Building an HTPC for my Holo3DGraph

[philexile]

Hello,

I recently acquired a Holo3DGraph I and I'm looking to build a HTPC for it. I'm not too versed in HTPCs, so I figured I would ask for suggestions. My options are:

1. Easy: Buy an old Shuttle PC on eBay
2. Harder: Build a new HTPC from scratch that's powerful enough to also play the most recent build of MAME - nothing too crazy (or expensive)

Any feedback would be appreciated.

Thanks

[Arasoi]

Congrats! It's a great card, owned one for a year or two now and record all my SD stuff through it.

The Holo3d is a bit of a long card to fit into a lot of the shuttle models, at my old job I built about 200 small Shuttle PC workstations and recall problems even with putting longer video cards in most of the models, the tray that holds the drives tends to get in the way. As is, it would be tougher with a longer PCI card because it isn't the outer slot (AGP/PCIE is) and the room to work with will be reduced further. Cable routing might be a pain as well since the holo3d takes a molex connector in the rear for power.

I'd probably go with a bigger mini case, though it might fit in one of the larger Shuttle cases. The card doesnt generate much heat, so if you can fit it in a smaller case good deal.

Hope that's helpful!

[philexile]

Hi,

That's very helpful, thank you for the heads up!

Do you have any suggestions as to the hardware. I've built PCs in the past, but I'm sort of out of the loop at this point. (The last one I built was my P4 from '04) Like I said previously, I'd like it to work for MAME, mainly for more intense games that won't play on the original XBOX. I was thinking about messing with that Dolphin emulator, but then I saw that there are still compatibility issues and I lost interest. I'll want to make sure to get hardware that's compatible with the Holo3D. I'll probably just load up XP since I'm guessing I would have less issues with driver compatibility.

By the way, how is the Emotia working out for you?

Talk soon

[Fudoh]

My recommendation:

- socket 775, Core2Duo E7500 (not a Quadcore)
- make sure the board has an intel chipset.
- Nvidia GT 220/240
- XP

XP, Nvidia and Intel for compatibility with the Holo3DGraph. E7500 for perfect MAME performance.

[ZOM]

Yeah, Fudoh's recommendation is easily enough horsepower for such a HTPC.
Just whatever you do, don't get anything with an intel GMA for graphics - I think it'll put quite a bit of additional lag to the holo's deinterlaced output.
Also, a quick and reliable HDD can help if you plan on using it as a capturing device.

[philexile]

Hi Fudoh,

Did you mean Intel for the manufacturer of the motherboard as well? If not, I think I found a good micro from ASUS:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813131680

It supports up to 8gb of RAM, where the Intel version only does 4gb . . . however, I think XP only supports up to 3gb, so maybe I shouldn't worry about that.

Thanks again

My recommendation:

- socket 775, Core2Duo E7500 (not a Quadcore)
- make sure the board has an intel chipset.
- Nvidia GT 220/240
- XP

XP, Nvidia and Intel for compatibility with the Holo3DGraph. E7500 for perfect MAME performance.

[Fudoh]

I just meant the chipset. The Asus one has a Intel G41, so it should be fine. For a Holo3D/MAME XP system you only need 2GB of ram.