So here we are, with a small factor PC that is missing some very crucial parts. To make sure I was not going to waste money on a non-working motherboard and PSU, I had already booted the PC without any memory or CPU. Besides the awful noise of the PSU (we’re gonna have to fix that later), there were some blinking lights at the front confirming the motherboard wasn’t totally cooked. Checking for any burns or blown capacitors or broken parts: All good.
So I went to my trusty technical website of choice, Tweakers.net, and started looking for parts. If you live in Belgium or the Netherlands, this website will show you in which local shops the parts are available ranked by price.
Of the bat, I wanted a CPU with an integrated graphics processor such that I didn’t need to buy an external video card. We’re not trying to do crazy things, just play movies or TV series at an acceptable resolution. So in the end I settled for Intel Pentium Gold G6405. The spec sheet states that over HDMI we can get 4096×2160@30Hz: Perfecto.
Memory is not really a biggie so I just took some cheap 8GB RAM from a well-known brand with the right MHz.
For the OS drive, I bought a 128GB M.2 NVMe drive to save space in the case. This leaves enough room in the case if I wish to add some chunky boys to store some movies or TV series offline for a rewatch.
| Item | Cost |
|---|---|
| Kingston KVR26N19S8/8, 8GB 2666MHz DDR4 Non-ECC CL | 34,95 |
| Gigabyte SSD 128GB M.2 NVMe | 25,95 |
| Intel Pentium Gold G6405 4.1GHz, 4MB, S1200 | 72,00 |
| Total | 132,90 |
The goods bought at Informatique which overall had the lowest price!
The goods after waiting patiently on the delivery man for a week (it was 'stuck' somewhere in DHL fairyland).
Sadly, I was too excited to put these bad boys in my case and give the system a boot up, so there are no actual photo’s of the assembling or assembled case (and honestly, at this point it’s too much work to fake some photos as if they were taken during assembly).
The Blu-ray player
“Euh Adriaan, I think you forgot a crucial part of your HTPC… how are you going to play DVDs and Blu-rays like you said in Part 1?”, I hear you thinking. Well to that I can only say I’m absolutely baffled at the prices of Blu-ray players! I had thought that in the time of streaming all media, I would be able to pick one up for around €20. Wrong! They would be the most expensive part to buy, more than €70 for a simple Blu-ray player (not even a burner!). So I shook my head and thought I’ll scour the Interwebs for second hand (internal) blu-ray players. Wrong! These are also not easy to find, unfortunately. So until the day comes that I can find one at a reasonable price, the HTPC will have to live without. :(
Next up
So that’s it for this part of the build. Next up, we’ll have a lot of Operating System shenanigans (the Adriaan that is writing this post already knows what’s up) to get our system of the ground and in good shape to play some media!