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HTPC upgrade time.


Cheesegeezer

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Cheesegeezer

So @@Heckler got my will to upgrade my current HTPC going. I wanted to make a the upgrade a HTPC Gaming rig. The old rig is just getting slow and with MB now streaming to my multiple devices need a rig with some oooomph.

 

I had this as my old set up for 5 yrs

 

AMD dual 5050e energy efficient processor

4 Gb of RAM

Motherboard

Noctua U9 cooler

Originally ATI5850 GFX but swapped it to a ATI 6550 and put in the 5850 in my 3D and After effects workstation.

 

So now i have bought

 

Intel i7 4770S processor

Asus Z87-C Mobo

16Gb 1600Mhz RAM

240Gb SSD

noctua thermal paste

Noctua socket 1150 mounting kit

ATI R9 270 vapor-x GFX card - still waiting on delivery.

 

So here is the obligatory pc porn shot

 

lBJbfsc.jpg

 

I'll get some more up during the upgrade.

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CBers

What's the syringe for ??

 

Is it for you, when you get frustrated building it  :D

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Heckler

I bought some Arctic MX4 thermal paste, not realising that the Noctua cooler I bought came with some pretty decent stuff... which is what I'm using.

 

Looking forward to seeing the pics of the build itself.  :)

 

Now I want to upgrade the gaming rig... MB, CPU and perhaps replace the Xfire 5770's I have.. although they're handling anything I can throw at them still even at 1920x1080. Not bad for a sub £200 outlay.  :)

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Cheesegeezer

What's the syringe for ??

 

Is it for you, when you get frustrated building it  :D

Damn!!! Caught me out!!! there is nothing quite like coursing thermal paste thru my veins during a pc build lol!!!

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Cheesegeezer

Well at least it will keep you cool during the build.  :P

That's right Iceman...... I am dangerous!!

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Heckler

You forgot the cheesy/creepy smile and teeth smash

 

And for the record... I do actually Tom Cruise's smile to be really, really creepy... much like the guy himself.

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Heckler

I almost had the urge to go and watch Top Gun there... then I remembered I'm not in the mood for a cheesy homoerotic guy flick.   :P

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Cheesegeezer

I almost had the urge to go and watch Top Gun there... then I remembered I'm not in the mood for a cheesy homoerotic guy flick.   :P

Gutted!! You should have... Me n the missus were talking about must see films of all times. She is a reader and i'm movie watcher. So i said classic movies to have on your Shelf much like a book worms library were.... And please add to it...

 

Aliens

Goodfellas

Scarface

Shawshank Redemption

Top Gun

Gone with the wind

blazing Saddles

Clockwork Orange

McVicar

Escape to victory

Avatar

Young Guns

Ferris buellers day off

War games

 

Theres so many more but my brain is fried now lol

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Cheesegeezer

Proper HTPC specs you've got yourself there  B)

Haha yeah, thought it was time to treat myself, 5yrs in tech is a long time, it was fine for VideoBrowser and MediaBrowser back in the day but then some smart arse :D (@@Luke & @ebr) took it to the next level and now i need a power HTPC to make sure i dont miss out!!

 

Happy Dayz

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Heckler

Haha yeah, thought it was time to treat myself, 5yrs in tech is a long time, it was fine for VideoBrowser and MediaBrowser back in the day but then some smart arse :D (@@Luke & @ebr) took it to the next level and now i need a power HTPC to make sure i dont miss out!!

 

Happy Dayz

 

 

Same here... the old Athlon II X2 250 and 4GB of DDR2 ram... and the OS installed on an IDE (yeah... that's right) hard drive... just couldn't keep up any more.

 

Now... let's look at that movie list.

 

Gutted!! You should have... Me n the missus were talking about must see films of all times. She is a reader and i'm movie watcher. So i said classic movies to have on your Shelf much like a book worms library were.... And please add to it...

 

Aliens     YES

Goodfellas YES

Scarface

Shawshank Redemption YES

Top Gun  YES

Gone with the wind

blazing Saddles MAYBE

Clockwork Orange

McVicar

Escape to victory YES

Avatar   NO

Young Guns

Ferris buellers day off  YES

War games

 

Theres so many more but my brain is fried now lol

 

 

Marked a few as ones I consider MUST SEE, and one that I don't... the rest are kinda Meh for a must see list (for me anyway.)

 

So here's a few more to add...

 

Army of Darkness (funniest comedy horror ever made)

The Godfather trilogy (I know 3 is lame, but it's a trilogy)

Tron (Basically re-invented the special effects for movies)

Star Wars trilogy (the original of course)

Raiders of the Lost Ark  (A family classic)

Iron Man (No comment needed really)

The Breakfast Club

Robocop (The original, not the shitty remake)

Goldeneye (Bond reinvented)

Skyfall (Bond reinvented again and improved 500%)

The Good the Bad & the Ugly  (Classic Western)

Back to the Future trilogy (no comment needed)

A Bridge Too Far (Classic war film with a cast to die for)

Bridge Over the River Kwai (Another great classic film)

The Crow (One of my all time fave films)

 

It's too early to think of more... I've only been up for 30 mins and not had coffee yet.  :)

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CashMoney

Noctua's stuff is pricey, but you get what you pay for; definitely quality stuff. I have a kick ass watercooling setup, which I planned to replicate on my son's system. Then I tried a Noctua cooler, the giant one, forget the name, DHsomething140thingy. Got the same temps and at the same noise level as my watercooling, and was so impressed with the quality, and though pricey it was a third the price of my watercooling. Looking like a great build Cheeze.

