What would make a good UHD HTPC

[Pauven]

In the past few years, chasing certain feature sets has led me repeatedly to Asrock. Primarily, Asrock seems to be one of the few to commonly feature onboard 10 Gb NIC, though that's by no mean an exclusive feature. Since that was one of my must-have features, Asrock is often my go-to brand.

But other than that, I don't really have a preference. My current HTPC is running MSI. I like Gigabit and ASUS too. Basically, I decide what features are important to me (i.e. chipset, mem slots, ports, etc.), filter by those criteria, then sort by reviews. Then I buy the one that has the "most best" reviews - i.e. I ignore the 5-star MB with just 1 review, and instead go for the 4.5 star MB that has 129 reviews, because that's what people are actually buying and you can [better] trust the rating. Of course, I also value shop too. MB's are getting ridiculously expensive, but for HTPC use you really don't need any of those bells and whistles. I normally stay in the $100-200 range, though I eagerly spend less when possible, and begrudgingly spend more when required. Often, those more expensive motherboards are simply adding features that you will never ever use (i.e. better overclocking, more M.2, more USB, enhanced cooling, RGB.

I also find it important to read the reviews too. Often a MB will have a feature that causes buyers to lower their rating, but that feature happens to be unimportant to you. For example, maybe the onboard RAID features don't work right, but you aren't going to use RAID anyway, so you can disregard those negative reviews since they don't affect you. The reviews that scare me away are the DOA or "failed after 2 months" type reviews. When I narrow it down to a handful of boards, I often try to read reviews from multiple sources, i.e. Newegg and Amazon and elsewhere. Sometimes you'll find a product reviewed highly in one place, but lowly elsewhere. I lean towards products that seem to get lots of good reviews from multiple sources. I know, I know - scammers be scamming with fake reviews no matter what, but I really don't know what else to do.

Also, pick out your memory last, after picking out the MB, and make sure the memory is listed on the MB's QVL for memory. In my experience, this can be one of the most important factors, preventing memory related headaches.

I know one of the features you're chasing is HDMI 2.1 that the 11th gen chips have - do you homework and make sure any motherboard you're considering also supports it. Sometimes these features require both CPU and MB to support the feature before it works. No idea if that applies here.

Regarding size, both Micro ATX and Mini ITX are fine. I went Micro ATX, mainly because there were more options and they were less expensive than the Mini ITX's.

[Pauven]

Well I just read some disappointing news. Turns out I was very confused about Intel's path.

The new Rocket Lake S 11th gen desktop CPU's with UHD 750 graphics is only a small upgrade over the previous UHD 630 GPU, and is not the Intel Iris Xe level graphics we were hoping for. The Tiger Lake mobile CPU's have 96 execution units, while the UHD 750 only had 1/3rd of that, just 32 execution units.

Looks like the only way to get the new Iris Xe graphics is to buy something that has Tiger Lake in it, likely a pre-built mobile based solution, though perhaps some NUCs may include it.

Additionally, the UHD 730 is a cut down version of the 750, with only 24 EU's, and may actually be slower than the UHD 630.

[Jamie]

Yes, I heard about the way Intel is moving their graphics capabilities to pre built PCs, Yes NUCS included. It seems that they are really screwing HTPC enthusiasts. I just can't understand Cyberlink making a deal with intel in order to cripple powerdvd. All I see for hdmi 2.1 boards are AMD products.. SGX gives the user nothing except an intel PC, AMD has all the advanced boards now.. There is only one intel M-ITX board that supposed to have HDMI 2.1 and it's an Asus board.

I will probably get the I5 plus the asus board and if I hate the graphics I' will buy an NVidia card and work with Jriver if I have too.

The board I am looking at is a ASUS TUF Gaming B560M-PLUS WiFi LGA1200 (Intel11th/10th Gen).

I may have a limited graphics with the CPU but everything else will be up to snuff.

At least I'll have the ability to upgrade parts which the NUC doesn't provide.

When does Cyberlink come out with a new version of powerdvd? I want to see whether the support the UHD 750?

[Pauven]

Cyberlink's website indicates they are having their "final" sale on PowerDVD 20, so perhaps that's an allusion to 21 coming?

That must be a really new motherboard. I can only find it on Amazon, and it only has 1 review. But you do get the HDMI 2.0 with 11th gen CPU's. I'm still curious if all 11th gen motherboards automatically support HDMI 2.0 with 11th gen CPU's, or if there's something special about it. Though for sure I would stick with a 5xx series chipset, and avoid the few 4xx series chipsets that backported 11th gen support. Looks like a nice motherboard otherwise.

