New HTPC Build

With the untimely death of my HTPC because of the nearby lightening strike, I'm putting together a new box.

When I first built my HTPC, I did not have one let alone the 2 Drobos I have now so I had 6 hard drives (including the OS drive) in it. I then got the first Drobo as a backup and network storage solution. That one reached capacity and since it was a Gen 1 Drobo, couldn't have more than 2TB drives loaded in it. Got a Gen 2 Drobo which can take drives up to 4TB. Was originally going to sell the Gen 1 but figured why give up the extra storage.

To streamline things, the 2 Drobos are going to be used as primary storage since they are automatically redundant, instead of using them as backup for the internal HDs. Because of this I've decided it is time to downsize to a smaller form factor case. This one is going to be a case designed for HTPC use that will fit on my TV stand instead of next to it.

I decided to go with a Silverstone case:

http://i58.tinypic.com/nlx3xk.jpg

The new motherboard is going to be a Gigabyte GA-Z87X-UD4H.

New processor is going to be an Intel Core i5-4570 3.2GHz and the RAM is going to be 8GB of Crucial Ballistix Tactical DDR3 1600.

The power supply will be the Seasonic M12II-750 I just purchased.

Going to reuse the Arctic Freezer Pro 7 CPU cooler from the old HTPC.

I'm hoping the Hauppauge Colossus HDTV card wasn't affected and can be reused as well as whatever hard drives I can fit in the case. Really don't want to spend the money on a new Colossus card.

Looks good Ryan. When we visited I did get to see your media setup and it was quite impressive!

I'll be honest, with not having all of my content at my finger tips and on demand I'm realizing how much crap is on TV that I don't care about. So many useless channels I end up paying DirecTV for that I otherwise would want nothing to do with.

Just switched from DirecTV to Time Warner. The equipment with Direct is far superior but I couldn't justify that for the price they were now charging me (it's gone up since I first joined).

I had hoped it would be an easy hookup setting up the new TWC set top box with the HTPC but, no.

The first problem was setting the HTPC IR blaster to successfully send the proper IR frequency to control the set top box. That wasn't too bad even though my specific box is new enough it wasn't listed by name. Found another compatible IR code.

The bigger problem is that on these new TWC boxes, HDCP via the HDMI connector is apparently now being enforced. I had thought my Hauppauge Colossus HD capture card was compatible with HDCP but it apparently isn't.

So, when I'd connect the HDMI connector from the cable box to my HTPC I would get a content protection error warning and it would then go to a black screen.

Started doing a little research and found I wasn't up a creek without a paddle.

There are apparently certain HDMI splitters that will strip out the HDPC. Jumped on Amazon and located a splitter that will strip out the HDCP. Thanks to Amazon Prime, I just got it earlier this morning and hooked everything up the way it should have been. Voila! Video from the cable box on my HTPC! :D

Just figured I'd share the info in case anyone else reading decided to set up a HTPC of their own and ran into this content protection error problem.

Since the HTPC is coming up on 4 years old, I'm doing a bit of a hardware refresh.

I'm now up to 4 Drobo units, 3 of which are Gen 2s and 1 a Gen 1, with about 30TB of total usable storage space to house my library. The HTPC library is up to 2,237 movie titles and 273 TV titles, using up about 13TB, and is large enough it's really slowed down the HTPC trying to access it all.

So, I just dropped in 32GB of Crucial Ballistix Sport RAM and will be picking up a 4GHz Devil's Canyon i7 the next time eBay has one of it's 15%-20% off site wide sales.

That should get it ready to handle 4K so when my Panasonic plasma 1080p TV goes tits up, I'll just need to snag a decent video card, since I'm only running off the onboard mobo graphics, and a nice 4K TV.

The Hauppauge Colossus is still going strong but, I may upgrade that to a Colossus II if I come across one at a good price.