Build a modern, silent HTPC for gaming and media

I really wasn’t into HTPC-s, until recently. My TV was always at arms — well, HDMI cable — length from my computer. Whenever I needed some big screen action away from mouse and keyboard, it took a button press to switch over.

But times and apartments change, all the dude nerd rooms became spacious homes containing nice living rooms with big couches and separate work rooms. It became downright impossible, or at least very uncomfortable to hunk a HDMI cable all around, not to speak of control. How do I keep having the same(ish) comfort of accessing contents on my PC, or playing? More importantly, as soon as I was in a larger living room area, the thought of having a whirring, loud computer box eeked me out. Read on this article to find out how I solved this very privileged problem!

A quick word on why: a perplexed reader might ask if a separate computer is even needed in the modern living room. Smartphones, Gaming consoles, small smart dongles, and smart TV-s without any additional hardware at all provide various streaming services for both movies (Netflix) and gaming (Xbox Cloud), web browsing, and wireless streaming (Chromecast). Without starting to chant on the problems of dependence on internet/cloud providers, censorship, privacy issues, the beauty of an own media collection, I just say that when your use cases are fulfilled by these services, read no further. I suspect most people clicking on this article have a gist of what they could want out of such a setup.

To note, every need and use case is different. This article — while guiding through my specific ones — gives you some thoughts and tips on what you might consider when building an HTPC with each step. It is not a tutorial or walk-trough, but a cookbook of sorts for advanced users.

Hardware

The PC itself

This is obviously the step that needs the most thoughts. What kind of performance is actually required during the lifetime of the device? What kind of CPU, GPU might fit the bill? Below I tried to rather write generic ideas on each class, rather than have a really up to date model selection — as that would be outdated by the time this sentence is written.

Mini towers

Historically, this was all there is in terms of HTPC-s — Mini ATX motherboards and regular PC peripherals crammed in a smaller case, with some effort to reduce the noise. Their greatest strength is their greatest weakness also: you can easily build a config for any budget and performance need (even reuse old parts lying around), but it will still be a relatively big, heavy case, hard to hide away. Power consumption will be high (80–100W), along with noise, especially with a dedicated GPU. The latter can be fixed with fancier heating, but since the overall cost is already the highest, we’re talking about building a smaller full desktop computer here, straying away from modern HTPC territory.

SBC-s

Single board computers began their rise with Raspberry, and while they are wildly popular amongst DIY fans, their recent gains in performance — and the fact that there are more and more x86-based systems being introduced — makes them ideal for low-performance HTPC tasks. They are all completely silent, draining next to nothing from the plug, so they can be turned on all the time without worries. Their downside is naturally also the weak performing components, especially the GPU, for which even moving the pixels on a high 4–8K display can be a challenge.

• ARM boards — Raspberry Pi, ClockworkPi, Odroid XU etc. — Most of the higher-end crop of SBCs are still built on ARM architecture, and while this is totally fine for hobbyist usage like controlling a pet detecting webcam or garden irrigation, it is rather limiting in typically desktop-patterned HTPC usages. You’ll need a fast MicroSD card, or better, a USB external disk to boot from. You can’t really go over 1080p resolution (even if most, like the PI supports 4K), especially for playing video, where decoding even this is a hit or miss. Consider this if you need an emulator game station, or basic browsing (without much YouTube).
• x86 boards — this category was kicked off by the now defunct Intel NUC dongle, only a handful of vendors copied this form factor since, mostly based on legacy Intel Gemini chipsets. Models to consider is the like of Odroid-H2+ or ODYSSEY X86 but later successors are more akin to the Mini PC category below. They are harder to find and a bit pricey for what they deliver, obviously they are less extensible (if only for external storage) but if for some reason size is a factor, they pack a modest desktop power in the smallest possible dongle format.

Mini PC-s

The idea of using a laptop chipsets in prebuilt small cases to have palm-sized, powerful PC-s came surprisingly late to the industry, but that’s just what these little devices do. Currently most of the models target enterprise customers (as silent workstations and presentation machines) but make no mistake, with newer Intel and AMD Ryzen boards, they can deliver performance that was considered high-end 4–5 year ago. Intel Xe and AMD Vega graphics can even drive 8K/Dual 4K screens at high refresh rates — capable for gaming to mid-level AAA games settings. In line with laptop specs, they need only around 25–35W of power. They feature built-in Wifi6 (AX) networking, and use M2 or 2.5" SSD drives (most also have a “3.5 slot), SO-DIMM memory (“laptop” DDR size) with a large port selection so they are very extensible. Note that most models have budget-mid-high chipset variants, to bracket performance. For this reason, I consider this range to be by far the best middle ground for current HTPC builders.