 

As an aside to this, I was going to upgrade my HTPC at some point, but for me it was more to do with creating a system that could game properly on the big screen. Then Steam opened up their streaming beta a couple of days ago ... I have to admit, I've had no trouble with it, even with games I've added to Steam rather than bought and installed through Steam.

 

A good reason not to worry about upgrading (for me), so my wife says :/

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Heckler

I have a Titan Fenrir in my gaming rig on an overclocked Phenom II X4 955BE which is running at 3.5ghz on stock voltages... That idles at 30-32º depending on ambient and hits at most 54ºC under a heavy and prolonged mode, but the fan never rises above 1041rpm.  It's only got a single fan on it though, 120mm and it exhausts to the top of the case where I have another 120mm fan. Sadly there's no room to fit a second fan to this particular cooler... but it's been running well since Nov 2010 at least 12-14hrs a day.

 

But I'd definitely get another Noctua for the next rebuild based on the quality of the one in my mediaserver now.

 

They also do a free upgrade bracket for AMD systems so it can exhaust to the rear, just go via their website and provide a print screen or scan of the order (must show a Notctua cooler and AMD board)... Mine arrived yesterday, about 8-10 days after ordering.

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Cheesegeezer

Well Yesterday was build day.  My Sapphire R9 270X Vapor-X arrived to complete the build.  And it got underway.

 

First things first I mounted the new 1150 Noctua cooling mount. which was pretty easy.  Then assembled all the bits inside.  Cable tidying was a bit of a difficult one as the Mobo butts right up against the PSU.  

 

Anyway everything went in without a hitch.

 

But........

 

I plugged everything in and i just saw a blinking green led on the Mobo and i couldn't switch the darn thing on.  I knew i hadn't hooked anything up wrong as i'm a bit meticulous about this stuff.  Then I thought is this a safety thing, to allow the caps to charge up before allowing the user to switch on.  Anyways I waited about 2 minutes and the light eventually went steady green and allowed me to turn the machine on.  My heart was pounding at first.  I thought I had duff compenonet somewhere.  

 

Installed Win7 on the SSD.  I had removed the old system drive from the setup completely so as not to be tempted to install unnecessary crap again.  The only thing i wish i had done was copy over my watched states from MB.  

 

Anyways.... Overall the system is whisper quiet when in Mediabrowser mode.  Gaming is a little different.

 

I did the usual Windows Experience score and scored max points at 7.9 with everything except the CPU, which i was surprised at but then released i have not enabled turbo mode which takes it from 3.1Ghz to 3.9Ghz.

 

I did do 3DMark 11 Scores but only had basic edition which is free.  For anyone interested the results can be found here  

 

Trancoding and sending to my devices, i did a little test with.  Mediabrowser on Roku, MBC, ipad app and iphone app all played flawlessly when playing what I think is the most demanding stream of Batman - The Dark Knight Rises in .mkv format with AVC level 4.1 and DTS-HD MA. It was a dream.  All were set to around 3Mbps streaming settings on their respective devices.  But quality was excellent I have to say and no stuttering.

 

So that was the first box ticked for one of the reasons for my build.  The other was Gaming.  

 

So i've played Ghost Recon Future Soldier and Tomb Raider (the new one) all on max settings and its a dream although i can hear the GFX card whirrrr up a bit when pushing it but only when there is no action going on.  Another one i've tried playing is Ghost Recon Phantoms, which is also set an max settings and that plays beautifully also however, i need to sort out my Pinnacle profile with that for Xbox controller, the mouse sensitivity is wrong and I need to sort the buttons out to be more inline with GRFS as I'm a bit crap at that.  

 

So Temps.  Idling or using MB are around 25degC.  Gaming pushing the temps upto around 43degC.  All in all i'm very happy with the temps.

 

So here is a list of what i've installed.

 

MBSERVER

MBCLASSIC

Mediacontrolmce - to control subtitles and audio streams from within MBC

FFDShow 32 and 64bit

Win7FilterTweaker Tool

Graph Studio

MediaInfo GUI

MediaCenter Studio - For theming MCE.

NoIP - to allow for remote connection to MB, however needed to port forward my MB Ports

Pinnacle Game Profiler - to allow for games that dont support controllers, i can map keyboard controls to my X360 controller.

Steam - For PC Games

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Heckler

How did you manage to get mediacontrolmce to work, because I tried it ages ago and nothing... What key did you assign on the MCE remote to enable/disable subs and switch audio streams?

