Ultimate Home Theater PC - Silent & Powerful - Tech Deals 

*UPDATE* - Several people have asked "why not just use a NAS?". That question implies that the only use here is to play back MP4 files that are stored on drives and that can be played back via an app on a Smart TV. If that was the only goal, sure, that could work... except how do you backup the NAS? Remember that RAID is not backup. Putting that issue aside, a full PC on your TV can do so much more. As noted in the video, you can access streaming web sites that may not have an app for your favorite device or TV, you can rip DVD and Blu-Rays to ISO files and mount them, keeping their contents intact. You can play back odd and unsupported media formats that "apps" would complain about. You can transcode media to other formats, and at the end of the day, have absolute control over your PC/TV experience. Backing up the local storage is easy for $5 per month via Backblaze (link in video description for a free trial), and you can add/remove whatever parts you want to make it your own. This sort of media PC isn't for everyone, but for what I use it for, no app would replace it, I like having a full Windows desktop on my TV that I can do whatever I want with.

Damn, that was my plan for my 2400g. Thanks for always making the most informative content on youtube.

I built a wonderful media PC a few years ago, and my wife absolutely loves me for it. Seriously... she uses it almost every day to stream all sorts of movies she finds. Especially foreign movies, because she grew up outside of the US. It has saved us big dollars, not having to sign up for special cable. Windows 7 has a free TV Guide function in Media Center, which you can buy a cheap remote for. And you can record off the air or cable. Lately, I have been exploring Linux. And this is a great PC to try it with. When Windows 7 is no longer supplying the TV Guide function, Linux will with the Myth TV App. And no Windows 10 crap! I wish I could switch all my PC's. But Linux does not support a lot of games as yet.

Honestly, this man could sell me a broken pen, tell me in my face that it is broken, and I'd still buy it... How does one achieve such power? O_o

Nice info, I've recently been thinking of a HTPC lately, getting sick of the outdated TV apps that keep crashing and never get updated 😭

Whenever I watch this man's videos, the way he talks just makes me happy inside. I have no clue why but its just nice to listen to him talk.

I’m a simple man, i see a tech deals video... I play it

Man, your voice is so clear that it can make a deaf person start hearing

whoever reading comment, i dont see why you dont support this channel, because this guy right here is the only person in the whole youtube trying to help people to save money and help you to make best bang for your bucks. This channel needs to stay alive for the good.

The Intel Gen 11 Iris Plus Graphics 940 will be a beast. Giving you twice the decoding power and gaming performance. The next generation of intel might have a sub $200 budget gaming champion CPU soon. Vega 11 performance and Intel cores? Yes! Perfect HTPC CPUs too. If you can wait for them to launch.

I bought a core i5 9400f with a rx vega 56 for gaming and it works really well!

Giving real feedback, very useful as always. I was thinking about this until I bought a long hdmi cable and plugged my tv to my gaming pc. At the moment it’s running perfectly. I went from ryzen back to intel, simply for gaming at 100+ FPS, intel gives stable performance.

if it's a silent pc how will i hear the movie?

ah, the i7-920. Some serious legs on that thing. Amazing really how, overall, CPU development was so stagnant between 2008 and 2017 when 'i7' finally got more cores.

When I buy stuff, I always use these amzn aff links to show my appreciation.. always great content

We ditched cable 9 years ago now. Internet only home built HTPC's built with gaming in mind and also ditched consoles about 8 years ago now to. And now large format monitors are here. I could not imagine going back to the way we used to do things.

I went the HTPC route a few years ago. Sold it and got an Nvidia Shield. The shield has a USB so you can plug in an external HDD. You can also network to a NAS if you need more storage.

Intel Quick Sync screams! Using Handbrake, I went from 10 hours to encode 2 hour 4K to just under 2 hours using the I7 8700K. The tricky part, is making sure the BIOS properly configured. That might be a good subject for future video?

A major problem with using intel CPU's is that the motherboards rarely support HDMI 2.0, including the one used above. Most B450 motherboards (and many A320) support HDMI 2.0 when using the Ryzen 3 2200G or Ryzen 5 2400G. Hence if 4k 60Hz viewing is a prerequisite, then AMD is really the only option (assuming you are using the iGPU).

