Upgrade or replace 210p?

[bgtees]

Looking for advice from anyone who's been in the same situation with their 210p.  I've been using my 210p (Sempron 3100+, 1GB RAM, ti4200) as a HTPC to playback downloaded shows (divx & mkv files).  Works fine for this.  I was thinking about adding a blu-ray drive to the 210p - obviously this will require upgading the video card.  I've been looking at the ATI 2400Pro or 3450 as viable replacements that will work with the 250W PSU.  Due to the AGP slot & 250W PSU, these seem to be the cards with the best chance of working.  But then the more I read about driver problems for ATI/AGP cards, and also the fact that many people have struggled to get Blu-Ray to play well with these cards, the more I'm considering just building a new HTPC from scratch.

So I guess my questions boil down to:

1) Has anyone attempted to get an internal Blu-Ray DVD drive to work with the 210p?

2) Has anyone tried either of these cards (2400Pro or HD3450)?

3) If I decide to build from scratch, would it be possible to re-use the IDEQ case?  I'm looking at a build with an Intel miniATX or microATX motherboard.

Thanks

[rrussell]

No replies, huh?

1) I haven't, coz I don't have one...
2) I haven't, coz I don't have one...
3) No clue, but my hunch is you'd have to hit a nano-itx before you got small enough.  And I'm not sure about the 210P, but the 200N has indentations on the bottom of the case which are designed to actually make contact with hot parts of the motherboard and dissipate heat.  If that's the case with the 210P also, you'll have to make damned sure to insulate the contact points (or cut the indentations out) or you run the risk of letting all the smoke out.

And then it won't run at all.

Hope this wasn't entirely worthless?

[fobis]

bgtees, the only reason why you would need to upgrade your video card is to hope for fully supported video playback hardware acceleration. Your Sempron will simply not cut it especially when it comes to any Blu-Ray encoded in H264/AVC. Playing SD content in DivX/XviD is one thing (and I'm not sure what codec is being used in the MKV files you mentioned, but my guess can only be either DivX/XviD or low resolution H264), but HD H264 content requires a FAST CPU. Generally speaking, a dual core is pretty much required.

Now, having a video card that offloads the computational work needed to be done to playback Blu-Ray would help, but only if it worked 100% of the time. From what I can gather, hardware acceleration for video playback provided by the video cards only works under certain circumstances.

I guess my point is that you may want to do a little bit more research on whether or not your system could really playback Blu-Ray without consistently chopping up before you bite the bullet and purchase a drive.

I would suggest, though, that you just look at buying a brand new setup for an HTPC. I parted a decent one together for my friend using NewEgg just last week and the price came out to be about $700 shipping included.

Unfortunately, getting an SFF case is just still way too expensive. I just can't seem to justify it in my mind and honestly I don't know how I did years ago when I bought my 200N. Regardless, I had a fun ride with it and it brought me to this wonderful little forum, which I actually have not logged into for more than a year (last login was in 11-28-07).

rrussell: howdy.

[rrussell]

Hey there, Fobis!  How's it been?

I've "moved on" from the 200N as well, but invested in a shuttle off of Ebay. It's worked out great, only cost me a hundred bucks.

Is your 200N still alive?  My kids use mine on a daily basis to watch "Zoboomafoo" videos

[fobis]

I've been doing well. How about yourself?

As for my 200N, it has been dead since I last logged in back in Nov. 07. I'm not quite sure what happened with it, but I'm assuming it overheated and something blew. When I hit the power button, the fans would barely even kick in. One of my guesses would be something blew in the PSU, but I don't believe I even had the will power to test another PSU at that point. I had been fighting an uphill battle with the system as far as stability went and so I gave up.

I'm glad you got a nice Shuttle! I was looking specifically at that system way back, but then decided it was too expensive for a desktop.

I'm also glad to see that you're still very active in this near-dead forum! Haha, keep that old Biostar iDeq spirit alive!

[rrussell]

Yeah, that shuttle was my last best hope for a decent PC back when my wife got laid off.  I figured, better get while the gettin's good and hope it doesn't keel over  Never did get into modding it the way we did the Biostars though.

So long as someone asks about a 200N, I can answer  Anything else is kind of a crapshoot.

[brmiller]

Man, and I thought I was the only one left running a 210P.  I haven't need or desire to attempt a Blu-Ray conversion, but my 210P has been strong for 5 years now!  Holy cow!  I bought it right before my first son was born and all the money goes to the kids now. lol.  It's been in the same config since I started, save for that I'm using a smaller HDD since most everything is on the server downstairs.

I will say this--I have an AMD64 3400+ and an nVidia Quadro FX 1000--and I'm able to use the 210P as a MythTV frontend to display recorded or live HD from my myth box across the room.  I was pretty stoked when that worked!

Keep on, SFFers.  (Is the whole SFF thing dead?  I too hadn't been on here in ages, nor have I seen much in the way of new SFF rigs.  Shuttle still seems to crank out new ones, but any one else?)

Brendan

[TheTerribleTinkerer]

[quote ]
Keep on, SFFers.  (Is the whole SFF thing dead?  I too hadn't been on here in ages, nor have I seen much in the way of new SFF rigs.  Shuttle still seems to crank out new ones, but any one else?)
[/quote]

The NKS1380 and the LanBox are alive and well. I prefer these over the proprietary BIOStar and Shuttle products.