HTPC/AVCHD build.

TELBOY77

Hello everyone. I'm currently doing some research for a HTPC build. Ideally, the PC will used as a HTPC with sufficient capabilities to be used for video editing, especially the rendering of AVCHD from my canon HG20. I was considering using the following components:

Motherboard:
ASUS M3N-HT hdmi/nForce 780a

Processor:
AMD phenom x4 9950, 4mb cache

Ram:
Corsair XM52 4gb

Hard drive:
1 TB western digital caviar green.

My main concern is whether this set-up will have sufficient capabilities to render AVCHD. Thanks in advance.

GymBrat98

Hi, my computer is not as powerful as yours, and it displays HD video very well. I have a HD camcorder, and take vidz all the time to watch on my puter. Dude, you should be good to go. You should check out the HD camera/camcorder forum in this site. They can offer alot of help for peeps just getting started with HD vidz.

Hope this helps.

__________________
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2O-ygbA-VQs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSEzbN9SygU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUNXtLCQSog
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHvmaLFap_8
http://www.highdefforum.com/gallery/....php/photo/613
[url]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xh8878_Aquk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnD-b9-t18I

"Stereotypes are devices for saving a biased person the trouble of learning"

mobiushky

I'd switch your mobo from the nforce to the Asus M4A78T-E. The 790GX boards have incredible AVCHD playback. The video decoding is hardcoded into the GPU on the 780G and the 790GX. The new 790GX is outperforming the 780a for HD playback. Plus the M4A78T is DDR3 ready now and supports the AM3 chipset completely. The M3N is technically only an AM2+ board that will allow you to use an AM3 chip, but you cannot take advantage of the DDR3 memory. And on top of all that, the M4A78T is cheaper.

That is assuming that you are only building an HTPC and have no plans to add SLI later. If you are an nVidia fan and you plan to buy cards later to do hybrid SLI, then go for the board you list. But so far ATI's HD support is much stronger than nVidia and cheaper.

ATI has the crosslink system that is identical to SLI and works with the M4A78T board, so that's an option if you are not beholden to nVidia.

That's the only suggestion I would make.

Having said all that, the more important question is what software you plan to view the video with. The newest versions of WinDVD supports both the nVidia GPU and the ATI GPU. But if you get a software that doesn't support the GPU, you may find it's not good enough. The point is to take the processing of the video off the CPU and move it to the GPU. Then the CPU is less important.

My personal set up is an AMD 9850 black edition on an Asus M4A78-E board with 8GB of OCZ memory (my board is pre-AM3 support but is essentially the same as the M4A78T-E). I also have an ATI x1950XT and am using surround view to let me use 3 monitors. Using Nero 9 Showtime, I can view AVCHD files perfect on the monitors attached to the Mobo onboard video (HD3300), but they suck on the x1950xt. Just fyi.

__________________
DRM is roughly the equivalent of poking you in the eye, repeatedly.
----------------------------------------------------
Main Setup:
Pioneer PDP-5070HD
Pioneer VSX-80TXV
Dish Vip622
PS3 (120Gb), someone tried to tell me my BD player could play games too, what an idiot.
Logitech Harmony 1000 remote
All Klipsch speakers

Bedroom Setup:
Sony KDR-40XBR4
Dish Vip622
PS3 (80Gb, no BC) I think I have too many PS3s.
Sony Commander RM-AV3000

DexterMorgan

i think the OP might also be interested in Video Editing. In which case the faster the quad core processor the better. I think most of the editors use the processor for rendering out edited video. What programs do you plan on using for editing?

I have the Cannon HF200. I know there isn't a surplus of video editors that can edit AVCHD .MTS files. I haven't even bothered to research them. I've just been demuxing the video and re-encoding it to DxVA compatible x264 so I can watch it on my dual-core HTPC.

mobiushky

Actually there are quite a few in all price ranges. Pinnacle, Sony Vegas, Nero 9, Adobe, etc, etc. I use Pinnacle 12 Ultimate on an AMD 9850 and have had no problems editing my AVCHD files. I like that it does not require me to convert the files in anyway. Most programs do use the processor, but more and more they are starting to take advantage of the GPU even in processing the video. Those programs are rare still though. But, the differences in total processing time between a 2.7GHz quadcore and a 2.8GHz quadcore is not going to be 2 hours vs 10 mins. The difference is going to be measured in seconds depending on the size of the files. So the first may take 35 minutes and the second will take 33 minutes, or whatever. The question is, is it worth the price difference? If yes, get the more expensive faster processor. Just don't expect it to turn your processing into a 35 second ordeal instead of a 35 minute one.

__________________
DRM is roughly the equivalent of poking you in the eye, repeatedly.
----------------------------------------------------
Main Setup:
Pioneer PDP-5070HD
Pioneer VSX-80TXV
Dish Vip622
PS3 (120Gb), someone tried to tell me my BD player could play games too, what an idiot.
Logitech Harmony 1000 remote
All Klipsch speakers

Bedroom Setup:
Sony KDR-40XBR4
Dish Vip622
PS3 (80Gb, no BC) I think I have too many PS3s.
Sony Commander RM-AV3000

TELBOY77

I'll probably be using Premiere Pro CS4 for video editing.

mshulman

Awesome choice! I love Premiere and Encore CS4!

I think what you have will do fine. I have a Quad Core system with 4GB of RAM. Premiere works awesome. The biggest slowdown you'd see with it is from disk I/O

I'd recommend mirroring 2 drives that you will store the video on and keep these separate from your OS installation. I have a RAID 5 which holds OS and video and at times, even that gets a little bogged down depending on what operations I am doing. If I'm just doing one thing at a time, its fine, but as soon as I try to do too much it really slows down. Mirrored drives will give you the best read performance.