Good HTPC build if you don't want to watch 4k60Hz. As far as I know, Intel doesn't support HDMI 2.0 on the iGPU. The AMD 2200G and 2400G support HDMI 2.0 on most B series boards. I use and Asrock B450 mini ITX for my HTPC with a 2400G ( I do lite gaming on that TV as well, like SC2 and Diablo III ). It all depends, but I think the only reason to get the Intel CPU is when you plan to rip blue rays, all other cases the AMD APU are far superior. I use the HTPC on a 75" 4k60Hz TV. The Intel can only drive 4k 30Hz.

The heck, I never knew the i5-9400 existed. I could only find the i5-9400F and it doesn't have integrated graphics, but the link in the description links to i5-8400?

This is what I'm talking about. These are the type of videos u absolutely shine in. It's literally like u are a teacher, u deliver this information so well. I left a little constructive criticism on your last tech deals gaming video where u were playing the division.

I will never move away from all metal cases! They are the best! Great build Mr Tech! You truly make magic with computers! This should be advertised for every living room!

Thanks for the guide! I turned my TV into a smart tv. It made me realize why the tv shows large gray bars on the top and bottom of the screen every time I change something. It is for displaying ads... The menu option "factory reset" did not remove it either but thanks to a guy on youtube I could use some obscure key sequences on the remote to do a real factory reset.

Great video, HTPCs are either forgotten about, or people just don't know how great they really are. Looking forward to part 2

This may be the best channel on all of youtube. I don't even care about a home theater PC and I still enjoy watching this. Keep up the excellent work!

will you be covering the types of software you use for your htpc in the second video? like what programs you use to rip/encode/stream etc. or how you stream the media to your other connected devices?

The Fractal Arc Midi is $65 on Newegg, 8 x 3.5" drive cages (2.25 too) and 2 x 5.25 ODD with one convertible to 3.5 w/ included bracket plus 3 x 140mm fans that are pretty good and since they're 140's will spin slower than 120's.

I was just thinking about an HTPC build. Answered the key questions of the day, like why an HTPC and not Smart TVs? Great outline and use case coverage. Classic Tech. Wall to wall coverage no topic is too big or small.

This is great! I been thinking of getting/building a HTPC and this video really explained some much needed info to me. I am curious about something though. In this video you discuss the box components but I'm curious about what kind of keyboard/mouse to use to navigate with. Is this something you will discuss in part 2? Also software? What do I need? Looking forward to part 2.

I built an HTPC based on an Intel I5 8400 in a mini ITX case, with 2 Samsung 860 EVO 1 TB for storage, 500 960 EVO 500 GB for boot, GTX 1060 6GB 16GB RAM mounted on a mini ITX Z370 gaming mainboard. it is great for gaming and also video playback. yes it is overkill but it is going to last a very long time. I also have a NAS on the network for mechanical storage. I also built this to keep my PC building experience up to date.

with all those HDDs that is Almost a server PC

I went with a small computer case for mine as it sorta matched the consoles it was going to sit beside.

can you please show the setup with plex or similar

You should be really proud of you and your channel. We watch every second of every tech video you upload, independently of whether it is acctually useful to us or not, but because the quality of your work makes it all worth it, and a pleasure.

I recently started using the Corsair 200R for two builds, for the purpose that it was affordable, tooless and is not a distraction.

I made mine with an 8th gen intel pentium g5600 Only 3tb drives since i have most of my movies in 720p But I did put a Blu-ray disk drive for the Blu-ray movies I have

I couldn't have a better explanation than this for a Home Theater PC , even if i made my own research. I'd probably go with the Pentium G5400 option combined with a large HDD just to watch movies. Thanks for this video!

What a class on HTPC fantastic my friend

Great video as always. I'm looking forward to the video of what software you use and how to configure it, and how to config a remote control for the media software. That always scared me away from building a media machine. Instead for the last 5+ years I have run a WD Media player linked to a Synology NAS. I recently upgraded the WD Media player to a Nvidia Shield running Kodi and it works really well, no complex software config required. It's my first time using Kodi and it has blown me away, great software.

