Soldato
- Joined
- 10 Oct 2005
- Posts
- 8,706
- Location
- Nottingham
Currently I have an old Shuttle SN45G V3 (Barton 2500+) acting as a media box hooked up to a TV in my bedroom. Over the last 6 months this has been getting more and more flakey with it occasionally failing to POST. Also it currently running an external 500GB to give it a decent amount of storage but with this connected it's network performance appears to be severely affected, (to the point where sometimes looses the network entirely). It's also getting quite noisy.
It's got to the stage where I'm starting to look into a replacement and thus would like to call upon those here present to provide any assistance they can.
Instead of a Shuttle this time I'm looking at something based on Antec Fusion case but I'm not sure which route to go with the content, Intel or AMD. I've had more issues in the past with non-Intel chipset motherboards than Intel ones and I already have a C2D P35 based HTPC in the lounge so I am leaning towards an Intel based solution but I am open to suggestions. System would be connected to a Samsung 26" R87 LCD TV and be used to play back video files (xvid/mkv/DVD rip) / the odd DVD. System would run Vista Home Premium.
I already have a 200GB SATA2 drive which can be used for the OS/Music and the 500GB SATA2 drive out of the external enclosure for video so I think I am ok on the disk front. I also have a spare Nova-T freeview TV Card.
For Intel I was looking at:
Gigabyte GA-G33M-DS2R
Intel C2D 7200
Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2-6400C4
Whereas on the AMD side it would look like the prefered solution is:
Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H
AMD 4850e (OCUK don't do these?)
Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2-6400C4
(I've seen a lot of people suggesting the AMD route but I have also seen things on places like AVForums saying that the 780 chipsets onboard graphics can have issues outputing 1368x7## to some TVs and I would like a system that works and is stable)
If either the onboard graphics chipsets are not good enough then I was looking at adding a ATI 3450 based card. Of course on top of the above I'd need a DVD drive, (no need for Blue Ray yet), the case and Vista HP (OEM).
So what do people think and what suggestions/specs can they offer? Also what quiet CPU coolers should I looking at which would fit on these boards in this case, how noisy is the cooling on the case and am I likely to hit any issues with fitting any of the above in it?
edit: I don't really want to spent more than £500 on this which given that I already have the disks I think should be doable.
It's got to the stage where I'm starting to look into a replacement and thus would like to call upon those here present to provide any assistance they can.
Instead of a Shuttle this time I'm looking at something based on Antec Fusion case but I'm not sure which route to go with the content, Intel or AMD. I've had more issues in the past with non-Intel chipset motherboards than Intel ones and I already have a C2D P35 based HTPC in the lounge so I am leaning towards an Intel based solution but I am open to suggestions. System would be connected to a Samsung 26" R87 LCD TV and be used to play back video files (xvid/mkv/DVD rip) / the odd DVD. System would run Vista Home Premium.
I already have a 200GB SATA2 drive which can be used for the OS/Music and the 500GB SATA2 drive out of the external enclosure for video so I think I am ok on the disk front. I also have a spare Nova-T freeview TV Card.
For Intel I was looking at:
Gigabyte GA-G33M-DS2R
Intel C2D 7200
Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2-6400C4
Whereas on the AMD side it would look like the prefered solution is:
Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H
AMD 4850e (OCUK don't do these?)
Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2-6400C4
(I've seen a lot of people suggesting the AMD route but I have also seen things on places like AVForums saying that the 780 chipsets onboard graphics can have issues outputing 1368x7## to some TVs and I would like a system that works and is stable)
If either the onboard graphics chipsets are not good enough then I was looking at adding a ATI 3450 based card. Of course on top of the above I'd need a DVD drive, (no need for Blue Ray yet), the case and Vista HP (OEM).
So what do people think and what suggestions/specs can they offer? Also what quiet CPU coolers should I looking at which would fit on these boards in this case, how noisy is the cooling on the case and am I likely to hit any issues with fitting any of the above in it?
edit: I don't really want to spent more than £500 on this which given that I already have the disks I think should be doable.
Last edited: