[Quickie Build] QinX' SinguTV HTPC

[QinX]

This is going to be a quick build because there isn't much to it, but I thought I'd share it with you guys.

So I've got a dedicated PC for my media consumption for just over 3 years now. A AMD E-450, I know right :S
I use it with Kodi for all my Movie/Series/YouTube/Twitch viewing and at the same time it also does all downloading and processing if said downloads.
It has done all this to my satisfaction for all 3 years, but as off late I'm noticing it is becoming too slow for me I've recently added Boblight for ambient lighting and this is probably asking too much of the CPU. So I'm retiring my current system and relieving it of its duty as a all-rounder. It is going to spend the rest of its days as a NAS for me (I'm adding a Seageate Archive V2 8TB drive as well), purely storage and build myself a new HTPC.

So I will be transitioning from
Case: Lian Li PC-Q08B (Black)
Motherboard: ASUS E45M1-I DELUXE
CPU: AMD E-450
RAM: 2x2GB DDR3
PSU: Be quiet! Pure Power BQT L7-300W
HDDs:
1x WD Green WD30EZRX (3TB)
2x Samsung SpinPoint F2 EcoGreen Desktop Class HD154UI (1.5TB)
1x Samsung SpinPoint F1 Desktop Class HD103UJ (1TB)
1x WD Green (640GB)

Case: Akase Euler (incl. 120W Adapter) - Future mod, Add front USB and Audio
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H81TN (Thin M-ITX)
CPU: Intel Core i7-4785T (35W TDP)
RAM: 2x4GB DDR3
PSU: 19V DC Adapter
SSD: Samsung 840 Pro 256GB

So what will that do for CPU performance?
How about complete and total overkill!

I've ordered all the parts and purchased a used 4785T. I'm hoping I can assemble it all next weekend, but it shouldn't really be that spectacular.

 

[rawr]

The i7 4785T is a very interesting processor, as well as Intel's other low power offerings. I just wish that there were more coverage and reviews of these CPUs, although they are a very niche product.

 

[PlayfulPhoenix]

Nice build, and excellent choice of case For whatever reason, I have a soft spot for fanless mini-PCs such as this. They're great for dedicated use cases like HTPC's.

With that CPU and SSD, it should last you a long while haha.

 

[QinX]

The i7 4785T is a very interesting processor, as well as Intel's other low power offerings. I just wish that there were more coverage and reviews of these CPUs, although they are a very niche product.

If you have any requests in terms of benchmarks, let me know. I can run some benchmarks once I have it up and running.

Nice build, and excellent choice of case For whatever reason, I have a soft spot for fanless mini-PCs such as this. They're great for dedicated use cases like HTPC's.

With that CPU and SSD, it should last you a long while haha.

Only 4K h265 might be an issue. Once it is running I'll look for some videos to test it.

Edit:
I just realized that the CPU isn't overkill. I can use it to help with my 3D rendering, muhahahaha!

 

[QinX]

Soo, I didn't take any pictures of me building the system, but to be honest, there is nothing special about it. I think you are all more interested in the actual performance of it so here goes.

I've compared it to H2O-Micro which has a Core i5-4670 4T/4C.
Cinebench R15
i5-4670: Multi 496/Single 138/Ratio 3.59x
i7-4785T: Multi 519/Single 107/Ratio 4.86x

As you can see the 4785T outperforms in terms of multi-threaded even-though is was only running at 2.8Ghz vs. 3.6Ghz, this is due to HT support on the i7. so if you are working with heavily threaded content the i7-4785T is a nice alternative to the i5-4670 considering the extremely low power consumption, though at a higher price.

Single threaded performance is a different story, here the i5-4670 outperforms by about 30% due to its much higher speed. but the i7-4785T still manages to put down a nice performance.

One of the downsides of the i7-4785T is the low TJmax 72C vs 100C on the i5-4670 that is allowed, this means that it tends to throttle a lot earlier, I've only had it happen once because I was putting a 100% load on the CPU for a couple of hours.

It terms of power consumption the entire system idles at 18W, during movie playback it goes up to 21W and when a full load is applied it can go towards 45W.

If anyone has a request for another test please let me know.

 

[rawr]

Might be a bit difficult, but some gaming comparisons would be very interesting!

 

[QinX]

Might be a bit difficult, but some gaming comparisons would be very interesting!

You mean with the GTX970? I would like to do that, but that would mean taking apart both H2O-Micro and the HTPC leaving me with no computer to work on. So unfortunately I can't do that. Games that are multi-threaded should run fine on it but I'd think that some single-threaded games don't like the only 2.8GHz clockspeed of the CPU.

If you look at this link http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/1357
You can see the i3-4330T vs the i3-4130T it's 8 FPS slower because the speed is 0.6GHz lower.

 

[QinX]

I've been using the system now for a while and it runs absolutely smooth, I've set up distributed rendering via V-Ray and the system runs fine for hours on end at 100% speed, we had a heatwave a couple of weeks ago and that was the only time it had to throttle its clockspeed by about 500MHz, but other then that I am truly happy I made the upgrade from the E-350.