After seeing a friend’s Mac Mini hook up to an HD TV and look incredible and seem like fun, I took the challenge of building a stronger, faster PC version albeit uglier for the same cost of less than a thousand dollars. Along the way I discovered some pitfalls and had some successes as well.
Having a computer hooked up to the TV is a totally self indulgent act. The Mac Mini lacks a card reader, front load USB slots and to my surprise, doesn’t have a Blu Ray disk reader. It’s slick, sexy, effortless function right out of the box is a huge attraction; but I’m the kind of guy who will spend the extra four hours figuring something out or just ignore some duct tape solution that would never be acceptable at market. You too?
Until I benchmarked this thing on a whim, I had NO idea that I was building such a fast machine. I have NEVER built on a Micro ATX and certainly never EVER used a power supply that wasn’t approaching 1,000 WATTS. I’m from the muscle car school of computer building: More power means more power. It’s not a stretch. No that looking at the World through green-colored glasses is the way to go, I drew heavily on my knowledge of internal numbers like system bus speeds, cache and RAM latency to beef up what I thought would be a modest system.
First pitfall. Blu Ray players not only suck up TONS of power, but depend strongly upon software to play the latest movies. I had tried and failed to play Golden Compass and Batman, The Dark Knight on the HD Blu Ray player not because the laser was bad, the software was out of date. A new Dolby codec had been introduced after I thought I purchased everything up to spec. The Mac Mini I saw has no Blu Ray player because a minimum of 300 WATTS is required. My initial 200 WATT power supply wouldn’t fire up the Blu Ray, just the DVD player (different laser used).
Raw Numbers
A GIGABYTE LGA 775 Intel G41 HDMI Micro ATX Motherboard for $80 seats an Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz Model BX80562Q6600 Processor costing three times the motherboard. This is notable for going beyond the 2:1 Processor:Motherboard cost theory that results in solid starting points.
Memory and Bigger is Not better
With a system bus speed of up to 1333MHz, why ask the RAM to do less? Utilize all you got! G.SKILL PI Black 4GB (2 × 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F2-6400CL4D-4GBPI-B delivered for $65! The danger in the super unattractive DYNAPOWER USA Titan Mini Tower Computer Case with Micro ATX 200W Power Supply is that the RAM has very tall heat spreaders. Cramping is bad in any computer and Micro computers, HD capable, need some breathing room.
This case prooved too small. Wires were bunching and rubbing and while I was amused with the design, I quickly ran out of room and found that the power supply was to blame for some seriously depressing problems I couldn’t escape. It cost $40. I sprang $65 bucks on a slightly larger IN WIN BL631.300TBL Black Steel MicroATX Slim Case Computer Case with 300W Power Supply. Now the RAM gave me a headache. IT WOULDN’T FIT. Never remove the heat spreaders if your RAM is too tall. Sell it. PS, I got RAM for sale. ;) The new RAM: G.SKILL 4GB (2 × 2GB) DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Model F2-6400CL5D-4GBPQ For $45 bucks it’s one milisecond slower, 30% cheaper and has a shorter heat spreader that folds over the RAM.
Did you SEE that? The Video Card
The biggest surprise for me was the power behind modern graphic cards. MSI N94GT-MD512 GeForce 9400 GT 512MB 128-bit GDDR2 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready Video Card was a crucial step in the evolution of this machine. It must support HDMI and the max resolution for HD TV which is 1920 across by 1080 scanlines up and down. This exceeds that with 2560 by 1600. So it also has enough brain to power two HD displays as an extended desktop or cloned. Additionally! Don’t forget the “Low Profile” we need to keep foremost in mind. This is a Micro ATX! For $55 bucks, I’ve actually never been happier with a video card.
I was SO impressed I RMA’d to get enough money back to buy a moderate 23-inch HD monitor and now try to fry my brain with visual information overload. There is a caveat…
Second pitfall. HD video cards have nooooo problem pushing the video image out to the edges of your pricey 1920×1080 computer monitor. Your TV, however, was made differently and more conservatively. A FULL HD picture will fall about 36 pixels short on all sides. My Task Bar was missing! What to do? If your HD video card goes off the edge of your TV, pray that, like the MSI GeForce 9400 GT above, you can scale the desktop. Video Card software should provide a way to shrink the picture to intervals unavailable through Settings > Advanced > etc. as we’re used to doing. The software actually controls the Horizontal and Vertical squeezing like old televisions.
There’s another problem. Once I got my 23-inch monitor, I was baffled for days. The picture left the TV. There’s a huge difference between 1080p and 1080i and that software scaling mentioned in the Blockquote above, can reak havoc when toggling back and forth between the real HD TV you use primarily and the HD monitor you just want to play with. There were two days when I had to do everything by memory because the computer picked the wrong display as the primary monitor when starting up and shutting down. Be real savvy or don’t fuss with dual monitors alone.
I blasted through a short list of wireless interface devices settling on a Kensington mouse with Play controls on the bottom and a wireless keyboard with touchpad like a laptop’s horizontal bit. The LG Black Blu-ray/HD DVD-ROM & 16X DVD±R DVD Burner SATA Model GGC-H20L won’t play more modern Blu Ray movies like The Dark Knight because the software (bundled with the drive in my example) is out of date. Can you imagine how ragingly upset I would be if I spent $400 on a stand-alone device with no Internet connection to update the firmware? Again, it’s not a problem with the laser or hardware. I had to pop an unexpected (read: “expensive”) $99 for a Platinum version of Arc Soft’s Total Media to fetch the particular Dolby codecs that Trail Version wouldn’t play! Unfair? You bet!
Am I a happy computer with this configuration? You bet! I get all my Hulu, Blu Ray, Facebook, Techmeme, email, TasteSpotting and Pandora wirelessly through my TV and can store 1 Terabyte of whatever crap comes to mind. It’s slowly becoming the true center of media and entertainment in my home and it’s still totally self indulgent. I think I’ll call it, “My HD PC: The Dark Chocolate.”
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