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Project Home Theater PC (HTPC)

post #1 of 10
3/17/05 at 3:14pm
Thread Starter 
So after a few months of being lazy I've decided to get off my and build a MCPC. Here is what I'm looking at purchasing:

Motherboard - Intel D915PBL - $0 (Already in my posession)
Processor - Intel 3.4GHz Pentium 4 w/ HT - $0 (Already in my posession)
RAM - 1GB OCZ Platinum Edition PC-4200 ($304)
Video Card - ATI x850 XT PCI-E 256MB ($467)
TV Tuner - ATI HDTV WONDER ($149)
Wireless - Linksys Dual Band A+G 5/2.4GHz Card ($79)
2 Western Digital 250GB 7200RPM SATA HDs ($254)
Optical Drive - Plextor Dual Layer DVD+/- ($86)
Case - Silverstone Lascala SST-LC03 ($128)
Power Supply - Zippy PSM-6600PP ($192)
Mouse & Keyboard - Logitech diNovo Media Desktop for Bluetooth ($189)
Floppy Drive ($5)
Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 ($120)

Total Estimated Cost ~$2000

In my research, I wanted to go with one of the Alhanix cases as I loved their design but they were very limited in upgradeability and expansion so I ultimately chose Lascala. I was going to get two TV tuners because you can't record TV and watch it with one TV and there is also issues in using one card for HDTV/analog even though the card has both inputs but I decided that I just need one for now. I was also going to get a RAID array of the 74GB WD SATA Raptors in 10000RPM speeds but mroe space is good :-)

I'll post pictures and whatnot as I get going but I'm gonna order up all the parts this week. It should pwn
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post #2 of 10
3/17/05 at 3:22pm
Excellent - I've built a few home theaters with the MSI 865 box and the Kloss 915 box, but haven't used the home theater cases yet.

I like the Ahanix, too, but there are lots of good cases now.

Did you check the Media Center Edition for compatibility? The MSI TV Tuner didn't work with Media Center, but I could use it with MSI's TV software.
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post #3 of 10
3/17/05 at 3:55pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by CoffeeShark
Did you check the Media Center Edition for compatibility? The MSI TV Tuner didn't work with Media Center, but I could use it with MSI's TV software.
Definately a good callout..the last thing someone wants is to purchase some uber hardware just to find out MCE blue screen during install haha. I've found the following resource to be invaluable to HTPC builders and they keep it updated pretty darn often; in fact they updated it today lmao:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/m...erlisting.mspx

My x850 and ATI HDTV Wonder are on the list
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post #4 of 10
3/17/05 at 5:56pm
i think you'd be happier with some low latency pc3500 or even 3200 (i'm assuming you're going to be overclocking with such high speed ram?). it'll run faster at default settings and, as long as you don't skimp (which i can tell you're not) with the price and get something decent, definitely won't be the bottleneck of the OC so even that will get better performance with the pc32/3500.

the hard drives is the only other thing i'd question. i know a lot of people are diehard western digital fans for the past 5 years, and i agree they're great drives, but there are better available now in my opinion. if you have the time and would consider something different, check out the new line of NCQ drives that have come out recently - the drives are amazing. the two mains are the seagate 7200.8's and the maxtor dm10's. they're faster than any western digital drive aside from the 74gb raptor at this point, come with a longer warranty, and have fluid dynamic bearings making them significantly quieter and longer lasting. if i were to recommend one i'd say http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...144-357&depa=0 this. benchmarks point to it being faster than the seagate by a small margin. can get a review of it here http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_cont...=ncq300&page=6 .

goodluck with the PC.. looks like it'll be insane.
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post #5 of 10
3/17/05 at 6:50pm
Thread Starter 
I'm kind of confused by what you mentioned about the RAM I'm considering:

http://www.ocztechnology.com/product...annel_platinum

This ram is ultra low latency RAM lol. As far as the hard drives, I actually think I'm going to go with the 10000RPM WD Raptors...even though I'll be losing the space I think the small bit of performance gain will be cool cause I'm putting those two drives in a 0+1 RAID setup. Plus I have another server with 1TB of hard drive space so I'm not lacking some storage head room lol.
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post #6 of 10
3/17/05 at 7:14pm
I was about to the same but gave up and now thinking of doing a car pc. But here are a couple sites that I came across while doing my research.
http://www.htpcnews.com/
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forum...php?forumid=26
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post #7 of 10
3/17/05 at 8:36pm
edit: i'm a complete moron and wasn't thinking; i just realized you can't use ddr memory with that motherboard so everything i stated made no sense since i was attacking it from an issue of getting tighter latency such as 2 2 2 6 instead of the 2.5 3 3 8 since the motherboard wouldn't be able to take advantage of the ddr533 speeds if this were all ddr. i don't build intel machines and haven't owned a pentium since the 2.4c was out, so i'm not in a situation to comment on ddr2 memory and would just be going on second hand info, so i'm not in a position to comment about that. again, my apologies.

i think i just made the longest sentence in the world.. eh w/e
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post #8 of 10
3/18/05 at 1:46am
Do you have a lot of over the air High Definition broadcasts in your area? Just forwarning you because the HDTV wonder cannot decode HDTV transmissions over cable or satellite.

Before offering any further opinions on your setup I'd really have to ask are you really building a stand alone HTPC system or a gaming system that can also do HTPC/video editing duties? Some of your components just don't make sense.
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post #9 of 10
3/18/05 at 1:59am
some of you guys want the ATI hdtv wonder. This is NOT the best HDTV card.

you guys NEED to hang out on avsforum.com

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forum...php?forumid=26

lol
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post #10 of 10
3/18/05 at 2:43am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Melodis
Do you have a lot of over the air High Definition broadcasts in your area? Just forwarning you because the HDTV wonder cannot decode HDTV transmissions over cable or satellite.

Before offering any further opinions on your setup I'd really have to ask are you really building a stand alone HTPC system or a gaming system that can also do HTPC/video editing duties? Some of your components just don't make sense.
As far as the HDTV, really the only channels and stations I care about watching/recording as of now would be MTV, BET, FOX and Comedy Central and I don't know if those are available in HDTV right now. Basically I'm going to use it for analog cable as of now but I wanted to prep for HDTV in the future. I have a decent amount of ATA available right now as found here: http://www.antennaweb.org

I chose the ATI card (based upon an Arstechnica article) over one of the hauppage HDTV cards because I've found the happauge software to be pretty weak in comparison but hauppage as far as quality and performance definately is pretty good.

http://arstechnica.com/guides/buyer/htpc-guide.ars/2

As far as this as a HTPC, I am basically a die hard notebook guy hence the reason why I've been a member of this forum for a while. For some reason I just don't like desktops as much lol. But I got that Intel motherboard/processor combo for $200 so I figured I might as well build a pretty damn good system and a HTPC seems like the thing to do so I'm rocking it out. I like to have the best and the bragging rights and I $$$ isn't an object hence some of the potential radical expenditures that I would have nixed if I was building a true all out silent/slim HTPC. I really really really wanted to build a system with an Ahanix case like this http://www.ahanix.com/ahanix_product.asp?pid=26 but there were too many expandability and upgradeability limitations.
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