New hardware suggestions

[phoneguyinpgh]

 

I have been experiencing some hardware issues lately with my living room HTPC. Every two or three times it wakes up from sleep, it will hang, requiring me to do a hard power-off and reboot. I believe this corrupted the OS(W764) on the HD, I replaced it and did a restore from my WHS2011. That lasted about 3 weeks and the OS got corrupted again. I did a complete clean install on a SSD, yet the system still hangs every 2 or 3 wake ups. I suspect the 4 year old MB may be giving out.

I will be keeping the case, PSU, ATI5450, ATSC tuner, BR & HDD.

So, I would like to solicit recommendations for a new MB, CPU and RAM.

Good speed, low power consumption are what I’m shooting for. I was considering 65W Athalon II but I’m open to anything that will give similar perfromance.

Any suggestions?

[Techbutton]

It almost sounds like a bad driver or bad power supply. I have had issues with computers and it does the hanging stuff, and it is because the power supply can’t keep up or going bad. Have you run test on it?

The MB could also be the cause, but it shouldn’t wait 3 weeks before you see it again.

Have you tried just a BIOS clear and see if that fixes it?

RAM may also be the cause this too…

Do a search online for Hirens Boot CD and that will have some Hardware test on it to narrow it down.

 

Kyle

[phoneguyinpgh]

Thanks, I will check that out.  Other than the hanging wake-ups I haven’t had any issues with it.

[Aaron Ledger]

I have had systems that had flaky resume from sleep in the past. It was the motherboard that was causing the issue.

[phoneguyinpgh]

I have a spare PS from my WHSv1.  I’ll give that a try.  If it still is having issues,  I’ll have to go for the new MB/CPU/RAM.

[PAPutzback]

Have you disabled sleep to see if it works ok?

I am running an AMD Athlon II X2 265 Regor 3.3GHz Socket AM3 65W Dual-Core Desktop Processor ADX265OCGMBOX on my HTPC. It records up to 8 channels but the most I’ve probably seen is 4 via my Ceton tuner. 

[Aaron Ledger]

If you do go with a new platform, it is very difficult to beat an Intel board. The stability and support are top notch. I’ve got 4 DH67BL boards so you can see that I am sold on them 🙂

[phoneguyinpgh]

Well the issue occures when it wakes up from sleep, so disabling sleep would deffinately clear that.  It is an old Athalon X2 5600+ that has been in the machine for over 4 years.  I did notice the heatsink and heat pipe for the chipset was rather hot.  I just have to watch my money for a while so if the PSU works, great.

[phoneguyinpgh]

[quote=Aaron Ledger]

If you do go with a new platform, it is very difficult to beat an Intel board. The stability and support are top notch. I’ve got 4 DH67BL boards so you can see that I am sold on them 🙂

[/quote]

 

Aaron,

What MB/CPU combo would you recomend??  I’ve been an AMD guy for the longest time, just can’t beat the $$/CPU ratio.

[Aaron Ledger]

One reason I really like Intel boards is that I can get a quality Intel NIC. With AMD boards and often 3rd party Intel chipset boards, the NIC is a substandard Realtek or equivalent. That component alone is worth ~$30.

If you are looking for a cheaper Intel setup, take a look at the Pentium G620 or even the new Celeron G530 if you are really on a budget. We know the G620 can handle all the basics for sure. It is dual core and has HD Graphics 2000. You can get by with any H61 or H67 Intel board that satisfies your needs. I went for DH67BL boards because of the price point of ~$90 and feature set. In my own primary HTPC, I am running with a Core i3-2100 and it performs extremely well.

[mikinho]

+1 for the DH67DL.  It is my primary HTPC as well.  I considered the DH61AG as well as I really like that board but I needed 1 more SATA port that it provided.

[Aaron Ledger]

Also, you can get rid of the 5450 if you go with Intel SB. You save some power, free up an expansion slot and have more options for different chassis.

[phoneguyinpgh]

Can’t argue with that.  How is the Intel GPU quality compared to the 5450?  Is it easy to configure?  I connect direct from my HTPC to my TV via HDMI for video and use optical SPDIF for DD and DTS audio.  I’ve also almost exclusively used ATI graphics cards.  Just a creature of habit I guess.

[Aaron Ledger]

I personally have had better experiences with Intel graphics for HTPC use. The drivers seem to be more stable overall whereas ATI/AMD traditionally seems to have had a stable driver and a bunch of duds. The Intel configuration is generally much simpler and easier to follow than Catalyst.

The good thing for you is that you’ve already got the 5450. You can try out Intel first and if for some reason you are not satisfied, you’ve got a backup plan.

[phoneguyinpgh]

Good point.  I’m browsing Newegg now.  Thanks.

[Author]

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