sam9s HTPC Project! powered by XBMC!!

[manniraj]

I have a gigabyte 880gm mobo with onboard graphics. This is not playing some of the 1080p videos properly with overlapping of frames. So decided and brought a new gpu zotac gt440 and installed it. The same video is working fine now without any frames overlapping. But now my question is how do i disable/switch off my board graphics to reduce the power consumption. Do i need to make any changes in the BIOS. I have uninstalled all the ATI drivers for graphics & sound and installed the nvidia drivers. Also the gt440 started to work only after i plugged in the power on the mobo for the graphics. I thought that this power was for onboard graphics and not the pci-e which the gt440 is. Please clarify.

Thanks.

 

[baijuxavior]

There is no need to disable the onboard graphics card. If you want, you can do so by going to the BIOS or through the device manager. The onboard graphics card won't consume much power.

You need to connect power to the new card for it to work.

 

[manniraj]

Thanks for the quick reply. Let me see for the BIOS/Device manager settings.

I was presuming that the power for the gt440 card would be coming in thru the pci-e slot itself which in turn gets from the mobo. So I am now presuming that the power for the pci-e slot comes thru the same power which I connected for the onboard graphics as the gt440 did not have any external power cable just I inserted the card into the pci-e slot and it worked only after I connected the power cable to the onboard graphics slot (4 pin) on the mobo.

 

[baijuxavior]

^^ Latest high end graphic cards need additional power connection.

 

[manniraj]

I require this adaptor Amazon.com: StarTech.com Slimline SATA to SATA Adapter with Power(SLSATAADAP): Electronics and this drive bay Amazon.com: StarTech.com Slim Optical 3.5-Inch Hard Drive Mounting Bracket for 5.25-Inch Front Bay SLIMCDFDCAGE (Black): Electronics to insert my slim blu-ray drive and connect the same to my motherboard with the sata. However these items are not available to be shipped to India and I enquired in SP Road, Bangalore but no body has this items. Can somebody from Bangalore refer me to a shop with these items are available. I checked on the ebay and the items are pretty expensive when shipped from US compared to the one listed on amazon.

Thanks.

 

[hydra]

@manniraj, you can get it from Amazon through ICC World.

They will buy it for you in the US and ship it to your address in India. You can get a quote from them through their website.

OR, You can buy it online yourself and get it shipped to you through Aramex (Shop and Ship :: Home). For a one-time purchase from the US, Iccworld might work out to be slightly cheaper.

 

[manniraj]

Thanks, I requested for a quote from the ICCWorld site. Let me see how much that turns out to be.

 

[Switch]

Hi Sam,

It was nice to see your HTPC video. I also have a HTPC running. Everything works fine. Just wanted to inquire what remote works best with the HTPC. I already have a generic one which I bought from ebay and also I have remote HD app installed on my iPhone but both of these don't actually cut it for a proper remote as generic one is just too tiny and sometimes don't actually work while the iPhone is with me most of the time and if other people in the house want to use HTPC then they have a problem.

Also I have TataSky HD+, Onkyo HTiB, Starto DVD Player, Xbox360 and Samsung LCD TV all there connected with the HT setup. Will there be a Universal remote which would accommodate most of these apart from the Xbox. I know it would be tricky to find a universal remote to work with the HTPC as well as the other equipment.

As for me adding my 2 cents to the cause/thread I would advise you to try using showmix as well as the Alaska Revisited skin for the XBMC. I use all three(Traparency,Showmix & Alaska) but personally Alaska Revisited feels very very polished. Have a look...

Showmix (Aeon)
[youtube]1tBf27-lDLI[/youtube]

Alaska Revisited
[youtube]zgtszrN_tjU[/youtube]

 

[cmsajith]

Thanks, I requested for a quote from the ICCWorld site. Let me see how much that turns out to be.

New Micro SATA Power Adapter Cable for HDD MK1617GSG | eBay

This is available for 4$ with worldwide free shipping.

 

[manniraj]

New Micro SATA Power Adapter Cable for HDD MK1617GSG | eBay

This is available for 4$ with worldwide free shipping.

I ordered this item, I think the seller is from Hong Kong more than a month back but the item never arrived and I have asked the seller for the refund. I checked with the local post office and they have not received the item and blame the customs for not clearing it. And the bad part is the tracking is available till it reaches India and after that there is no way to find out where the item is as it is sent thru local Indian post.