Most common models/vendors to consider:

• Ryzen boards: Asus PN50/VivoMini, Gigabyte Brix, ASRock 4X4 BOX
• Intel boards — take note if your model has legacy Iris boards (HD600, HD620) or the newer Intel Xe graphics:
  XE: Intel NUC12, ASRock NUC BOX-1165G7
  Iris: Intel NUC 6/7/8, Asus PN41, Asrock Beebox

The Display/TV

Honestly there is not much to say on this — any display, whether a monitor or a television goes that fits your quality and tech spec considerations. For new buys, I recommend Samsung and LG smart devices in the TV department for their good standards/app support. Privacy-minded users should simply not enable wifi/network on these (cue the famous case of Samsung always transmitting microphone recordings). Things to consider are:

• Picture quality/HDR/black levels (you should strive for the brightest screen offering deepest possible blacks — besides top of the line OLED(-like) technologies, vendors snakeoil around with increasing dimming zone counts)
• Resolution — from 1080p to 10K — this should be more dependent on physical screen size, for comparison individual pixels are hard to see even on a full HD picture on a 55" display. Higher resolutions give more detail, but are much more taxing on a GPU to render movies and games.
• Refresh rate — a high (over 60) Hz refresh rate can greatly improve experience, when doing something else than media consumption — like gaming or office work.

HDMI-CEC — When choosing this as opposed to a monitor, check for support for HDMI-CEC, a protocol that lets the PC turn on when turning on the TV, and vice versa. This enables you to turn the PC on by switching on the TV remote. Note that some vendors call this weird names (Anylink for Samsung, Simplink for LG), and this only works on a specific HDMI port (usually #1). Monitors don’t need this as they turn on with the PC anyway, and you can remote yourself that too (more in Peripherals).

Connection — Most likely will be a HDMI (in case of a TV) or a DisplayPort cable (when using USB-C, it uses either of these protocols in a special Alternate mode). Anyone considering some wireless mode — sadly as of writing there are absolutely no good options — except for the occasional Chromecast/Miracast or snakeOil kickstarter solutions that are well enough to make a presentation or show off some pictures from a phone, but not much more else.

HDMI cable — or more specifically, what standards it supports — is very important! Using an older cable from the box on a new set is probably not gonna cut it. There are multiple mainstream cable versions, and some brands/labels simply don’t deliver what’s on the label. This is complexed by what output your PC/GPU supports. And then again if for some reason you need to convert the signal with an adapter, eg. from a USB-C output. Anecdotal, but I needed to switch cables 2 times until issues (not being able to switch to a specific resolution/refresh rate with HDR, flickering output every 10–15 minutes) disappeared. Watch out for what mode the display is actually in — you can always check this in the menu (for Monitors) or pressing OK on the remote (for TVs).

Switching to the display easily — If you have a more complex display scenario, MonitorSwitcher, that can create shortcut-able commands to switch between any display configuration (eg. single screen/dual screen/TV only/dual screen + extended to TV) very easily.

Placement

Some might not give too much thought to this, and I surely don’t want to go full interior designer on the topic, but there are some options that are useful to consider.

Standing on a cabinet/aligned to a wall

The classic. Provides ample space for accessories around, while being safe from harm. The obvious problem is that it’s pretty immobile, and hard to align. This might not be a problem for a very small room, but mounting height, and especially tilting can really improve the viewing experience — with a simple cabinet these are fixed, and likely not ideal. Might still be the only choice when there is a lot of equipment around, or with short cables.

Free-standing /rolling cabinets

Similar to above, with the added benefit of easy movability, but somewhat less packing space and fragility. Can be the ideal middle ground. With long cables you could flexibly roll in an open area like to better align it to a couch.

Wall-mounting

Often preferred for rooms that consist mostly of a bed, overhanging it, or a large open space. Height can be freely adjusted (once) and with the proper mount, tilting and rotating is also solved — make sure to get one that at least can tilt.

