htpc high spec - seen this second hand what do you think

[laffin tattie]

i saw this advertised for £600 but may be open to lower offers, what do you think of this set up? this setup must cost around 850-900 by todays prices. Is 600 reasonable or is £500 closer to what its worth. its a lot more than i would have gone for but its ready built and good spec i would just hope it is quiet enough for the living room.

Silverstone lc17 case (silver aluminium)

P4 3gig

Zalaman flower heatsink with fan speed controler

450w 120mm quite power supply

1gb ocz 4400fsb ram heatsink (quality stuff)

Gigabyte ga81pe 1000 pro g motherboard

35gig western digital 10,000rpm raptor running os and apps

160gig seagate barracuda 7200rpm for storage

Leadtek winfast geforce 6800 limited edition video card

Happauge wintv pvr150 tv card

Gigabit ethernet

Pioneer 109 16x +/- dvd writer

Microsoft Media Centre Keyboard (Windows XP Media Center)

Microsoft Media Center Remote Control Inc Reciever

software :
Microsoft OEM Windows XP Media Center 2005 original discs and full licence.

norton 2006 antivirus
theatertek 2.2
and a few other handy apps

looking for £600 plus delivery

 

[semi-pro waster]

It does seem a fairly reasonable price, I might say offer £600inc based on the prices new and allowing for depreciation but it isn't entirely unreasonable. I generally work on the basis that you allow for around 2/3 depreciation on new prices but you do get the software and the parts are good.

Having had a look at the specifications it seems quite sizeable(normal midi-tower sized roughly) have you checked it will fit where you want?

 

[Lanz]

There is stuff there that isn't really required for a HTPC. The Raptor for example isn't the quietest drive, and you'd porobably hear it.

The AGP 6800 (NV40) isn't goood for a media centre, as it has broken hardware WMV decoding.

You dont need good ram, as you wont be overclocking, you want to run a HTPC at stock so its as cool and quiet as possible.

The Pioneer DVDR 109 can be a noisy beast when playing DVDs, I got one for my mates HTPC and he had to replace it because it was annoying.

Its a good price, but its just not ideal for MCE2005.

 

[laffin tattie]

thanks for the reply guys

unsure if i would use the htpc for playing dvds, maybe dvd files and movie files from hdd, i have a pioneer 575 dvd player and will be outputting via component to a 42" SD panasonic plasma. so not sure if i should be doing away with the dvd player and using the htpc instead. I have 2 nec dual writers i would probably use, nec 3520 and 4540, not sure how these are playing dvds as i only burn with them.

i have a new maxtor 250gb hdd which i could swap over for the raptor and sell the raptor i suppose. if my maxtor is any quieter.

I was planning on a shuttle so it was more portable and dinky, but this would fit in an av rack with my av amp, sky and dvd player and look the part.

so would that gfx card give me lots of trouble using MCE

 

[laffin tattie]

i have the chance to buy this htpc for £475 + postage, i think its a good deal and a much higher spec then if i were to build one myself. I like the idea of being able to fit 2 dvdrw drives into it. I would then be able to sell my laptop and pc that i use for downloading & burning discs and use this instead, if the drives are noisy i can swap them to get them quiet. As its in my living room i will me using it as a main pc too so it will need to be really quiet.

is this a good purchase at 475 + postage. so tempted to go for it

includes some games as well

farcry
splinter cell pandora tommorow
prince of persia warrior within
X2 the threat
moto gp ultimate race technology 2

 

[Lanz]

See if you can biuld a better specced one for the same money, if you cant, then go for it. Bare in mind that buying a P4/AGP system, it will make it totally non-upgrable in the future, where as if you build a S939 with a cheap cpu like a 3000+, you'd be able to stuff in dual cores and new PCI-e cards, giving it more life.

 

[laffin tattie]

ok ill see what i can do

thanks