 

[sam9s]

There is no need to disable the onboard graphics card. If you want, you can do so by going to the BIOS or through the device manager. The onboard graphics card won't consume much power.

You need to connect power to the new card for it to work.

^^ Latest high end graphic cards need additional power connection.

Thanks for the quick reply. Let me see for the BIOS/Device manager settings.

I was presuming that the power for the gt440 card would be coming in thru the pci-e slot itself which in turn gets from the mobo. So I am now presuming that the power for the pci-e slot comes thru the same power which I connected for the onboard graphics as the gt440 did not have any external power cable just I inserted the card into the pci-e slot and it worked only after I connected the power cable to the onboard graphics slot (4 pin) on the mobo.

What are you talking about, GT440 does not need any external power from the PSU. GT440 is hardly a High End graphic card. Its just enough for HTPC. Gaming people wont even look at this card for their requirement, unless they are gaming at say 15" monitor with all goodies turned down. Maniraj you dont need external power for this card. Just plug it in on the board and off you go. (as you have already done I presume.)

What I am surprised was that the Intel HD graphics giving problems. What chip-set your mobo has???

Here a pic of my 440, no external power needed ...

 

[hydra]

...And the bad part is the tracking is available till it reaches India and after that there is no way to find out where the item is as it is sent thru local Indian post.

If you check with the FPO (Foreign Post Office) in your city, they might be able to help. The tracking details might help them in tracing the packet.

It does depend on your luck, though. I had to do this once (for a packet from HK itself) and they got it for me in a week.

 

[manniraj]

What are you talking about, GT440 does not need any external power from the PSU. GT440 is hardly a High End graphic card. Its just enough for HTPC. Gaming people wont even look at this card for their requirement, unless they are gaming at say 15" monitor with all goodies turned down. Maniraj you dont need external power for this card. Just plug it in on the board and off you go. (as you have already done I presume.)

What I am surprised was that the Intel HD graphics giving problems. What chip-set your mobo has???

Here a pic of my 440, no external power needed ...

What I was referring to is that as my mobo is a amd (gigabyte 880gm) and not Intel based. This mobo has a 4 pin power to be connected from the psu for the onboard graphics to work. This 4 pin power when i disconnect it from the mobo the gt440 card does not work. I do not see anything on the screen when I do this as I connected the hdmi of gt440 to my tv and not from the onboard hdmi. I have not connected anything from/to the gt440 except putting into the pci-e slot.

 

[manniraj]

If you check with the FPO (Foreign Post Office) in your city, they might be able to help. The tracking details might help them in tracing the packet.

It does depend on your luck, though. I had to do this once (for a packet from HK itself) and they got it for me in a week.

I am not sure what the FPO is but I personally visited last week to my local area post office and gave them the registered air mail reference number and they verified the parcel thru this site IPS Web Tracking/Item Tracking and then verified there own system with the same reference but unfortunately no item is recorded with them. This is the same site that the seller had mailed me once he had dispatched the item. So I was sure that the post office guy was on right track to check my item.

 

[sam9s]

Hi Sam,

It was nice to see your HTPC video. I also have a HTPC running. Everything works fine. Just wanted to inquire what remote works best with the HTPC. I already have a generic one which I bought from ebay and also I have remote HD app installed on my iPhone but both of these don't actually cut it for a proper remote as generic one is just too tiny and sometimes don't actually work while the iPhone is with me most of the time and if other people in the house want to use HTPC then they have a problem.

Also I have TataSky HD+, Onkyo HTiB, Starto DVD Player, Xbox360 and Samsung LCD TV all there connected with the HT setup. Will there be a Universal remote which would accommodate most of these apart from the Xbox. I know it would be tricky to find a universal remote to work with the HTPC as well as the other equipment.

As for me adding my 2 cents to the cause/thread I would advise you to try using showmix as well as the Alaska Revisited skin for the XBMC. I use all three(Traparency,Showmix & Alaska) but personally Alaska Revisited feels very very polished.

To be very frank I did not at all did any RnD on the remote part. Reason, no one uses my HTPC except me. and once I used the Android Official remote, I was so impressed that I did not at all feel the need to go for a physical dedicated remote.

For universal remote you can try any of the Harmony series. Its a bit pain to configure it, but once done, its a pleasure to use.

