Cheap Media rig, good enough?

northun_munky

northun_munky

northun_munky

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Joined
1 Mar 2008
Posts
955
Location
Near Longleat, Raaaar!!
Just about got a enough bit spare to put together another system which I was thinking of using for watching films on, a bit of internet browsing and to act as a server of sorts for all my films and music. I'll need a cpu which I was thinking of picking up a cheap p4 or celeron but could do with a bit of advice as to whether its going to be up to the job.

CPU: P4?
Mobo: MiniATX which came with a ACER PC i bought a few years ago.
GFX: nvidia 7500 LE
RAM: Corsair 2GB DDR2 Value Select PC2-5300C5
PSU: 280w PSC which came with the acer
HDD: 400gb WD for the media, 80 GB that came with the acer for OS
OS:XP MCE

It will be going through a LG 32' LCD TV via DVI.

Cheers
 
when you say it'll be used for playing back movies do you mean hd? For decent 1080 playback you'll need quite a capable cpu, if you just want to play back standard def div x etc than pretty much anything will do
 
The 400gig WD hard drive is likely to be a lot faster than the 80gig Acer one, so Id put the OS on the WD.

You should be able to tell what your CPU is and Motherboard is... if you dont know this simple stuff you not ready to build a PC. Sorry.
 
Hi Vegetarian, no disrespect but if you read my post you'd see that I don't actually own a cpu, hence asking for advice. With regards to the motherboard, I'm at work at the moment and even though my memory is good, I can't remember model numbers of Acer made motherboards of the top of my head.

I post on this forum as although I've built a few PC's in my time I'm not all knowing and appreciate the advice on things I don't have experience with. Not to be told I I'm not ready to do something I've done before. Thanks for the advice on the HDD though.
 
what you have listed should be find for normal def playback, you might manage acceptable 720 playback with it too. 1080 requires a fair bit more power. My friend had some stutters when playing h.264 1080 on his e6750 so quite significant power is needed to get the best playback, and I dont think your other components (particularly PSU) would take a powerful modern cpu so 1080 is probably outside this systems capabilites without some significant investment in new parts
 
northun_munky said:
Hi Vegetarian, no disrespect but if you read my post you'd see that I don't actually own a cpu, hence asking for advice. With regards to the motherboard, I'm at work at the moment and even though my memory is good, I can't remember model numbers of Acer made motherboards of the top of my head.

I post on this forum as although I've built a few PC's in my time I'm not all knowing and appreciate the advice on things I don't have experience with. Not to be told I I'm not ready to do something I've done before. Thanks for the advice on the HDD though.
Click to expand...

Sorry I didnt mean to come accross wrong. If you can find out what motherboard you got would help things... find out if bios can surport newer CPU's etc

I would go with an E1200 CPU and update the graphics card to ATI X2400 and you should then have an HTPC that will do the job. P4 will actually be hotter, slower and consume more power than the E1200 (wich can be o/c'ed as well).

Another option is to bin the motherboard you have and get the cheapest ATI780 motherboard you can and athlon x2 cpu.
 
BENdage said:
what you have listed should be find for normal def playback, you might manage acceptable 720 playback with it too. 1080 requires a fair bit more power. My friend had some stutters when playing h.264 1080 on his e6750 so quite significant power is needed to get the best playback, and I dont think your other components (particularly PSU) would take a powerful modern cpu so 1080 is probably outside this systems capabilites without some significant investment in new parts
Click to expand...

As it would be nice and cheap I think I'd be happy with normal def in the comfort of my own lounge. It would make a change from sitting infront of a 22' monitor!!

Vegetarian said:
Sorry I didnt mean to come accross wrong. If you can find out what motherboard you got would help things... find out if bios can surport newer CPU's etc

I would go with an E1200 CPU and update the graphics card to ATI X2400 and you should then have an HTPC that will do the job. P4 will actually be hotter, slower and consume more power than the E1200 (wich can be o/c'ed as well).

Another option is to bin the motherboard you have and get the cheapest ATI780 motherboard you can and athlon x2 cpu.
Click to expand...

I remember that the mobo had no overclocking options and was generally pretty poor! Its what persuaded me that building from scratch was the way forward and I haven't looked back! Thanks for the advice. I reckon it will be suitable for what I want and it shouldn't cost me much.

Thanks
 
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