Rolling stands

You might often see this in office spaces. By far my favorite way, as it gives absolutely the most flexibility. Besides freely rolling around, you can completely adjust the height and tilt of the display. Even better, on the same floor you can freely roll them around easily even between rooms, so multiple people in the house can use it secluded. Just make sure to have a power strip on top for TV, PC and such, so you only need one single wire on the bottom. The downsides are that it needs a bigger floor space to be more usable, and it’s a bit more unstable with kids/pets around. Also the space for devices besides the TV is almost nonexistent. You can velcro quite an amount on top behind the panel, and most likely there is a space for a soundbar, this makes the setup more wobbly. Some models have a shelf down below, but packing that can make the stand bottom-heavy to lug around. As I only had the TV and a mini PC, this was by far the most ideal choice for me.

Networking

Per use case and layout, this might be the easiest, or the second hardest thing here to get right. It’s an easy thing if you only consume locally stored media, and you can just plug in a network cable — way harder when you have high bandwidth needs (bandwidth for streaming, latency for gaming) and no way to physically connect.

• UTP cable — if you have a fixed placement, and a direct cable to your router is no problem, you can just plug in an UTP cable and you have a nice stable, probably 1 gigabit connection. The only way to pimp this is to consider a 2.5G switch (especially if one or more of your computer’s motherboard already comes with such a network card). You can also create a fixed connection between 2 computers (eg. your file server and the HTPC) using USB3 2.5G dongles.
• Powerline network adapters — if pulling a network cable around the home is not a solution, you were surely tempted by the idea to get network from a power plug (the same that you might use for your setup, reducing the amount of cables to the stand to a single one). Nowadays they are advertised as being capable of over 1, even 2 Gigabit speeds — but as you can expect, real results are typically way lower. Even so, if it works, it’s more cable-like than most WiFi that you get out there. Go for TP-Link devices, as per my experience this brand has the best tech out there in the area.
• That said, after having gone through 3 high quality sets with mixed results, I say on average don’t really bother. Even if your home/layout is not affected by its greatest pitfall — they’re well known to be sensitive to old wiring, and you need to be sure to be on the same circuitry as the target device (your router or perhaps a file server). One benefit is that they provide low latencies for cheap. But beware that even in ideal situations, switching on high-wattage devices — whether coming from your own, or a neighboring home — can make the connection unstable, or at least its parameters suddenly changing for the period. Also take note that in the case of a power surge (storm, faulty wiring) this will be the first device to die (you can’t connect it to surge protectors). Happened to me. If you have an ideal situation — single home with modern wiring, and you can afford to experiment — this might be the best bang for the buck. Or your daily annoyance.
• Wi-fi — Wireless networking has gone through a lot of improvement in the last decade, enough to be a completely feasible replacement to cable connection for not just your daily browsing and youtube habits. If you have high bandwidth needs: If your set and the router is in clear sight a few meters apart, not intersected by RF-emitting devices, even a measly old N wifi router/dongle can be good enough. But most likely your layout is less ideal. An AC, or better, Wifi6 router is recommended — not because older standards don’t have the theoretical bandwidth, but since streaming requires a constantly high amount, newer ones fare much better in the long run.
• Working out a good solution is more like a well thought puzzle play in your home considering the position of the modem, (cable-connected) main router, and if needed, one or more extenders/access points — which could be of purpose-built power-plug type, or even better, another same-ish priced cheaper router. Especially if you don’t want to upgrade your main router. I had good results with the very cheap Huawei Honor 3 Wifi6 router (if you worry because of privacy, not using the WAN port on this specific device will pass through the internet to other connected devices, while the router itself will be in offline mode). Don’t forget to turn off autoconnect to other networks in Windows, otherwise it would try to hop between slower networks when the fast endpoint is suddenly not available.

