CPU Requirements

Since I have decided to use the AMD Phenom II processor, I have a wide choice to choose between 2, 4 or 4 cores.  From my readings, all AMD Phenom II are 4 cores but during manufacturing, some of the cores or cache might be faulty, instead of throwing it away, they sold them as X2 or X3 with different cache sizes.

After much comparison between price vs budget vs number of cores, I went for the middle one, an AMD Phenom II 2.8Ghz X3 720 Black Edition. I took the Black Edition just in case I want to have some fun to overclocking the processor as the multiplier is unlocked.

As a Home Theater PC is different from a desktop or gaming PC, the main issue is keeping the noise to the lowest level and keeping the chassis as cool as possible to prevent the CPU fan RPM from spinning too fast. I will explain in more details about chassis and cpu cooling later.

Some might think that a HTPC does not need a powerful CPU / multicores but from my experience since the HTPC also function as a central storage for all your multimedia (photos, audio & video) , you will need to do lots of video format conversion & encoding, video editing and also to rip some audio or DVD into the hard disk.  All the above mentioned requires a lot of CPU power and a faster CPU with multi core will complete these task a lot faster with multi core supported software.

As for video playback, ATI Radeon HD4200 support UVD 2.0 to offload the main CPU from decoding high definitions video format.