Mobile on Desktop HTPC for h.264 HD content

[klinkby]

I am currently building a HTPC box that meet these requirements:

1. Play HD-movies VC-1 and h264 with a bitrate of at least 5Mbps.
2. Low idle power
3. Near silent
4. High WAF
5. Low price

These constraints pull in three directions so obviously it is going to be a compromise of some sort. After digging through tons of sites and advise I decided to put the HD decoding in dedicated hardware as it its power efficiency is better that doing the decoding on the CPU, and is less prone to skipping frames (if Bill suddenly want's to use the processor for something else). Unfortunately currently no IGP chipsets can do end-to-end h.264 decoding, so I need a dedicated graphics card. The ATI HD 2400 Pro is cheap and runs fine with just passive cooling.

I would like to keep the box running 24/7 for p2p and instant HTPC availability. But I really don't want to sponsor my power company more than I absolutely have to. To meet the low idle power/near silent requirements I chose to use the new Q35 mobile chipset from Intel that consumes half the power of the previous Q965 chipset. Then throw in a cheap, low power Socket 775 Celeron L-4x0 CPU, which is a stripped down Core 2 solo. And of course a 2½" hard drive.

To summarize here is a component list with their respective peak power consumption:

10W Q35 MicroATX main board
35W Celeron L-430 1.8GHz
3W 2x1GB PC2-5300 RAM
16W Radeon HD 2400 Pro (silent)
3W 80 GB 2½" HDD

A theoretical maximum power consumption of 67 watts.

I have decided to put it in the new Antec NSK1380 SFF case that features an 80PLUS PSU with a now noise 12 cm fan. And most important: The Wife approved of the design.

So I'm currently waiting for it to show up in the mail. More info to come.

[autoboy]

I suggest you try out AMD for this build because in the low end their platforms are much more affordable. Your h.264 bitrate is rather low and any modern system should be capable of playing those kinds of files. My S754 3200+ and Geforce 7300LE are capable of playing that low of a bitrate.

I would try:
AMD 690 chipset motherboard with HDMI - capable of playing HD-DVD & BR with a CPU of 2.2ghz and above. If you need more CPU power for playback, which is unlikely, a 2400pro would work. I would try onboard to start though.

Any 65nm dual core athlon - you can undervolt these pretty low to get idle and load power down considerably

An AMD system like this with your 2.5 inch drive and an efficient power supply can idle at 40W or lower and top out at 60-75W depending on your cpu and undervolt.

[elec999]

I like your project. I would like to know how it goes. My laptop with dual core and a nvidia card cant play vc1 video. I hope your new build will be able to. Can you look at Nvidia 8500 and ati 2600 cards as well.
Thanks