I'm just starting to look into building a HTPC, centered around an AMD A6 or A8 APU. I've got an NAS that has lots of video on it that I need to be able to stream from. Family uses Netflix & a little bit of Hulu for TV shows, and I'm putting a Blu-ray drive in it for movies. CPU: AMD A6/A8 Richland (Not sure which yet) MOBO: MSI A88XM-E45 FM2+ / FM2 AMD A88X (Bolton D4) GPU: XFX Radeon HD 6450 2GB (already have it & need to find some use for it) RAM: G.SKILL Ares Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3 1866 SOUND: ASUS Xonar DGX 5.1 CASE: LIAN LI PC-V354B Black Aluminum MicroATX Mini Tower HDD: Western Digital WD10EZEX 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s PSU: CORSAIR CXM series CX430M 430W ATX12V v2.3 80 PLUS BRONZE I'm tying to find a nice balance of performance vs. price. So on that note, would it be better to use the dedicated GPU, or stick with the internal APU. All this will be doing is media streaming. Same question for sound. To start, it'd only have the speakers built into whichever TV we might get for it. Sometime down the road, I'd like to get a speaker system, but I need something my kids won't trash. If I have a dedicated GPU & sound card, how does that affect the wiring if I want to use HDMI? Also, my big question is what OS to use for it? So far I figured I'd be using Windows Media Center for everything. Should I be using Win 7 or 8 for it? Any advice would be great. EDIT: Anyone have any preferred input devices?
Use whichever OS is preferable, won't make much difference tbh. An APU will be sufficient to decode Bluray but there's no sense getting one if you intend to install a dedicated GPU as well. Get a dedicated GPU or an APU, but not both..... HDMI output is configured in the media player. I use MPC-HC with the HDMI output on my 6950.
If you're using HDMI and want sound transmitted to the TV, don't waste money on a sound card. You won't be able to use the dedicated sound card with an HDMI connection anyway. You'll have to use the Realtek HDMI audio chip on the graphics card. If you're going to use a dedicated graphics card, don't waste money on an APU. If you're dead set on a Richland based processor, the Athlon X2 370K (dual core) or Athlon X4 760K (quad core) would be better options.
The Richland A8 will do everything you want and more. No need to buy a discrete graphics card. I am running the A10 Richland and am very happy with it.
Try and shoot for the newer Kaveri APU's like the 7850K and then up that 8GB 1866MHz RAM to something more speedy around 2133MH or 2400MHz which will be MUCH better for the iGPU as they use system memory for graphics so the faster the better.
Depending on price, the Kaveri APUs are definitely a better choice. However, they do not bring anything to the HTPC that the Richland APUs do not already bring.
He already has the dedicated graphics card and Kaveri is more expensive than Richland or Trinity. for an HTPC, high speed memory isn't necessary. Trinity and Richland are more than capable of performing HTPC functions.
Ah, had not noticed the stuff in the parentheses. Yeah, the Athlon X4 would be a good choice. I cringe a little wrt only 2 core CPUs...mostly because they will not last as long as new things come out that need more power. Probably nothing wrong with them.
For an HTPC, a dual core processor is just fine unless you're using it as a DVR and attempting to record multiple streams.