__________________
Toshiba HD-A2 and HD-A3
PS3
Sanyo PLV-Z3
Canon HF-10
Onkyo 805

"I eat green berets for breakfast and I'm very hungry!"

TELBOY77

I've now concluded what component's I'm going to use:

Motherboard:
Asus M4A78T-E

Processor:
AMD phenom x4 9950

RAM:
Corsair xm52 4gb

Hard Drive:
2x 500gb Western Digital caviar green

Power supply:
Hec x - power pro 650w


Any other suggestions? Bare in mind that this PC is going to be used for home theatre and rendering of AVCHD.
Also, has anyone got a good recommendation for a chassis/case?

mobiushky

If you're serious about rendering, going with the WD green drives is probably going to be a slight bog down. Nothing major, but it might be a source of slow down. The green drives are made to be low power. So they have variable spin rates and slower components. The black drives are for performance. 7200rpm, 32mb cache, etc. Do you plan to RAID the drives? If not, you could use one black for the number crunching side and a green for just storage. Just a thought. I've been told that a system that uses 2-3 160GB in RAID 0 for the OS and the rendering software are very fast. Make the 2 500GB your storage area. But that's a bit complicated.

The other option is to use a Raptor for your editing software...

Just random thoughts, since you asked.

Edit: just noticed mshulmans comments, so I assume you are planning a RAID 1. That's a good idea for storage, but it doesn't give you the speed you might need. You might want to think about using the RAID just for storing as I noted above and then add a fast slightly smaller drive for your OS and software. Something like a Black edition 250GB or 320GB. If your budget allows, a Raptor 150GB would be excellent. Again, just thoughts.

__________________
DRM is roughly the equivalent of poking you in the eye, repeatedly.
----------------------------------------------------
Main Setup:
Pioneer PDP-5070HD
Pioneer VSX-80TXV
Dish Vip622
PS3 (120Gb), someone tried to tell me my BD player could play games too, what an idiot.
Logitech Harmony 1000 remote
All Klipsch speakers

Bedroom Setup:
Sony KDR-40XBR4
Dish Vip622
PS3 (80Gb, no BC) I think I have too many PS3s.
Sony Commander RM-AV3000

DexterMorgan

i've got a 1TB WD Green in my desktop. It doesn't slow things during actual rendering (since the processor is the bottleneck usually, especially with HD content) but muxing or moving files is pretty slow. If I could go back I'd get a Caviar Black drive or look into a raid solution.

TELBOY77

Thank you very much for the advice mobiushky. I will definitely use a black edition for the OS. Also, a moderator on another forum suggested that the processor would not be compatible with the motherboard. I fail to see why. Any input?

mobiushky

Yeah, he's right, I didn't catch that. The 'T' variant means it's an AM3 board only. I was thinking that the board was like mine in that it could support both. With the AM3 chip, AMD removed 2 pins on the processor, so if the board does not have those 2 holes in the socket, it will only take AM3 chips. That means Phenom II. Easy fix though.

Look for an M4A78-E, without the 'T' variant. That's an AM2+ board that will work fine with the 9950. Newegg has it for $15 cheaper than the 'T' variant. You won't see a lot of difference, but you will lose out on the chance to upgrade to DDR3 later. Unless you are dead set on getting DDR3 memory. But then you have to buy more expensive memory and more expensive processors etc.

If money is no object, go for the AM3 with DDR3. If you are trying to save a few bucks, get the AM2+ with the 9950 you want.

PS, Dex is right about the speed of the drive being less important in rendering than the processor. I will add though that if you are processing an entire video for preparation to burn it to disc, it will be writing the file to the disc while it reads it. So in that case, the disc will play a role in the overall speed, but still smaller than the processor.

__________________
DRM is roughly the equivalent of poking you in the eye, repeatedly.
----------------------------------------------------
Main Setup:
Pioneer PDP-5070HD
Pioneer VSX-80TXV
Dish Vip622
PS3 (120Gb), someone tried to tell me my BD player could play games too, what an idiot.
Logitech Harmony 1000 remote
All Klipsch speakers

Bedroom Setup:
Sony KDR-40XBR4
Dish Vip622
PS3 (80Gb, no BC) I think I have too many PS3s.
Sony Commander RM-AV3000

TELBOY77

I might go for the Phenom ll 905e. It's very energy efficient at 65w.

mobiushky

Not a bad idea. You may not get the kick of the 3GHz cpus, but at half the power draw, you will get a lot better cooling.

__________________
DRM is roughly the equivalent of poking you in the eye, repeatedly.
----------------------------------------------------
Main Setup:
Pioneer PDP-5070HD
Pioneer VSX-80TXV
Dish Vip622
PS3 (120Gb), someone tried to tell me my BD player could play games too, what an idiot.
Logitech Harmony 1000 remote
All Klipsch speakers

Bedroom Setup:
Sony KDR-40XBR4
Dish Vip622
PS3 (80Gb, no BC) I think I have too many PS3s.
Sony Commander RM-AV3000

TELBOY77

Motherboard:
M4A78T-E

Processor:
Phenom II x4 905e

Ram:
Corsair dominator DHX 4gb 1600mhz

Hard drive:
Caviar black 250gb
Caviar green 1tb

What do you think?

Also, i'm not entirely sure what power supply to go for. Do you think 400w would be sufficient?