Games Room HTPC - KodiGames

I had quite a few spare parts collected over the years from decommissioned systems. I figured I'd start a second UnRAID server using these parts, but opted against that. I had thought about picking up an Android box for the Games room TV, but then decided to try and put this system back into play as a media machine.

The base hardware is the guts taken from the MediaPVR Gen2, and UnRaid systems, using an old case that was used from the MediaPVR Gen1 setup. Right now the drives are carry over from a collection of hard drives I had on hand from the various computers systems of the past.

CURRENT HARDWARE

Motherboard: ECS 945GCT-M

This a an older socket LGA775, with 4 SATA ports, 100Meg onboard LAN, 2x RAM slots for DDR2 memory, a PCI-Ex16, a PCIe-4 and two PCI slots. Pretty sure I bought this off ebay back in 2008. This was the original board used in the early days of the UnRaid server formerly known as Zeus. It was also used recently to verify the E4700 CPU, Mushkin RAM and a power supply after the catasphrophic ASUS board failure to prove out those devices. From that, I decided to use the build for revamping the Kodigames systems again.

CPU: Intel E4700 Core2Duo

This CPU was used in the UnRaid server up until the motherboard suffered a catastrophic failure. After testing it out on the ECS board, the system now makes up Kodigames. I bought this E4700 Core2Duo off ebay. It has 2 cores running at 65W. Each core clocks at 2.6GHz.

This CPU is now being used in a media machine buildup called Kodigames.

CPU Cooler: Artic Cooling Alpine 7 Pro

I bought an Artic Cooling Alpine 7 Pro. This is a low-end heat-sink fan but is ultra quiet. It should be adequate for cooling a 65W CPU even at its lowest speeds. It is cheap as the local computer store sells it for about $14.52. A review of it can be found here: http://www.frostytech.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=2234

RAM: Mushkin Silverline 996557 PC2-6400 2x2GB RAM

This memory was pulled from the UnRaid server (formerly known as Zeus). The 4 Gigs runs the media machines decently and will be utilized here as well.

Strorage: Toshiba THNS128GG4BBAA

This Toshiba drive was installed in an older laptop that gradually started to breakdown...battery died, keys of the keyboard falling out, and not responding, so took this SSD out and decided to use it in this setup. It is extremely zippy, and loads the OS very quick.

Video Card: Asus HD6450 Silent/1G DDR3

I have had nothing but good things to say about this card in the HTPC, I decided that if available, I would purchase the same for the Kodi Games. Card is very capable of outputting upto 1920x1080p video. This PCI-E video card has onboard HD decoding capabilities. It's also HDCP complient, so this card has been able to handle everything I've thrown at it. It has a DVI-I port, HDMI port and VGA output. Since it can do decoding onboard, it will help take pressure off the CPU.

Network: TP-Link TG3468 GigLAN adapter

This TPLink GigLAN PCIe x1 network adapter was used in the UnRaid server formerly known as Zeus. It was purchased to replace the onboard LAN that faulted about a year and a half ago. Bought for $15 from the local computer store. It has found new life here in the Kodigames systems, since the on board LAN is only 100Megs.

Power Supply: Coolergiant Enermax

I had one of these supplies sitting around for years, and never used it. The Coolergiant will be used until such a time that I feel that I should replace it with something even more quiet.

Controller: Logitech Cordless Rumblepad 2 Gamepad

Got this as a Christmas gift way back when, and use it in the MediaPVR Gen2 system to play emulator games as well as other types. It includes the rumble effect, though I don't know how to incorporate that into the old console emulators. Since the retirement of the MediaPVR system, I used it periodically with my HTPC setup for MAME and SNES gaming, but it more or less just sat and collected dust.

Now getting this system up, I looked into seeing if I could use this controller to navigate Kodi. Sure enough, I was able to map its buttons and joysticks to the Kodi controller setup. So far it is performing very well.

Case: Generic

The case was a generic one that I bought way back in testing the first generation MediaPVR. The one with the bright blue button that I commented about (see image above). Not only did I just have this on hand, but being a full sized case, it has plenty of room for hard drives to be added. It's a bit overkill considering the equipment listed above for this latest build, but will work for what I need.

Retired Equipment

Motherboard: ABIT AN-M2HD

The motherboard is an ABIT AN-M2HD. It can accommodate the Athlon CPU listed below. It has 4 memory slots, 4 SATA connections, 1x PCIex16, 1x PCIex1 and 2x PCI slots. It also has GigLAN and on-board audio. It has an HDMI port so I may try it without a video card in place and see how it performs, as it should be able to output up to 1080p video. Prior experiences, though, I didn't have much success with this motherboard. I found it very faulty, but that was back when I was using MediaPortal.

The motherboard ended up with major faults and has now been placed in the recycle bin.

CPU: Athlon 64 x2 4800+ Dual Core Windsor @2.5GHz

This was originally used in the HTPC, but due to the motherboard issue, I replaced the motherboard and this CPU with the M2A-VM/5200+ setup. This CPU is pretty good, and has worked great in the playback of HD material.

I'll keep this around in the event that I find a cheap AM2 motherboard to use it on.

