Building HTPC - A couple of ?s

[brandon DuBois]

Ok everyone - I have been looking around and looking around and I am finally ready to buy my parts to build my hackintosh HTPC. This is what I have come up with so far:

 

MOBO - GIGABYTE GA-G31M-ES2L

CPU - e5200

Video Card - ASUS EN9400GT/DI/512M(LP) GeForce 9400 GT 512MB

Memory - 2x1GB(PNY OPTIMA 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800)

Hard Drive - SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD502HJ 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5"

Case/PSU - Undecided

 

My main two questions are

 

1) Does all of my hardware appear compatible?

2) WILL I GET 1080P out put from my HDMI on the graphics card?

 

The 2nd one is pretty important to me since I will be using this as a media PC - I will have it hooked up to a receiver through HDMI.

 

Thanks in advance.

 

Brandon

[Zaap]

Looks good.

 

I'd highly recommend either going with the full 4GB of RAM, or using a single 2GB stick -foregoing dual channel, but leaving yourself room to easily update to the max 4GB. I find 2GB of RAM slightly anemic for OSX and an HTPC.

 

Nice video card with all three connectors- it should do 1080p just fine.

 

Just look into OSX via the HDMI connector if that's what you're planning to use. If you plan to use audio via HDMI, make sure it works with the ES2L's board header. (I know the ES2L has working optical SPDIF with a bracket connector made by Gigabyte, but no idea about using it with the cable the vid card comes with). Otherwise DVI to HDMI video with seperate audio works great.

 

If you plan to use a slim, low-profile HTPC case, it's nice that the video card is LP ready and comes with the brackets.

[brandon DuBois]

Looks good.

 

I'd highly recommend either going with the full 4GB of RAM, or using a single 2GB stick -foregoing dual channel, but leaving yourself room to easily update to the max 4GB. I find 2GB of RAM slightly anemic for OSX and an HTPC.

 

Nice video card with all three connectors- it should do 1080p just fine.

 

Just look into OSX via the HDMI connector if that's what you're planning to use. If you plan to use audio via HDMI, make sure it works with the ES2L's board header. (I know the ES2L has working optical SPDIF with a bracket connector made by Gigabyte, but no idea about using it with the cable the vid card comes with). Otherwise DVI to HDMI video with seperate audio works great.

 

If you plan to use a slim, low-profile HTPC case, it's nice that the video card is LP ready and comes with the brackets.

 

 

If i use the HDMI on the back of the vid card for just video and use the gigabyte audio adapter that has spdif - i should be fine this way right?

 

Brandon

[Zaap]

If i use the HDMI on the back of the vid card for just video and use the gigabyte audio adapter that has spdif - i should be fine this way right?

 

Brandon

Yup, provided the HDMI video output works with a Hackintosh. (I have no idea, never tried it).

 

Just know that DVI to HDMI is exactly the same signal, so if you're using separate audio, that combination will definitely work fine.

 

This is the SPDIF bracket (3-pin) that works with the G31M-ES2L.

[brandon DuBois]

My Build - now the waiting for parts begins....

 

Brandon

 

[Zaap]

Looks good- that build should work great.

[brandon DuBois]

Thanks alot - I went ahead and get the DVI to HDMI adapter and the Gigabyte Audio Adapter that way if it doesnt work on the card I wont have to wait to order everything to finish my setup - considering the parts were pretty cheap

[brandon DuBois]

Well this was quite an easy install - everything seems to work - using my existing iMac - I used UInstaller to install retail copy of Leopard to my hard drive that I was putting in this build - After doing this i put the hard drive in the new HTPC and booted with Boot 132 cd - following the guide by leopard soup everything installed perfectly - the onboard HDMI connector on the video card works - the audio works - I couldnt have asked for an easier install - now its time to enjoy my media center hackintosh - just curious have other people noticed when hooking this up to a 50" plasma that it doesnt seem as clear as on my iMac - is this just due to the 50" screen vs the 24" - I'm referring to text and things while surfing - I feel its just because the screen is so big.

 

Thanks for this site it has helped me a lot

 

Brandon

[phoenix_iii]

So did you need the extra Audio adapter(s)?

 

Also, it's normal for the 50'' to not look as good. It's running at a lower resolution on a bigger plane, so it won't look 'as sharp' as on the smaller TV at a higher resolution.