Wouldn't you want a smaller case for that? A very nice video as always!

I can see the high performance coffee mug is on display.

Gotta love that feeling when you have extra inventory and just play around making RAID 0s and what not

*don't panic just because you're early leave a witty comment* Me: passes out

Make sure the MoBo you choose doesn't disable any of the SATA ports when M.2 ones are populated (or account for this). This is usually mentioned in the detailed description of the MoBo.

Even though this video is really well explained, you do not talk about the video resolution limits (Or I missed it). Does it play 4K ? (Quick Sync seems to say so) HDR ? HDR 10+.... ? What about home theater ? Does it need a sound card or is the motherboard enough for 5.1 or 7.1 ? But great video as usual !

Running my home theatre using an old Thinkpad x201 laptop. Works great except that I added a TV without display port so now I have to get a converter cable.

Good,excellent video as per usual.Not just throwing a pile of part together,but rather giving valid,common sense reasons for each choice.Good one man.

Never even thought of doing something like this, but Tech Deals got me wondering now 🤔

I have been going back and forth for the last few weeks about replacing my current PC with the same i7-920

How timely. I just upgraded my pc and my old case was the corsair 200r with an amd fx 4100. At least I now have a use for the case. Great video.

I've been wanting to make a media center PC but had no idea where to start. You have helped me. ty.

if there was a computer school, I would hire you to teach, keep up the great posts

Hey Tech, since you do real life purpose builds, heres a hyothetical one for you. the pre-adult content creator build (OK my nephew will probaly be needing this shortly and I want to get his dad and me a one up on this future present. You could expand on essential accessories (other family presents) and how much of his work space my brother in law probably be "donating".

Nice video as always Tech. One quick recommendation that I know many many people already have told you.. probably a better option for a media computer is a mini itx build.. Waiting for moths for a mini itx build. Thanks again for the useful information

Hello! I've been looking for the past week to build a new gaming pc. Since I bought mine from 2014 and, I've notice that I can't run most of the new games . And was thinking of building a new one. So I came a cross your videos looking for difference between graphics cards,ram,psu etc. And I was wandering if you look at my list of order(not ordered yet).And could give me some opinion on what to swap out for or what to put extra on (example more ram). You are the only tech channel I understand the most out of, your explanation are on point, I've learned alot just by watching your videos. I wish the best for you and your lovely family! :) I also got a budget of 1700$ Here are the list: [ Case] Corsair Carbide Series 275R Tempered Glass [PSU] Corsair PowerSupply (PSU) RM750X V2 750W 80+ Gold [CPU] Intel Core i7-9700K OR Ryzen 7 2700x (cooler Noctua NH-D15) [Motherboard] ASUS ROG Strix Z390-F GAMING - ATX / Z390 OR ASUS ROG STRIX B450-F Gaming - ATX / B450 [RAM] G.Skill Trident Z RGB Series 16GB (2x8GB) / 3200MHz / DDR4 / CL16 / F4-3200C16D- 16GTZR [Harddrive] Seagate Intern harddrive Barracuda Compute HDD 4TB / 256MB / 5400 RPM / ST4000DM [SSD] Samsung SSD 860 EVO 1TB. [GPU] ASUS GeForce GTX 1070 OC 8GB DUAL Thanks in advance! looking forward to your new videos, atm I am watching the EVGA PSU 400 Watt,430 watt etc videos :D. Edit I forgot to add the CPU cooler. And I already own a Asus Geforce 1070 8GB

If I may make an alternate case suggestion in the CORSAIR Carbide 100R Mid-Tower Case- Silent Edition with the stock fans at fan control setting 3. I use this case as my gaming/media PC with 1 SSD, 3 4TB 7200 HDDs and 1 Bluray optical drive. I have a Ryzen 1700 OC'd to 3700 with stock air cooler and a slightly OC'd GeForce 1070ti with the Asus Prime B350 board. Runs remarkably quiet with all these components. Cable management is tight in the case and I ended up purchasing a modular power supply to replace my carryover PSU as I needed to hookup only the power leads I needed instead of trying to hide/cram the ones I didn't use. Using a full size SSD drive allows for the use of all 6 SATA ports; using an NVME would consumes the use of two SATAs. Overall I'm very satisfied with the minimal noise and hybrid use of my build.

hmm i did this with a ryzen 2700x so i can do VR in the living room. The hard part was trying to find a media cabinet that can house my computer case. I also did it with a AIO cooler to keep the sound down.

