Advice from guru's on a new build.

[tuff]

OK guru's, I am thinking of building an HTPC and keep my other machine for work related stuff. I already have a few things with me, from Stuff i have upgraded.
1) Corsair power supply VS550.
2) Zotac GTX 650 1 GB DDR5 RAM.
3) Samsung 120GB SSD drive.

Si I will need a CPU/Motherboard and RAM.4 GB is what I am looking at to start off. Also i3 CPU is what i am looking at.
What would be the best Motherboard for this?
Am keeping an eye on Sam9's thread on HTPC performance also so that would be great help.

 

[tuff]

forgot to add, It will be connected to Yamaha rx v477 via HDMi.

 

[regeHA]

What is the intended use? Better recommendations can be made based on your requirements.

Just for d/l and watching content? Do you plan to upscale video? Watch 4K? Watch Live TV/IPTV? Have DVR functionality to record IPTV?

For the money the Raspberry Pi 3 is the best to simply watch 1080p content, stream content like IPTV, free TV, etc. Kodi/OpenELEC runs great on it, gives you the full Kodi experience, plus you get content from a ton of sources.

Also, take a look at the HTPC build by FM neoonwheels at http://www.hifivision.com/home-theater-pc-htpc-media-pc/64328-every-htpc-has-story.html. FWIW its a great build... especially for what it costs.

 

[superczar]

Does your display support 10 bit?
If not, just get a cheap J3160 board (5K) , dump your gfx card and use your existing SSD and PSU - The chipset will handle anything upto regular (8 bit) 4K HEVC via Hardware decoding and will idle at <10W (assuming you are planning to leave it always on)

If you do however need 10 bit HEVC @ 4K then you will need to step up to either a sky lake i3 (software decode) or wait a bit for the newer Kaby Lake chips to come out

 

[sam9s]

Yea intended purpose, drives everything, else a meek Rpi 2 also does the job...