SteamBox – Building Your Own HTPC Gaming System

Performance

If you’re gaming on the big screen in your living room, then there is a fair chance you’re running a TV with a maximum resolution of 1920 x 1080 and a 60Hz capable panel. While many will cry that you need a blazing fast GPU, the truth is that even our modest Sapphire R9 270X will game at 1080p with ease, even with settings dialed up to high on many of today’s latest games. What if that’s not enough for you? If you really want to push the performance higher, you can always add a second graphics card. Crossfire or SLI (if you’re using Nvidia cards) can be a great and rather cost-effective way to boost gaming performance. I installed a second 270X into our test system and as you can see, the performance figures are looking even better. However, since graphics card prices are ever-changing, I’ve also tested a pair of Sapphire 280X graphics cards; let’s see if we can find the best value for money here.

The Sapphire cards scale really well in Crossfire and that’s good news if you want extra performance on a budget, but the main thing you need to consider here is now is acoustic performance, as we saw in our previous article, the chassis I’ve chosen, the Silverstone SUGO SG09, you can expect to hear around 36-42dBa when up close to your system. This is really good and by the time you get 6-10ft away to sit on your couch, this is a very quiet system indeed. While the fans won’t bother you too much while gaming, this kind of quiet performance will provide extra benefits should you also use the system as a HTPC for watching movies.

With a single GPU installed the system is very quiet, but keep in mind that adding a second graphics card will obviously push the acoustic levels a little higher and it really is about finding a balance that you’re comfortable with in terms of noise, price and performance.

The 280X is noticeably better in both tests and given the price is only an extra £30 right now, I think a single 280X would be more than enough for a HTPC gaming system such as this, especially given we’re targeting 1920 x 1080 resolutions.