Great video! I couldn't agree more about the value of quiet fans. I have the Silent Base 601 case from be quiet and I can honestly say it's inaudible from a couple feet away.

Always wanted to do something like that. Great idea. I even made a presentation about this at my university class of IT once. I'd just put it in smaller horizontal case, which is very stylish. Not many drives would fit there, but who fills their hard drives with pirated series and movies these days anyway? I'd also do some rainmeter, object dock and icon packager magic to make TV screen look cool at my living room. Or even use dedicated Linux distro.

This channel and his Twitch channel are criminally underrated.

I like the methodical way you go through things and inclusion of little pieces of info for beginners. Would you recommend this build today or do you have an updated version of this?

*Hey Techdeals just want to let you know I used your code when I purchased windows 10 pro, thanks for the discount*

I am going to build a Ryzen 5 2400g on a b450 m board...I thought it was a full size board when I ordered...so I will replace the b450 m with a bigger atx board in that pc and put a ryzen 5 2400g in a new one...a smaller case...small as possible...debating ram as I would like to use it in streaming with a capture card too...I think 16 Gb at at least 3200...we will see. Excited to see.

Classic Tech Deals is back. Hurray! Special request/fundraiser idea: Do a video dressed in full clown gear with Rogue. It would be so fun!

So what software are you going to use to play those blurays?

Biggest problem with AMD builds, is that they do not have SGX. Only intel 7th gen has that, so if you want a 4k blue ray drive (which any decent htpc should have), you have to go intel, there literally is no other choice. For every other use case, AMD all the way. But for HTPC, a 7th gen i5 or newer really is the only option. Streaming limits your experience greatly, so you really should invest in a proper disk based setup if you can.

I would have included a dedicated UPS in the cost of this build. Pretty much every PC should have a UPS, but specially a Home Theater PC which is intended to be up and running 24 hours a day. Also, some UPS units do make some clicky noises even if only once in a rare while. No idea which ones would most silent/ideal for an HTPC application

i still got a amd Athlon 5200+ it's on a few hours a week (now a back up server) and still working as good as the day i got it :)

I'm repurposing my old machine to be a NAS and home server (and it's plugged into my TV, but I have a smart TV for youtube and a Vero 4K+ dedicated media playback machine so isn't needed to play video or output anything locally under normal circumstances) and the noise is the biggest thing to overcome... I've replaced the heatsink that came with the CPU (FX-8320, so was always pretty terrible) and swapped the rear exhaust fan for a Silent Wings 3, plus bought a Corsair RM-550X to replace the decade old Antec unit for the same reason as in the video - no fan spin at low load... I just need to get around to doing the power supply replacement (and put in the PWM fan splitter so the exhaust fan isn't running at full speed from the motherboard's 3 pin socket) and it should do the job well, as the Antec Sonata 3 case is much better at muffling the hard disk noise than my Fractal Design Define R5.

Please talk about Multimedia Keyboards. The best I ever used was the awesome Logitech DeNovo Mini. It was ahead of its' time. I have struggled to find anything that even comes close.

Nice video. I've been using PC as media player for many years now, It gives you so much more flexibility, not only watching series, movies, etc. but also streaming youtube, playing music. Currently I have an older ASUS ROG G20AJ with 16GB memory, i7-4790 which is also a quiet pc. But looking for an upgrade which also has 4K support and which also has enought power for rendering 4k drone video content. Is a setup like this suitable for that, or would you need more power for rendering 4k videos?

Always information packed with reasoning, analysis and deductions on chosen components.

