Floppyhead – Digital Media and Streaming

Perusing various media center websites and forums, I am struck by one thing: people make their HTPCs too powerful.  Playing 1080p movies is a fairly easy task for most modern video cards.  You do not need some crazy system to provide a smooth experience.  All that extra processing power comes at a cost: higher energy bills.

Here are two quick rules of thumbs:

1. Do not spend more than $400 on building a media center (not including tuners). You only need to get a $50 video card to pull it all together.
2. Power consumption should drive your build.  One thing I have learned using a media center computer is that setting up Sleep and Hibernate is still a pain. For instance, my digital cable tuner won’t work after the computer is woken up.  This means I have to leave it on all the time.  Suddenly, idle power consumption becomes a big deal.  The goal should be to use less than 50W when idling.  That would equal about $3 a month in energy costs.

My ideal system would be to use an Atom processor with Nvidia’s Ion chip for 1080p playback.  I have not tested such a system but the word on the street is that Windows 7 Media Center can be sluggish with an Atom processor.  Still under 10W at idle is an impressive number.

Here are some tips for an energy  sipping build:

1. Don’t use more than 2 GB of ram.  Nothing more is needed. 4 GB is just a waste.
2. Use “green” hard drives.  No need to use the fastest hard drives on the market.
3. Use an energy efficient power supply.
4. Anything more powerful than a Dual core Pentium E5300 is a waste. I have one in my system and it works fine.  The one caveat to that is the new Clarkdale processors that Intel has like the Core i3, which would save you from using a video card.