 

It's the one thing that bugs me about Media Centre, after so long MS still can't be bothered to include the ability for subtitles and multiple audio streams.

 

 

Oh and one last thing....

 

 

WHERE ARE THE BLOODY PICS     :D 

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newfiend

I have a question regarding your installation of Pinnacle Game profiler and Steam.. I have both of these on my HTPC as well. I set Pinnacle to load the WMC profile by default, that way I can grab a controller and navigate WMC and launch steam from within WMC's main menu. I set the steam.exe as an exception in pinnacle because the WMC profile messes up the navigation of steam with a 360 wireless remote control. How do you get pinnacle to automatically assign a profile for a game that has no controller support when launching it from steam? Since pinnacle is disabled when steam is launched (due to my exception) I can't get it to load any profiles. Congrats on the new build.. Yeah lets see some pics! Haha =)

Thanks..

newfiend

 

Sent from my Lumia 920 using Tapatalk

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Cheesegeezer

How did you manage to get mediacontrolmce to work, because I tried it ages ago and nothing... What key did you assign on the MCE remote to enable/disable subs and switch audio streams?

 

It's the one thing that bugs me about Media Centre, after so long MS still can't be bothered to include the ability for subtitles and multiple audio streams.

 

 

Oh and one last thing....

 

 

WHERE ARE THE BLOODY PICS :D

 

Well you need an ffdshow only setup. Where FFDShow controls all decoding. Mediacontrol can hook directly into ffdshow and allow you to control subs and audio streams. I have some time tomorrow i'll put up a tutorial for you. Pics i'll add tomorrow too.

 

 

I have a question regarding your installation of Pinnacle Game profiler and Steam.. I have both of these on my HTPC as well. I set Pinnacle to load the WMC profile by default, that way I can grab a controller and navigate WMC and launch steam from within WMC's main menu. I set the steam.exe as an exception in pinnacle because the WMC profile messes up the navigation of steam with a 360 wireless remote control. How do you get pinnacle to automatically assign a profile for a game that has no controller support when launching it from steam? Since pinnacle is disabled when steam is launched (due to my exception) I can't get it to load any profiles. Congrats on the new build.. Yeah lets see some pics! Haha =)

Thanks..

newfiend

Sent from my Lumia 920 using Tapatalk

I think you've answered your own question, i always launch steam in big picture mode which allows me to use xbox controller to navigate it as big picture mode recognises controllers, i use a remote to navigate mce always so never have a persistent profile. I would keep them separate.

 

I guess i can have a play and see if there is a workround and post up my findings.

 

 

Oh, my uplay and steam handle is...........

 

Errr.......

 

 

Cheesegeezer

 

Hit me up

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Heckler

Well you need an ffdshow only setup. Where FFDShow controls all decoding. Mediacontrol can hook directly into ffdshow and allow you to control subs and audio streams. I have some time tomorrow i'll put up a tutorial for you. Pics i'll add tomorrow too.

 

 

I think you've answered your own question, i always launch steam in big picture mode which allows me to use xbox controller to navigate it as big picture mode recognises controllers, i use a remote to navigate mce always so never have a persistent profile. I would keep them separate.

 

I guess i can have a play and see if there is a workround and post up my findings.

 

 

Oh, my uplay and steam handle is...........

 

Errr.......

 

 

Cheesegeezer

 

Hit me up

 

If you get a request from some geezer called Heckler on Steam... ignore it.  :P

 

I'm currently using the shark codecs... and have set subtitles to use the ffdshow decoder, but for most things I am using the LAV decoder. Because of problems I've had in the past... I'm kinda hesitant to make any changes... But if you've got a tutorial I can try out on my office PC and it works... I'll think about making the changes to the mediaserver...

 

All I really want is the ability to turn on/off subtitles... or even have subtitles grabbed for movies, not concerned about having them for TV shows. But I often drift off to sleep watching a movie and want subtitles so I can keep the volume down so loud bits don't wake me up.

 

How does it handle subtitles embedded in mkv and mp4 files and those where there is a separate srt file?

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politby

Maybe repeating something that has been said already, but MPC-HC is pretty good at handling subtitles and if you have a universal remote that can send keyboard shortcuts, it is easy to set up toggling/selection of subtitles.

I use MPC-HC as external player for all file formats except .wtv and it works completely transparently with MBC and MBT.

 

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk

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Cheesegeezer

@@Heckler

 

Here is how you need to set up MCE MediaControl.  Read Descriptions at bottom of what to do.

 

Hopefully it's helpful.

 

You must have FFDShow installed and set Windows 7 to use FFDShow when viewing movies by using the Win7FilterTweaker Tool.  If you are not sure follow my guide in the Tutorials section under General.  Linky Here

 

http://imgur.com/a/QlHg6

Edited by Cheesegeezer
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Heckler

I'll test it out on the office PC later this week, and if it works... will transfer to the mediaserver.  :)

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