Can you a video for a premium intel build $1,000-$1,500 range, for media 4K burning Blu-ray, stream and TV tuner, being quiet, stealth.

I'm looking forward to learn how you use the small old ssds together to form a single SSD. RAID? I have a few ssd laying around myself.

Thank you, bro.

This case is kind of large. I have one. The Intel i5 8400 is also a 6 core CPU the video is great also.

I love your channel because you give us real information without the theatrics so common on RU-vid.. By the way, I have always use AMD processors since my 1st Intel 486. It's a moral choice, because I feel that AMD has kept CPU prices competitive. Also, people should not be afraid of building their own computer. It's the only way you can have a computer that really meets your needs and specifications (beware of off the shelf machines with 180 watt power supplies). It's not rocket science. Just read the MB manual and, to use a carpenter's term, measure twice so you only have to cut once.

beautiful. thanks very much.

I have that suamsung blueray player thing, albeit, its prob 4 years old now... but i wouldnt say it never came with issues, if there are newer models i would hope they are a lot better and alot faster.

In the description it says i5-8400 instead of 9400!

Thorough clear info thanks

Wonderful video. Your way of explaining everything and elaborating is excellent. Really impressive. Keep up the good work! 👍✊👏👏

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe you need Z-series chipsets to use memory speeds greater than 2666. Also, some disadvantages of a HTPC include expensive software for decoding Blu-ray discs, lack of a remote, and the fact that I seem to get better video quality from dedicated devices like Roku, Chromecast and FireTV than I do from web sites. I suppose a wireless keyboard and trackpad combo can work as a sort of remote, but it is very bulky and much more fussy to use. I'd be interested to know if there are ways to improve video quality from web sites.

Just so you know you can take those super cheap external hard drives and shuck them to get to the standard 3.5 in internal hard drive. They use the same models that you would buy anywhere but some of the drives will be the premium models and some will be the budget models there is no way of knowing until you take them out, but it is cheaper than buying the internal drive in any case.

You specify the i5-9400 as the right CPU but you seem to have an i5-9600k next to you in that box and you link the i5-8400 in your description. I am also having trouble locating the 9400 at my local computer shops.

My favorite youtuber! Your an awesome channel Tech!

Great stuff. I've been thinking about a home streaming PC, and this is most helpful, explains a number of questions I had. I really dislike how slow and clunky feeling our bluray player and it's apps are; I'd love to have the responsiveness and versatility of real PC performance. Thanks much!

Well, finally you explained the reason of these PCs. I mean, outside the US legal quality options are extremely scarce, the only and best one is Netflix.

Please make a video showing what software you use for that htpc; especially ripping DVD/bluray.

I still use an old Sony Vaio desktop PC basically as a home theator pc which has an Intel Pentium D cpu 2.8 ghz with 2 gb ram and 250 gb hard drive and running Windows XP media center edition 2005. Its date of manufacture says July of 2005.

I have learned so much about these videos..!!!

Awesome video, I've been looking to make a home theater build. I've been watching your stuff for a while now and I gotta say I love your humble approach to it all. Thank you for the awesome content.

I love how thorough you are!👍

you can also open up those external drives and use them as regular drives..

It's a little bit more money but I really like the "Corsair Carbide Series™ 330R Blackout Edition Ultra-Silent Mid-Tower Case". It's $100

Hi Tech Deals! I have not been here for a long time and I see this channel is as good as always, or even better :) By the way, I see you have almost no mini ITX or micro ATX PC builds and those are pretty cool. Sometimes the smaller the better ;)

Hey, Tech Deals! Aside from the hard drives which you could add externally, why choose this over a Mac Mini? Wouldn’t the base model 2018 Mac Mini slaughter at this for much less work? With third party software, your Mac Mini can be an AirPlay host for your iOS devices, it has iTunes built in, and it has MacOS for most of the time, Windows for when you need it.

Great options mentioned, explanation is clear as day, thanks mr.tech! I might just copy this build! 👍🏼👊🏼

great info. other than selling for parts, what do you recommend to use for retired components? do you recycle any components? or only sell them second hand? after years of building and upgrading im wondering what to do with older parts. thanks!