'm still using my 2009 edition AMD dual core 2.7 Ghz Kuma, albeit with an updated graphics card (circa 2010 or so), and get fine playback, so you will be "OK" with the CPU you already have. And, if your needs push you to upgrade, you haven't lost much. By the time you "need" to upgrade, something better / cheaper will be there. So don't sweat it. Nice build. I like your ATX form factor with long HDMI / Remote IR approach. I'll have to try it some time! Marc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
buddyweiser 105 Posted December 8, 2013 Author Share Posted December 8, 2013 FWIW, I run my HTPC off a "64GB" SSD as the boot drive. Though it's quite small, even with a pagefile it's still only half full. No plans to get a bigger one. Obviously, no content or recorded TV is ever stored on it. All it does is run the OS and software. And I've got a 120 GB SSD I just bought for my desktop, and it is only half full despite all the "stuff" on my desktop. It cost ~$60 last week. You could take $100 out of your build by going with a smaller SSD and plug the money into something else. I do think you may in time regret the CPU choice, but if it is still in-box you could sell it and get much of your money back. I'd recommend an i3 4340 as an entry point, particularly if doing any gaming at all. I don't game, but I might want to do MadVR or other CPU heavy playback one day. That said, I'm still using my 2009 edition AMD dual core 2.7 Ghz Kuma, albeit with an updated graphics card (circa 2010 or so), and get fine playback, so you will be "OK" with the CPU you already have. And, if your needs push you to upgrade, you haven't lost much. By the time you "need" to upgrade, something better / cheaper will be there. So don't sweat it. Nice build. I like your ATX form factor with long HDMI / Remote IR approach. I'll have to try it some time! Marc Thanks! What exactly is madvr? Currently I use a dell with a Core2Duo at 2.33Ghz with 4gigs of ram(though I only have Win7x86), and it runs all of my applications with no problems, though I have been interested in trying a ps3 emulator. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marc_G 92 Posted December 8, 2013 Share Posted December 8, 2013 MadVR is a video renderer that many people use to handle lower resolution / interlaced content and upscale for modern 1080p displays with minimum visible jaggies etc.. There's also stuff in there about chroma upsampling and so forth that I think has special resonance within the anime community. I haven't put it on my main HTPC, just on my "sandbox" desktop PC, so I can't comment on how well it works for the content I watch (which does include a fair amount of low res [DVD-quality] TV series). I don't know much about it, other than it takes a bit more oomph to run than standard codecs alone. Typically MadVR runs on top of LAV, IIRC. Most folks recommend a fairly up to date GPU and CPU to do MadVR. It's not a must-have or anything, though lots of people swear by it for certain types of content. Marc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aspdend 174 Posted December 9, 2013 Share Posted December 9, 2013 I would also look at changing the RAM if possible - rather than a single 8Gb stick, I would get 2 x 4Gb sticks as the CPU will work better in dual channel mode... also madVR will really need a discrete GPU rather than on board graphics..but start out with the onboard and see how you go. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Garryw 0 Posted December 9, 2013 Share Posted December 9, 2013 MAke sure you have a GPU graphics card installed this will take all of teh load off the CPU when play video, if you have the correct player installed. I have a HP N54L MicroServer which only has a 2,2 GHz AMD Turion™ II Model Neo N54L CPU but it play full HD no problems Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
buddyweiser 105 Posted December 9, 2013 Author Share Posted December 9, 2013 I have already purchased a second 8gig stick of ram totaling 16gig ram, and I haven't done any research into graphics cards so I suppose I'll have to look into it. Any suggestions on brands, specs, etc? Again, mostly I'll be watching HD movies and some emulator games (wii, ps3 at the most), with the possibility of other pc games in the future. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brendon 101 Posted January 1, 2014 Share Posted January 1, 2014 wish i had seen this earlier, as the owner of a pc store i could have thrown you some nice specs, we build a few HTPC setups both budget and high-end (i don't sell OEM crap, only custom builds). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
buddyweiser 105 Posted January 4, 2014 Author Share Posted January 4, 2014 Well I completed my build, but I can't get the system started. No POST, or beep, I made sure to have the case speaker correctly connected to the motherboard, as well as all of the front panel connections. It powers up and the fan, HDD, disc drive etc all start, then after about 10 seconds, everything re-starts. No display at all. I have a support ticket into the motherboard manufacturer, but does anyone have any helpful advice? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yogi 367 Posted January 4, 2014 Share Posted January 4, 2014 Have a read of this from Tom's Hardware,it has got some great troubleshooting tips in that tutorial. http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/261145-31-perform-steps-posting-post-boot-video-problems 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
buddyweiser 105 Posted January 4, 2014 Author Share Posted January 4, 2014 Thanks a lot Yogi, I did all of that, except that my RAM is 1.35V and it didn't even occur to me that that could be an issue, I will try what the forum said to do for that particular issue. Hopefully it will help. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
buddyweiser 105 Posted January 4, 2014 Author Share Posted January 4, 2014 YES! Score one for Yogi, and for Tom's Hardware. I took out one stick of RAM and voila! I'm in BIOS setup. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yogi 367 Posted January 4, 2014 Share Posted January 4, 2014 Good stuff buddyweiser,glad it you got it working. Toms hardware has got so much useful stuff on it,sometimes you don't know where to look first. I have done about 8 builds now and with the first one it was trial and error and hopefully I didn't fry anything (which I didn't) After that first build it gets so much easier with a bit of practice and experience. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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