Well I love my HTPC I built with the help of you all last year and so does my father so i am helping him build one.
Right now I am trying to decide between an Intel i3 530 or Athlon II x2 240.
What I need the most help with is selecting a good low powered motherboard. Reports of peoples' experience with the i3 chip for HTPC use would also be very helpful.
I plan for the system to look like so.
* It is very important the motherboard go to and wake up from sleep reliably and properly.
* Either AMD chip or Intel chip in ATX Hi-Fi component style case.
* Fanless PSU (mainly thinking about an electrodacus PSU like I got in my HTPC).
* 500GB Laptop HD
* BR full sized disc drive
* Video over HDMI from IGP
* Audio over spdif or HDMI (should be able to stream at least LPCM over HDMI) He will be buying a new amp next year but until then he needs spdif.
* Must be able to play Hulu or HD Flash without stuttering
* It should use DDR3 RAM (just in case the MB ever needs to be replaced.)
In my similar system the athlon x2 with stock HSF is pretty much inaudible when the system is at idle and the total system draws about 35W at idle. I would like to beat that number.
My main concern about the i3 chip is from bad experiences with Intel IGP drivers not working correctly.
AMD Athlon II x2 240 VS Intel i3 530 for low power HTPC
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barefootzero
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I went back and forth between the Athlon II 240 and i3 530 and ended up going with i3 but for slightly different reasons. I tend to keep a system till it's almost unusable then upgrade, so I went with i3 because I felt it would have longer legs than the Athlon II as time marched on.
The i3 does have lower power consumption generally if you choose the right board. Went with MSI H55M-E33 and power consumption is pretty low (31-32w while stepped away from keyboard). Early reports though were showing some having problems with going into sleep mode, and some boards do have this problem.
Went through 3 boards until I settled on the last one. The first I thought I had a video problem but I think it's my monitor, so I should have kept it. The second board had problems going into sleep, and believe they sent me a refurb so I inherited someone's bad board. My current board goes into sleep beautifully though. So out of 3 boards, 2 went into sleep without problems.
Haven't really experimented with HDMI except hooking up to the TV briefly. I do think the Intel HD video 64 bit drivers do need some more polish though. When using accelerated 10.1 flash with the latest Intel video driver it sometimes hesitates. If I uncheck the "enable hardware acceleration" within Flash it works fine in software mode. It's possible Flash needs more polish or the Intel driver needs more polish or both. The hardware acceleration is a relatively new thing, so it should be sorted in time.
Fan control is excellent. The 4 pin for the CPU fan won't completely spin down to 0% but I think this is normal for most 4 pins. Have the CPU fan down to about 30% speed and the stock fan is almost inaudible. The other two 3-pin connectors spin down to 0%.
Can't answer all your questions, but I'm sure others will add more information.
The i3 does have lower power consumption generally if you choose the right board. Went with MSI H55M-E33 and power consumption is pretty low (31-32w while stepped away from keyboard). Early reports though were showing some having problems with going into sleep mode, and some boards do have this problem.
Went through 3 boards until I settled on the last one. The first I thought I had a video problem but I think it's my monitor, so I should have kept it. The second board had problems going into sleep, and believe they sent me a refurb so I inherited someone's bad board. My current board goes into sleep beautifully though. So out of 3 boards, 2 went into sleep without problems.
Haven't really experimented with HDMI except hooking up to the TV briefly. I do think the Intel HD video 64 bit drivers do need some more polish though. When using accelerated 10.1 flash with the latest Intel video driver it sometimes hesitates. If I uncheck the "enable hardware acceleration" within Flash it works fine in software mode. It's possible Flash needs more polish or the Intel driver needs more polish or both. The hardware acceleration is a relatively new thing, so it should be sorted in time.
Fan control is excellent. The 4 pin for the CPU fan won't completely spin down to 0% but I think this is normal for most 4 pins. Have the CPU fan down to about 30% speed and the stock fan is almost inaudible. The other two 3-pin connectors spin down to 0%.
Can't answer all your questions, but I'm sure others will add more information.