Gadgetory

excellent welcome everyone to part 2 of my HTPC build series where I will be assembling my system asking some existential questions and using the power of short lists to prove that I'm right so here it is I'm finally constructing my HTPC that has been planned and assembled outside the box and tested with great success thus far it's good to be finally building in the fractal node 804 case but some of the weirder things about this build got me thinking and as a result today I'll be using my new HTPC as an example as I ask the question what makes an HTP see and is it a HTPC or an htpc idea anyway well I can safely say that all these parts make my htpc so here's why I chose them starting with the case that I just mentioned the node 804 the clean design and black brushed front bezel will blend in great with a home theater it has optical drive support which was important to me I grabbed a slim slot-loading blu-ray player for that I will say I was hesitant about the side window in the 804 more on that later though the motherboard is the ASUS Maximus 5 gene the CPU is the Intel Core i5 35 70 K and we also have 8 gigabytes of Corsair ddr3 1600 memory these are all parts from an existing system that I wasn't using anymore and I think this is very common for HT pcs to take a slightly out of date system and repurpose it for use in the living room this is also a significant boost in processing power for me which I like because part of this builds purpose is to improve gaming performance speaking of which my video card at least for the purposes of this video is the EVGA GTX 970 SC this is overkill but I want a fast quiet card that can handle 1080p games and this will easily do all of that the power supply is a fractal and Tegra M 750 watt again a very quiet part that does its job without problems I like that it's modular and I'm only going to be using maybe 50% of its capacity which means I'll be sitting right at the sweet spot of the 80 plus bronze efficiency curve my storage array is my boldest choice I think a Plex ster 256 gigabyte M SATA SSD for the operating system combined with 4 WD red 4 terabyte hard drives in raid 5 this gives me 11 terabytes of usable capacity for DVR use movie and music storage and oh so many games and you better this will be a steadily growing beast of a media server as well raid 5 means I can get some very nice read speeds and I'll still be able to save my array of a single Drive fills although my write speeds are low right now which makes me want to do a little bit more tweaking and testing I also have a Seton Infiniti V TV tuner card with cable card support and 4 HD tuners allowing me to watch and record a cable TV shows and this was also carry over from my old decommissioned HTPC finally we have peripherals most notably my wireless keyboard with built-in Mouse from i/o year the classic Windows Media Center remote and IR receiver and my new wireless Xbox 360 for PC controller with the awesome receiver that it comes with the connect up to 4 controllers and I've confirmed it already works with my existing xbox360 wireless controller base week so now it's time for those lists I was promising let's start with 3 things that do not make an HT PC in my humble opinion starting with the TV tuner card really yes yes the TV tuner card because there's a big movement towards cutting out cable companies entirely due to their outdated business model and shady business practices at times you can easily get all the entertainment you need with just an internet connection so I consider this a nice to have rather than a requirement even though I am using one on my system next up is bling that's right no need for fancy paint jobs or LED embellishments with an htpc this should be stealthy and quiet like a dead cat because even the faintest glow can ruin the mood while you're watching your stories the third thing is my WD red raid 5 array what oh my gosh yes yes really it's overkill it's almost completely unnecessary here but I still think it's awesome really all you need is a single large hard drive for a DVR or an HTC see but do at least make sure that it's a drive like these WD Reds that are made for 24/7 continuous operation or the drive you choose probably won't last as long as you hope so with that out of the way let's move on to the second list what about three things that do make an HT PC well first there's location location location location yes it's in the living room of course obvious a home theater PC in a home theater well this actually does bring into consideration things like case aesthetics because you want the system to blend in noise is also a factor in the living room where head or less of an option so you want the system to be silent and of course for connectivity you'll want to be able to connect to your stereo receiver or HDTV preferably using HDMI at minimum 4k adopters well that's another video the second thing that does make a computer in HTPC is interaction human interface devices simply need to be rethought in the living room mostly they need to be Wireless and RF mouse and keyboard are key Wireless game controllers for sure are incredibly convenient and a good old-fashioned remote control makes the experience a pleasant one finally our third thing is flexibility how delightfully vague what do I mean well the flexibility to use hand-me-down parts from old systems as nice and HT pcs typically don't need the same amount of power as a desktop flexibility to handle multiple tasks a DVR for cable a portal for Netflix or Amazon Instant Video YouTube standard web browsing pretty much any game ever via Steam origin you play good old games emulators the list goes on and on as long as it's not marked as a console exclusive pretty much and yes this is also what makes PCs in general great but I needed a third reasoned and I think it's damn good one so let me know if you think my lists were accurate let me know what you think of my new HTPC and let me know if you run an HD PC at home right now in the comments below oh yes there will also be a part three I have decided but a little bit later on after I spend a little bit more time with the new system I'll be upgrading from the stock CPU heatsink fan I'll be giving some more feedback on my experience and maybe trying to fix my raid arrays performance because I think it can get better don't forget to like the video subscribe to my channel thanks for watching guys we'll see you next time