Though I do see it clearly mentioned that HDMI 2.0 support is only with 11th gen. No mention of HDMI 2.1. I think once again the difference between Tiger Lake (HDMI 2.1) and Rocket Lake S (HDMI 2.0b) - man it's hard trying to keep this all straight. Not sure if this distinction matters to you. 1080p support looks identical, and 4K support up to 60FPS is also identical. As long as you're not looking for 8K support, or 4K over 60fps, I don't know what benefit you would get from HDMI 2.1.

[Jamie]

The RTX 3060 looks like a good card but of course it is sold out. Reminds me of the crypto mining days. I wonder if the PC industry made up this silicon shortage in order to make more profits.

[Jamie]

if I have a rtx3060 I guess I need a 550w power Supply. It draws 170w

[Pauven]

Silicon shortage is real, definitely not made up. Companies are selling everything they can make, and they can't meet record high demand. It's affecting more and more industries by the week. Unfortunately, it seems the middle-men, retailers and resellers are the ones making the real profits - most manufacturers are sticking to "reasonable" prices (in this case, "reasonable" means higher than ever, but in line with performance/$).

There's a lot of debate over how much impact crypto-mining is having on the industry. Personally, I would like to see virtual currencies outlawed, as they seem to enable criminals to get paid without revealing identities, plus they are a waste of Earth's energy resources. I don't see any legal benefit to them that I can't get from my MasterCard...

The RTX 3060 does seem really nice. Anything in the 3xxx series is nice. 550w seems like plenty of power for a i5 and an RTX 3060, and gives you some spare capacity in case you go bigger in the future.

[Jamie]

The ASUS TUF Gaming B560M-PLUS WiFi motherboard does not come out until April 12 and it will probably be sold out before I can purchase it. I will purchase the CPU and MB at the same time. I will wait for the reviews too. I think cyberlink will release powerdvd 21 in early May. I just want to look at the requirements and see whether they became smart and chucked sgx and the Integrated intel GPU and whether they support UHD 750.

[Teddyboy]

Jamie take a look at my hardware thread. Links to what I bought are there. It all comes down to which features are important to you and how much you want to spend. I appear to be leaning more and more towards ASRock these days. A $100 motherboard can work just as well as a $350 one. Especially when it comes to htpc use. I usually stick to the QVL for memory. I didn’t this time. I’m not over clocking, and I bought it with a 11th gen cpu in mind. It was a good deal for 16gb when I bought it. I bought a 10th gen i3 in anticipation of upgrading, but with Rocket Lake a incremental upgrade, I may just stick with what I bought. Motherboards are smart enough to adjust memory timings within reason, so we’ll see how it goes.

I think this whole sgx thing is overblown. Use the fox and you should be fine with PowerDVD or jriver for that matter. It removes that requirement. No one on the foxes forums is complaining about it. I’m probably going to stick with jriver for Blu-ray/UHD playback, and MPC for DVDs upscaled. I prefer igpu over discrete for htpc use. Keeps it simple for me. I think 10th gen igpu’s should be able to handle UHD just fine. I have 16gb of ram so I can dedicate 4-6gb to graphics for UHD and madvr. I’ll know soon enough when I install the new hardware if it can handle it or not. Worse case if it doesn’t work well I’ll have to upgrade my case to fit a discrete card. HDPlex has cases that will fit a discrete graphics card with passive cooling. I just don’t want to spend the money right now so that will have to wait if it doesn’t work. The new 4k panel I want to get first.

[Jamie]

Thanks for your responses guys. I will consider everything you said. As far as sgx goes, I don't think it is any benefit to the user. I don't think it worked well with Intel equipment as well but was a hinderance to everyone. If you search for my name on the foxy site you will find two discussions that I had with James and SamuriHL Foxy does turn off sgx usage but Powerdvd may require the intel igpu. Jriver is fine for blurays and I have played with madvr a little but. My concern is that I do not have the expertise to tweak madvr for UHD discs.

I think that I have a month to investigate things before pulling the trigger but I am concerned about the affects of the silicon shortage and whether I will be able to get what I desire. Paul is right I should at least wait for the reviews. I should also allow the MB manufacturers to provide newer MBs. I probably will get the 4k UHD TV in early fall which is when the prices have a little drop for the newer models.

Jamie