Low Power HTPC Showcase

[BeefCake 15]

Hi all,

I don't see many discussions on building an HTPC with low power consumption in mind. I was wondering if people would care to list how they built theirs to make it as power efficient as possible to lower the monthly electric bills .

The way I setup mine currently is through an E3000 Linksys router with TomatoUSB controlling my DLNA media server (attached external HD) and OpenVPN. IT works great but lacks the UI option of PLEX, KODI, EMBY etc. to control the media.

It would be great if Admins keep this as a sticky for people to use as a starting point!

 

[hallux]

I considered re-purposing a desktop to HTPC duties, and even bought the tuner card. I used it for a few days and decided the cabling in the TV stand to support it was going to be WAY too cluttered. My goal was to eliminate my cable box and be able to record/watch more stuff at once but it just didn't work out well.

As for the cabling, I needed two 2-way splitters (to get 3 RG-6 connections) to support my cable modem, the tuner card and the tuning adapter that was needed to support ALL the channels on my TV plan. Not to mention having my router out there, it was just a mess. I wanted the router out there also because I wanted to plug in using CAT5/6 to the router, I wanted the most stable connection possible.

As for low power? Mine wouldn't have been CLOSE, it was a gaming machine. I have still pondered doing a purpose-built unit and re-doing that tuner setup with it.