Building a Core i7 HTPC with Sapphire Mini ITX H67

To test our Core i7 Media center today we are using a variety of synthetic and real world testing, including recently released games in the attempts to measure overall performance. Would this system be ideal within a living room and gaming with friends in social situations for instance, or would it still be limited to media playback duties?

If we step outside generalised media demands how fast would the system be for encoding duties or professional level rendering?

We will also be comparing to a handful of AMD and Intel low power processors in specific parts of the review. Just to highlight the potential performance benefits from moving to this higher specified Core i7 system.

System build:

Processor: Intel Core i7 2600k (reference cooler)
Motherboard: Sapphire H67 Pure Platinum
Memory: ADATA 4GB DDR3 Memory
Power Supply: Antec High Current Pro 850W
Graphics: Sapphire HD6670 Ultimate Edition
Chassis: Thermaltake Armor A30
Boot Drive: Intel 510 Series SSD 250GB
Storage: Samsung 2TB HDD (HD204UI)
Optical: Asus USB 2.0 BluRay Drive
Monitors: Sanyo 50 inch 1080P LCD Television and LaCie 730 for IQ testing.

Software:
Windows 7 64 Bit Enterprise Edition
Fraps Professional
SiSoft Sandra
CPUz
GPUz
CPUID Hardware Monitor Professional
Cinebench R11.5 64 bit
CyberLink PowerDvd 11 Ultra
CyberLink Media Espresso
CrystalDiskMark
HDTach
AS SSD
Super PI XS
HQV Benchmark V 2.0
3D Studio Max
PCMark Vantage
PCMark 7
3DMark Vantage
3DMark 11
Unigine Heaven Benchmark

Games:
Dirt 3
Dead Space 2
Total War: Shogun 2
Resident Evil 5
Tom Clancy HAWX 2
BulletStorm
The Witcher 2
Home Front

All the latest BIOS updates and drivers are used during testing. We perform under real world conditions, meaning KitGuru tests across five closely matched runs and averages out the results to get an accurate median figure.

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