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Building a Core i7 HTPC with Sapphire Mini ITX H67

CyberLink MediaEspresso 6 is the successor to CyberLink MediaShow Espresso 5.5. With its further optimized CPU/GPU-acceleration, MediaEspresso is an even faster way to convert not only your video but also your music and image files between a wide range of popular formats.

Now you can easily playback and display your favourite movies, songs and photos not just on your on your mobile phone, iPad, PSP, Xbox, or Youtube and Facebook channels but also on the newly launched iPhone 4. Compile, convert and enjoy images and songs on any of your computing devices and enhance your videos with CyberLink’s built-in TrueTheater Technology.

New and Improved Features

  • Ultra Fast Media Conversion – With support from the Intel Core i-Series processor family, ATI Stream & NVIDIA CUDA, MediaEspresso’s Batch-Conversion function enables multiple files to be transcoded simultaneously.
  • Smart Detect Technology – MediaEspresso 6 automatically detects the type of portable device connected to the PC and selects the best multimedia profile to begin the conversion without the need for user’s intervention.
  • Direct Sync to Portable Devices – Video, audio and image files can be transferred in a few easy steps to mobile phones including those from Acer, BlackBerry, HTC, Samsung, LG, Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and Palm, as well as Sony Walkman and PSP devices.
  • Enhanced Video Quality – CyberLink TrueTheater Denoise and Lighting enables the enhancement of video quality through optical noise filters and automatic brightness adjustment.
  • Video, Music and Image File Conversion – Convert not only videos to popular formats such as AVI, MPEG, MKV, H.264/AVC, and FLV at the click of a button, but also images such as JPEG and PNG and music files like WMA, MP3 and M4A.
  • Online Sharing – Conversion to video formats used by popular social networking websites and a direct upload feature means posting videos to Facebook and YouTube has never been easier.

For our testing today we are converting a 3.3GB 720p MKV file (2h:12mins) to Apple Mp4 format for playback on a portable device. This is a common procedure for many people and will give a good indication of system power. We are focusing on the CPU efficiency with this test. The latest version of this program has some optimisations for the newest hardware.

The Core i7 2600k processor completes the task in just over 11 minutes, which is compared to 1 hr and 12 minutes from the Fusion powered Zotac ZBox. The Atom powered D525 completes the same task in 1 hr and 18 minutes.

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13 comments

  1. Now thats what im talking about !

  2. Thats a hell of a nice little system, better than my big ass desktop rig 🙁

  3. Id put in the new iceQ 6970 or something like that. let it kick some serious ass, but noise and wattage would rise a lot.

  4. I think over £1000 is a bit much for any media center, but thats more a full fledged performance PC. that case seems pretty cool though.

    Nice board from Sapphire, under £100 is a good price point

  5. The board is fantastic. its put me in mind to build a high end, small computer for downstairs. id probably opt for the 2500k.

  6. The PSU seems overpowered for the build, but at least it would be running quiet due to low overhead?. a method in the madness? obviously there for a better discrete card later if wanted.

  7. I always meant to build a media center and never got tempted by Fusion or ATOM as my mate has an atom desktop he built for 200 quid. he has lost all his hair using it, its that bloody slow.

    this board looks to be ideal for a new PC. its got everything you need,. well maybe except crossfire support.

  8. Yeah thats lovely, nice job, I could live with that myself

  9. Personally id go for a silverstone case, and use a 2500k with maybe a low noise card in the 68xx range.

  10. AT first I thought the system was unbalanced, why put a low end video card in with a Core i7 2600k? I see however the point now, its to keep noise down to as low as possible, but still offering decent gaming. im surprised that card is as good as the tests show. very impressive from sapphire.

  11. Nice system, my media center isn’t as powerful as that, but I really only use it for watching tv shows via the tv.

  12. The 2600k is really a very good price now, just over £200 for 4+4 cores. wasnt it closer to £300 when it was released?

  13. All very well, but where do you plug in the TV tuner (or more likely, TWO tuners)?

    The problem with mini-ITX is that there just aren’t any slots to plug stuff into, which is a bit of a non-starter for a media centre. USB isn’t really the way to go for this kind of thing (hardly makes for a tidy system and it’s relatively expensive), so the only way to go is a larger mother board.