Monday, February 27, 2017

HTPC Build

I document this because I have learned much in the last few days only after LOTS of forum browsing. Millions of computers setups out there, but every setup is different.

Background: I have an 8 year old Dell that I added a Radeon HD 3600 graphics card, and a Bluray burner to back when I bought it. It has always been hooked up to an Insignia 1080p LCD television bought at Best Buy circa 2008. DVI output converted to HDMI for the TV. I never understood it, but it always defaulted to 59 Hz and that made the picture small on the TC (1 inch black borders all around). Changing it to 60 Hz gave me a perfect 1:1 pixel display.

It looked great for many years. I had consistent problems over the years with Corel's WinDVD 11. Problem after problem. I eventually quit even trying to play Blurays and I just ripped them with Make MKV. Then the MKV files quit playing. I had promised the kids we would watch the Hobbit and I was desperate, so I plunked down $50 for PowerDVD. It kind of worked but was super blotchy. Tax returns came and I decided to upgrade.

Goal: I just want another media PC that I can watch blurays on, and eventually connect to a 4k TV. I am not gamer, so I don't need much, I just want to be able to surf the web in 4k. The goal then is to enable 4k on a budget. Using integrated graphics is where I try to save my money. The new Kaby Lake processors have HDCP 2.2 capabilities and can handle 4k.

New Build:MB:   GA-Z170X-Gaming 7  (one of few motherboards I found that supports HDMI 2.0)
Processor: Intel 7th Gen Intel Core Desktop Processor i7-7700K (BX80677I77700K)
SSD: Samsung: MZ-75E250B/AMRAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 DRAM 3200MHz (PC4-25600) C16 Memory Kit - Black

Issues:
1. Put it all together. Will not boot. Thankfully, the error code on the motherboard (62) led me to the right forums where I learned that my old BIOS can't handle my brand new processor. Simple. Flash the BIOS, except you need a processor for that. Micro Center took care of that for me--flashed my BIOS for $30. Money well spent. Now it boots! Installed Windows 10. Basic functionality successful.

2. Overscan. The bane of so many people's HTPCs. The image spills far beyond the edges of the TV. There is a scaling option in the Intel control panel, that in essence solves the problem, but everything looks blurry. a 1 pixel line looks a bit blurred, and text is kind of fuzzy too. It makes sense, because the comp is sending a less than 1920x1080 picture and the TV is then scaling it up to 1920x1080. But I swear my OLD computer looked better. So I hook it back up. Things look great. I put that old graphics card in my new computer. Also looks great. (I tried playing a bluray while the old GPU was in there. Failed miserably. It was the problem with blurays. Blue rays play great with integrated graphics) What's the difference. Much searching leads me to an answer I am confident in. My TV (Insignia circa 2008) recognizes my old computer signal as DVI despite it coming through the HDMI input. It announces DVI on the screen when it is plugged in. The firmware on the TV, recognizing DVI as a computer signal does NOT overscan. Hence it works with the old comp. The new build is HDMI - HDMI and my old TV does not allow me to turn off overscan (even through the factory menu (input 2 5 8 0)). I imagine a dedicated graphics card may be able to handle this better. I ended up just buying a $250 Scepter 4k tv on Walmart.com. Research says that I will probably be satisfied. I shall post a review...

3. My ripped blurays (mkv) still don't play. HD tune reveals my HDD (moved from old comp to new) has a read speed of 1 MB/sec. Bummer. I don't remember how old it is, but was used very little and always as a secondary drive.

Future: I will post reviews once I have the 4k TV setup. There was a lack of resources for me looking to build a non-gamine 4k setup. Hopefully this will all work well and someone will benefit from this first blog post in like 8 years.