CPU Cooler: Zalman CNPS8000A

This was the cooler used with the 4800 CPU. The big issue with this CPU cooler is the it is wide and could interfere with surrounding components. When I had it paired with the M2N-X motherboard, the heatpipes actually rested against the memory. When installed in the M2A-VM motherboard, the heatpipes would cover the first 2 memory slots. Mounted the other way, they would interfere with some tall electrolytic capacitors. The locking tab also interfered with the chipset heatsink, which I had to remove to install/uninstall this CPU cooler. It performed rather well though, and it was very silent.

Cooler to use for the above CPU.

RAM: Mushkin Silverline 996527 PC2-6400 2x1GB RAM

I got this kit off of Ebay. Should work nicely in Dual Memory mode. Would like to get more, since this is shared memory between the system and the on-board video, but this should be enough to prove the system.

Stored for future use...or maybe put for sale on ebay.

Hard Drive: Hitachi HTS543216L9SA00 160Gig

This drive I had pulled from a broken laptop. It's 160Gigs in size, and runs at 5400RPM, but so far is plent fast enough (and large enough) for my purposes.

Hard drive is now used as the app_data cache drive in the UnRaid server.

SOFTWARE

OS: Linux Mint Cinnamon

Media: Kodi Nexus (20.1)

LOG

April 9th, 2021

So after having this system shelved for a few years, and then dusting it off in an attempt to run it as an UnRAID server, I settled on trying it out as a media machine again, and use it on the Games room TV.

Using Kodi as the media frontend, and Plex on the backend, like how I've done the KodiBES, and KodiHTPC, I tried to deviate from using Windows 7, and opted to load the machine with Linux Mint.

Everything was installing well, but notice graphic artifacts on the Mint desktop. Oh here we go again, one of the reason why I aborted using this motherboarde board in the past. Video, too, ran very choppy with lots of stuttering while the video panned the screen horizontally.

I tried to use an external video card, but again I ran into issues where I couldn't load the external card's graphic drivers, so I couldn't get the card up and running properly (my lack of Linux understanding, but still frustrating).

A little defeated in my attempt at setting this up as a Linux media machine, I ended up putting on Win7, and installed windows Kodi 18.9. I decided to stick with Kodi Leia for now, and not jump to v19 (Matrix), as I know all the addons and the AeonMQ 8 skin I utilize works with Kodi Leia (skins are limited in Kodi's v19). Anyways this old tried and tested setup is far easier to adjust, I was finally able to rid the video playback stutter, and the system is running quite well with it, even limited at 2 Gigs of memory (plan on picking up more). I also ended up setting up the old USB-UIRT and Hauppauge remote to control it (with the IR Server suite from MediaPortal).

Other options for control are still using Kore or via web server.

November 26th, 2022

Unfortunately KodiGames bit the biscuit. Started having too many issues with the Abit motherboard. It didn't work the greatest back when I was using it before, and couldn't get it to work right now. So the system is torn down. I'm looking at replacing the ABIT AMD setup with an Intel LGA775 setup. I have the motherboard, and basic LGA CPU are pretty cheap. Alot cheaper than trying to replace the ABIT motherboard. The only issue is that I don't have the LGA hardware to easily swap the Zalman CPU cooler over. So I'm looking into that as well.

January 17th, 2023

With parts spared up from the UnRaid build, and spare parts left over, I've re-vamped the Kodigames system, and getting it up and running again.

January 18th, 2023

Found out through testing the system, that I require an external video adapter. The integrated one works, except for one issue. If it was a small issue, I wouldn't bother, but a little issue that when playing back video within Kodi, the image is magnified to some extreme. I realized that one is only viewing a corner of the actual video. All video playback fine outside of Kodi, in MPC-HC. Kodi's menus were all fine, as well as background images...just video playback.

I temporarily tried a video adapter from another machine via HDMI to the TV, and then it played fine. Strange indeed.

I also updated the OS from antiquated Win7 to Win10 and give it a whirl. Seemed to install fine, and everything was working, except in Kodi, the last letter of word looks like it is tearing. From what I've been able to fined is this issue with AMD Radeon cards, and people found a work around for those, but older Intel integrated adapters, no such luck. I've tried, like many, different fonts, different skins, but nother seems to work. Below are a couple screen caps:

Hoping to still find a solution for this, as I'm rather suspicious that this will occur on my other media machines, and they have way better graphics (though still antiquated per Win10 standards).

*UPDATE*

And no sooner did I enter that last post about the text, when I came across this post in a forum. I decided to upgrade Kodi to version 20 and voila:

Text is looking good again.

January 25th, 2023

Picked up an Asus HD6450 Silent board (the same type in the HPTC) and installed it this evening. The system is up and running, and video is now played at proper zoom (which is non), and everything is working well. This project is basically complete, and expands Kodi into 3 main rooms, as well as an Android box and FireTV.

January 30th, 2023

Ran into issues with Kodi 20 and some of the addons (namely PKC), so I went back to Kodi Matrix 19.5, and everything appears to be running fine again.

Febuary 15th, 2023

Using Win 10 to run Kodi on this hardware left it with some limitations, so I decided to run Linux Mint Cinnamon along with the Linux Kodi 19.4 package. Everything went decently. Some learning curves, but the most difficult thing was to get the Logitech game controller mapped to control Kodi properly. Now that is solved, the system is pretty snappy on loading and running Kodi's interface.