Building my HTPC (Part V: Finale)

This is sort of a 'wrap up' post for the 'Building my HTPC' series, so here is the list of previous posts:

• Part I: Decisions
• Part II: Building my HTPC
• Part III: Going HD-DVD
• Part IV: Mums HTPC, The AMD Choice

And now for some interesting numbers… I recently purchased a power meter, it plugs into a socket, you plug a device into the power meter, and it'll tell you interesting things like how many watts are being consumed.

Computer	Watt (Off/plugged in)	Watt (Sleep)	Watt (Light load)	Cost to run/day*
Original HTPC (S939 based)	12w	14w	120w	24.12c ($88.03/Year) (0.168 + 1.44 = 1.608 kW)
New/My HTPC (LGA775 based)	12w	12w	63w	13.5c ($49.27/Year) (0.144 + 0.756 = 0.9 kW)
Mums HTPC (AM2 based)	12w	12w	80w	16.56c ($60.44/Year) (0.144kw + 0.96 = 1.104 kW)

*Assuming 12 hours a day sleep, 12 hours in use (remember, it does music too!), and that 1 kWh costs 15c. Your mileage will vary.

Price:performance, the AM2 system probably wins (since the measurement of performance in a HTPC in this situation is a binary 'does it play back 1080p content or not'), but performance:watt Intel wins hands down. I'd be really interested to get some readings from AMD's "BE" range of low power consumption CPU's.

Sleep/standby mode on the two new systems uses the same amount of power that the system does while its turned off! If the HTPCs were in sleep mode, it usually takes it less than 10 seconds to boot up. By comparison, if my TV (Sony Bravia W series) has been off for more than 5minutes, it takes up to a minute to turn on!

If you end up buying the parts I have, or similar, remember to make sure you set in bios (or for my motherboard, set jumpers, see the manual details) the option to wake from S3/S4 via USB. This means you can wake up the computer using the Media Center remote, by pressing the On/Off button. It becomes a whole lot more usable when you don't have to get off the couch to turn it on!

Another thing to note is that for Australian users, there is no Electronic Program Guide (EPG) for Windows Vista that just "works" out of the box, due to the networks not making it freely/easily available. However, Nick Hodge recommended Free*EPG, which I finally got around to installing on mums HTPC yesterday. Her reaction was "Wow, that's awesome", and she gave me permission to give Nick a hug on her behalf, just before she queued up two shows to record that night.

Windows Media Center: Making mums happy.

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