 

Well this was quite an easy install - everything seems to work - using my existing iMac - I used UInstaller to install retail copy of Leopard to my hard drive that I was putting in this build - After doing this i put the hard drive in the new HTPC and booted with Boot 132 cd - following the guide by leopard soup everything installed perfectly - the onboard HDMI connector on the video card works - the audio works - I couldnt have asked for an easier install - now its time to enjoy my media center hackintosh - just curious have other people noticed when hooking this up to a 50" plasma that it doesnt seem as clear as on my iMac - is this just due to the 50" screen vs the 24" - I'm referring to text and things while surfing - I feel its just because the screen is so big.

 

Thanks for this site it has helped me a lot

 

Brandon

[brandon DuBois]

That is what I figured - but when I play my movies through plex everything looks great - I havent gotten the audio adapter in yet - but YES i will need it - the connector that came with the Asus Video Card is for a 4 pin connection on the MOBO - I am assuming that this is for Asus MOBO's - I probably could find a cable that does what I want but I have the bracket adapter coming in so no reason - just one extra cable that will go into my receiver. All in all this was a very simple build for me. It actually runs very fast just with the 2GB of ram - I was going to get 4 but after getting it set up last night - using it just for a media PC - no reason to spend the extra 30 bucks.

 

Brandon

[Zaap]

Glad your system is working good for you.

 

Like phoenix_iii said, that's normal with a larger screen. It takes some getting used to at first when one hooks a computer to an HDTV. 1920x1080 pixels looks sharp on a 24" monitor, but even on a 30" monitor that would be a low resolution. (2560 x 1600 would be a native res at that size). So you can imagine that at 50" you're looking at a native res that's half the size of a comparable resolution on a computer monitor. It's noticeable in the OS itself, but as you've probably seen, it makes no difference with most media files that you'd never see in a res higher than 1080p anyway.

 

For web surfing, I like using Firefox on my HTPCs. I use a jumbo-sized theme, and FF has a fantastic zoom feature just by hitting Apple key + or - . You can easily zoom a page up to where the text is nice and sharp and readable on even the most gigantic screen, viewed from across the room.

[brandon DuBois]

Glad your system is working good for you.

 

Like phoenix_iii said, that's normal with a larger screen. It takes some getting used to at first when one hooks a computer to an HDTV. 1920x1080 pixels looks sharp on a 24" monitor, but even on a 30" monitor that would be a low resolution. (2560 x 1600 would be a native res at that size). So you can imagine that at 50" you're looking at a native res that's half the size of a comparable resolution on a computer monitor. It's noticeable in the OS itself, but as you've probably seen, it makes no difference with most media files that you'd never see in a res higher than 1080p anyway.

 

For web surfing, I like using Firefox on my HTPCs. I use a jumbo-sized theme, and FF has a fantastic zoom feature just by hitting Apple key + or - . You can easily zoom a page up to where the text is nice and sharp and readable on even the most gigantic screen, viewed from across the room.

 

So I got the SPDIF connector all hooked up and what do you know - NO SPDIF sound output - I tried a few things but quickly gave up and bought the Behringer UCA202 for 29.99 from amazon - Figured this was better quality than the onboard anyways...

[Zaap]

Great that you got better audio.

 

But as for the onboard, it may not seem to be working, even though if it's correctly enabled, it may actually BE working.

 

For example, in this thread, a few posts in, the user Shwymie writes:

 

"My GA-G31M-ES2L hack is working great thanks to Kaido's guide, but I am trying to get digital audio out working. I have the audio adapter plate (from ebay) installed, but how do I set the audio to Digital Out? Is it thru the sound preference settings in OSX? If so, I don't see anything..."Choose device for output" and OSX gives me 3 options: Line out, headphones, and digital out. Line out works fine, but when I select Digital Out, I get the message "The selected device has no output controls". This leads me to thinking that I need to change the GA-G31M-ES2L board settings, but how do I do that in OSX? The GA-G31M-ES2L manual tells you how to change the settings, but that's thru using their PC software."

 

 

Then a few posts later:

 

"After staying up all night I finally got digital out to work! Here is how I did it...I did NOTHING! It was working all along. By selecting the digital out option, the sound gets passed to the machine that the digital signal is going to (i.e. my receiver). I later found this while searching thru the PLEX wiki "when using the digital connection, the internal amplification of the sound board is disabled, forgoing volume control within OSX."

 

Bottom line, the SPDIF on this board with the add-on bracket does work, just it seems it's not very intuitive. Unfortunately, I don't use SPDIF audio myself to be able to document the exact procedure.