Replacing an Oppo BDP by an HTPC + gaming

[anm]

what would be your suggestion for building an htpc.

• 
  An HTPC that can match video quality of oppo 103. 4k upscaling can be left out at this point.

• 
  An htpc that can match audio quality of oppo 103. Possibly that of 105 in 2 channel.

• 
  can bit stream 8 channel loss less.

• 
  Can play 3D videos/ isos/ blu-rays with ease

• 
  not so important - Can play sacd/ dvda

• 
  has low thermal footprint, boots up really fast, and can be put on standby for low power consumption mode.

• 
  along with all of the above, how to use it as a gaming rig? Specially, keeping the thermal footprint when gaming is not required. One way could be a different PSU and a different video card dedicated to gaming. that would probably require a different kind of cabinet that can house two power supplies? Or will the thermal footprint itself go down when gaming is not engaged?
  

Budget ~50k

 

[prosenjit]

ASUS MOTHERBOARD 990FX CROSSHAIR FORMULA V Z AM3+ NEW AMD AM3 USB 3.0 990FX | eBay

ASUS Sabertooth Z77 Intel DDR3 i7 i5 22nm 1155 SLI CF 5Yr TUF ATX Motherboard | eBay

processor acordingly

psu
Corsair TX950W Watts SMPS Power Supply TX 950W | eBay

cards
New ATI DDR3 HD6570 2GB 128bit PCI-E VGA DVI HDMI Graphics Card-HNJ | eBay

Asus Xonar Phoebus ROG Gaming Sound Card | eBay

use the mobo only fisrt...if not satisfied buy the cards

 

[baijuxavior]

what would be your suggestion for building an htpc.

• 
  An HTPC that can match video quality of oppo 103. 4k upscaling can be left out at this point.

• 
  An htpc that can match audio quality of oppo 103. Possibly that of 105 in 2 channel.

• 
  can bit stream 8 channel loss less.

• 
  Can play 3D videos/ isos/ blu-rays with ease

• 
  not so important - Can play sacd/ dvda

• 
  has low thermal footprint, boots up really fast, and can be put on standby for low power consumption mode.

• 
  along with all of the above, how to use it as a gaming rig? Specially, keeping the thermal footprint when gaming is not required. One way could be a different PSU and a different video card dedicated to gaming. that would probably require a different kind of cabinet that can house two power supplies? Or will the thermal footprint itself go down when gaming is not engaged?
  

Budget ~50k

1. Video quality mainly depends on the gpu, media player and the video renderer used.

2. For best two channel audio you should get a good DAC.

3. HD audio through hdmi is available in all latest motherboards. Most graphic cards also support hd audio and 3d blu-ray playback. I am using a 2.5K GT520 and it plays 3d blu-ray and hd audio easily. My motherboard supports hd audio passthrough, but not 3d blu-rays. I am using the gpu hdm5 for display to tv and motherboard hdmi for audio to avr.

4. You need a blu-ray drive. I am using LG blu-ray writer imported through ebay geb. Price was 5.8K where as it costs around 8K here.

5. Not sure about sacd playback.

6. AMD APUs are very energy efficient and are highly recommended for HTPC. For faster bootup you can use SSD, but I would suggest to use Windows 8. With a special feature called hybrid boot, Win8 will boot in flat 10 seconds from hard disk.

 

[anm]

ASUS MOTHERBOARD 990FX CROSSHAIR FORMULA V Z AM3+ NEW AMD AM3 USB 3.0 990FX | eBay

ASUS Sabertooth Z77 Intel DDR3 i7 i5 22nm 1155 SLI CF 5Yr TUF ATX Motherboard | eBay

processor acordingly

psu
Corsair TX950W Watts SMPS Power Supply TX 950W | eBay

cards
New ATI DDR3 HD6570 2GB 128bit PCI-E VGA DVI HDMI Graphics Card-HNJ | eBay

Asus Xonar Phoebus ROG Gaming Sound Card | eBay

use the mobo only fisrt...if not satisfied buy the cards

thanks for to the point response prosenjit. I have questions about the thermal footprint. How much would be the power consumption/ head generated when simply listening to a song, vs watching a 3D movie vs playing a game? that 950w psu itself may heat up a lot!

1. Video quality mainly depends on the gpu, media player and the video renderer used.

2. For best two channel audio you should get a good DAC.

3. HD audio through hdmi is available in all latest motherboards. Most graphic cards also support hd audio and 3d blu-ray playback. I am using a 2.5K GT520 and it plays 3d blu-ray and hd audio easily. My motherboard supports hd audio passthrough, but not 3d blu-rays. I am using the gpu hdm5 for display to tv and motherboard hdmi for audio to avr.

4. You need a blu-ray drive. I am using LG blu-ray writer imported through ebay geb. Price was 5.8K where as it costs around 8K here.

5. Not sure about sacd playback.

6. AMD APUs are very energy efficient and are highly recommended for HTPC. For faster bootup you can use SSD, but I would suggest to use Windows 8. With a special feature called hybrid boot, Win8 will boot in flat 10 seconds from hard disk.

thanks. An external DAC would be nice. or can the asus/ juliet (julia@) card be good enough/ comparable?

What about video processing? Oppo has some really good reviews on its video processing. Can a graphics card match that?

 

[spirovious]

As others said,graphic cards are much capables like BDp when you choose good GPU & its drivers.
When you have AVR which can decode HD audio,simple Graphic card with HDMI out which can support HD-audio Bitstreaming is required for movies.
For music,good soundcard OR DAC will be much needed.
SACD will require multi channel soundcard.
If you plan to DL BD rips,then Bluray drive may not be needed.

 

[mbhangui]

Regarding SACD playback (from wikipedia)

Unofficial playback of SACD disk images on a PC is possible through freeware audio player foobar2000 for Windows using an open source plug-in extension called SACDDecoder.[57]

 

[anm]

I have a NAD AVR and it doesn't have much video processing. I would prefer it in AVR where most things can be done per source basis.

 

[reignofchaos]

Get any i3 cpu with an h77 board, 8gigs of ram, a xonar essence stx and a GT650/HD7750 GPU. Should be more than enough to beat an Oppo BD103 Bluray player. Only issue would be the fact that it wont be able to play sacds as there's no way do decode an sacd on pc. Unencrypted images can be played back but not physical sacds.

 

[anm]

^^^^ but will I would be able to dump iso images of sacd with my regular drive?

 

[reignofchaos]

^^^^ but will I would be able to dump iso images of sacd with my regular drive?

Nope the only known way to extract images of sacds is by using a 1st gen 'fat' ps3.