One thing I noted was that your library has all the movies including Hindi movies as well. I am not sure how would you like this, but I want to keep my Hindi Movies library separate. Like I have "Movies" on the Home screen menu that have all the movies including Hindi and then I have "Hindi Movies" where in it shows only my Hindi movies.

How you can do this, I will explain in the next post to make it a separate tutorial.........

 

[sam9s]

Time to update ....... Added yet another feature ...... (tell you the truth, I added this feature months ago, but completely forgot to share, thanks to "Switch" post that made me remember this feature as he has his titles all in one single library.) .....

2. To be able to have separate libraries for say, your....... "Hindi Movies" or "HD Movies" or "Divx movies" .... etc ..etc .... instead of having all the movies under one single "Movies" heading on the home page.

This can be achieved by a very nifty feature of XBMC called "Smart PlayLists", by using smart playlist you can instruct XBMC to group together certain set of movies based on a predefined criteria. Like as I mentioned above, we can group together all 720p movies, or all Hindi Movies or all movies with foreign language....etc etc.

Technicalities can be read HERE, but I will show you how smart playlists work and how you can have one too. Few snaps to start off with ...

You can see in the snap below I have a separate section called "Hindi Movies" on my Home Screen Menu, and the next snap shows all the hindi movies grouped together.

Here a video created my me that shows how you can create smart playlists ....

How to create smart playlists in XBMC - YouTube

 

[baijuxavior]

What are you talking about, GT440 does not need any external power from the PSU. GT440 is hardly a High End graphic card. Its just enough for HTPC. Gaming people wont even look at this card for their requirement, unless they are gaming at say 15" monitor with all goodies turned down. Maniraj you dont need external power for this card. Just plug it in on the board and off you go. (as you have already done I presume.)

What I am surprised was that the Intel HD graphics giving problems. What chip-set your mobo has???

Here a pic of my 440, no external power needed ...

Thanks sam for pointing out my ignorance. I have no experience with this graphics card GT440. Since the op said, the card worked only after inserting power cable, I assumed that GT440 needs additional power supply.

 

[ausyz]

I was presuming that the power for the gt440 card would be coming in thru the pci-e slot itself which in turn gets from the mobo. So I am now presuming that the power for the pci-e slot comes thru the same power which I connected for the onboard graphics as the gt440 did not have any external power cable just I inserted the card into the pci-e slot and it worked only after I connected the power cable to the onboard graphics slot (4 pin) on the mobo.

@manniraj
The 4 Pin power connector on Motherboard is for the Processor, not for onboard graphics* or for pcie-express slot*. The reason u didn't get any display through ur graphics card, after taking away the 4 pin power is because the processor didn't TURN ON (am not talking about the cpu fan, it will spin). You won't get any display with a dead processor.

Forget about power conception by onboard graphics. By default*(depends on bios settings) onboard graphics processor is shutdown, when motherboard detects a card in the pci-e slot.

[An exception to this is, if u have enable ATI SurroundView* in bios.(if your motherboard has such an option)]

All new generation graphics card are capable of energy saving. They all have three basic operating profiles
1. Default ( idle mode, low core/memory/shader clock speeds: ie. low power conception while idle)
2. 2D Desktop ( this profile is activated while playing movie files, flash in browsers, picture slide shows etc)
3. 3D Desktop (Gaming mode, max core/memory/shader clock speeds, energy conception is high)

Download and install GPU-Z and use it to monitor ur graphics card, at all the above circumstances and see the card is working accordingly.

 

[sam9s]

This mobo has a 4 pin power to be connected from the psu for the onboard graphics to work. This 4 pin power when i disconnect it from the mobo the gt440 card does not work. I do not see anything on the screen when I do this as I connected the hdmi of gt440 to my tv and not from the onboard hdmi. I have not connected anything from/to the gt440 except putting into the pci-e slot.

You are confused, its not for your GPU. Thats for the CPU. I got a bit late to explain. ausyz has explained it very nicely. If the fan is working does not mean CPU is working, coz CPU fan has independent power. Anyway its resolved.... is what is more important.

 

[sam9s]

BTW for all movie buffs, using XBMC for their HT, checkout this sharethe.tv add on. Create an account at sharethe.tv and install the plugin in your XBMC via Add-Ons. You then can send your collection directly from XBMC to their site, and can share the link to your friends, like I have done in my sig. Click on the pic and it will take you to my XBMC collection.