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Building a Core i7 HTPC with Sapphire Mini ITX H67

V2011 is the first release of 3DStudio Max to fully support the Windows 7 operating system. This is a professional level tool that many people use for work purposes and our test will show any possible differences between board design today.

Autodesk 3ds Max Design 2011 software offers compelling new techniques to help bring designs to life by aggregating data, iterating ideas, and presenting the results.

Streamlined, more intelligent data exchange workflows and innovative new modeling and visualization tools help significantly increase designers’ creativity and productivity, enabling them to better explore, validate, and communicate the stories behind their designs.

Major new features:

  • Slate: A node based material editor.
  • Quicksilver: Hardware renderer with multithreaded rendering engine that utilizes both CPU and GPU.
  • Extended Graphite Modeling Toolset
  • 3ds Max Composite: A HDRI-capable compositor based on Autodesk Toxik.
  • Viewport Canvas toolset for 3D and 2D texture painting directly in the viewport
  • Object Painting: use 3D geometry as ‘brushes’ on other geometry
  • Character Animation Toolkit (CAT): now integrated as part of the base package
  • Autodesk Material Library: Over 1200 new photometrically accurate shaders
  • Additional file format support: includes native support for Sketchup, Inventor
  • FBX file linking
  • Save to Previous Release (2010)

We render a KitGuru custom created scene at 1920×1080 and record the time taken, lower is better.

No one will be using an ATOM or Fusion system for hardcore rendering, but the Core i7 can handle it no problems. This is not meant as a ‘side by side' test as the market audience is very different, but it does indicate potential gains especially if you needed a home built media center to handle other, more serious duties from time to time.

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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.