Some tips here:

• It’s easy to measure internet speed with services like SpeedTest.net, but a bit harder to do within your own network between two devices. iPerf3 is a great command-line tool for this purpose. You need to run it in server mode on one device, with all other devices running in client mode to measure bandwidth between themselves and the server. There are also
• In your router setup, it’s useful to set a fixed IP to at least the devices you work with — you can easily identify them later on by using a simple address space like ones between 192.168.10–20. You can usually do this on the router’s web interface menu called “DHCP Reservation” or “Static DHCP” in your router. You need to know the device’s MAC address to pair a number with, which you can do based on the device list + hostname. Beware, many WiFi devices will have more than one of these (per each WiFi standard/network interface on the device) if you ever switched between separate “5G” and “2.4G” bands in your router. In this case, make sure the device is actively connected, by checking that the MAC address currently has an active connection in the device list on the router.

Peripherals

You will need to control your new HTPC with something, and the classic desktop keyboard and mouse probably won’t cut it. If you’re the rare breed that only needs a keyboard, any slim and wireless one will do. But this is rarely the case. For combos, the options are:

• A lapboard — you may want to kinda ignore the above sentence, and use a “lapboard” — cradles or special tables to hold a keyboard+mouse combo, mostly some specific models. This is targeted to serious gamers and typists (as any other keyboard solution is mostly horrible to type on for extended time). While workable, it can still have a lot of heft, price, and discomfort to use these big clunky contraptions, so you need to really think if it’s worth the desktop feel.

• Sea of cheap Chinese wireless mini keyboards — the most compact, cheap, but still button-ffilled of all the options, these devices are more like compact pc remotes. But also they have unusual shape/layout that are harder to use from muscle memory, and the few I tried suffered from occasional wonky connections. They can be an okay bargain if you need a lot of varied controls for short burst moments — like actual remote.

• A Flirc remote — I would never pass a chance to plug one of my favourite little gadget. Flirc is widely available and cheap for what they offer: to turn any classic IR remote — all the old remotes you may have laying around — to proper keyboards. It’s a USB IR dongle that is recognized as a keyboard by any device (not just PC-s but consoles, TVs, set-top boxes) in which you can program and save signals from any remote as keyboard bindings. This is great if you only need a few commands (like media controls, shortcuts, macros). I plan to write a separate article on this, and an example config soon.

• A keyboard/mouse combo — I made this a separate section as popular, actually wide-usage models at the moment can be reduced to…ehm, 1, but maybe 2 — seemingly there isn’t a big crowd of manufacturers wanting to please the couch-sitting crowd. They’re the Logitech K400/K400 Plus and maybe Microsoft All-in-One Media Keyboard, the latter being a nicely thought-out clone of the other. Their keys are just okay to type, no backlighting, and the touchpad is pretty meh, but it’s hard to find anything that consistently performs as well. As a honorary mention, Logitech recently discontinued its K830 which was a premium version with backlighting and a much better touchpad — could be a good buy if you can snag it used.

• Controllers — for gaming, especially couch gaming that a HTPC may aim for, controllers are now a much more ubiquitous way of control than anything else. While there is a wide array of manufacturers and models, and you may have some laying around, for any new buys for HTPC purposes I recommend Xbox One/S/X controllers. They are wireless, extremely durable, powered by AAA batteries, and most importantly, have probably the widest support on every operating system. While they have bluetooth, you probably want to have the dongle (that may not come with the controller) to use bumpers and vibration.

A file server/NAS

This is more like a side tip/convenience, as it is a wholly different endeavor — but still worth to mention: if you use the HTPC to access local files, games, media, you probably won’t want to copy files back and forth. It’s very useful (and cheap!) to set up a simple file server nowadays, which is nothing else but a small Linux PC (or even a Raspberry PI) connected to a hard drive/SSD, running an SMB service which makes contents available to any networked device like it would be a local drive. With 2.5/5G cables, it can be almost as speedy as an internal drive even! You can search for options on set this up (or buy a ready-made one, like the popular Synology devices), but rest assured I’m also already working on an article on this topic, which I’ll link here in due time:)

Software

You now have a stable, silent, powerful PC whirring behind a big display. The range of possibilities are pretty wide! I’ll only write some ideas here as you surely already have yours.

• A movie-watching station with Kodi/Emby, or simply a movie player with VLC/MPV/MPC-BE and upscaling/improving the source with MadVR
• A retro ROM arcade with RetroArch
• A Steam machine for gaming with Big Display
• Last, but not least, you could whip up a cool Windows gaming thin client, which I wrote another tutorial about, and can be viewed as a follow-up for this article.