HTPC.... sort of!

duvet77

duvet77

duvet77

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Joined
22 Nov 2005
Posts
1,331
Hey up, I've not been on here since my last upgrade but I've got a little project on the go.

I've managed to liberate an old pc and some bits and bobs from work so i thought I'd build myself a basic media server, to store photos, mp3s and AVIs. The idea is that it sits in my cellar (cos it ain't pretty) just under the TV and is connected to the TV to watch AVI's etc.

The specs are (don't laugh):

IntelD845WN motherboard (socket 478 400fsb)
Pentium 4 1.7GHz CPU
768Mb RAM (3x 256Mb - MB only has 3 ram slots)
ATI radeon 9200SE gfx card
120Gb IDE hard drive
160Gb IDE hard drive
70Gb SCSI hard drive

What a beast!

Anyway, I want to make some cheap fleabay upgrades but don't want to spend much at all on it. I'm not going to be using it for HD stuff, it won't be doing encoding and it won't be acting as a PVR.

What would you guys do with it (other than drop it out of a very high window)?! I can get a 2GHz pentium 4 for a tenner which I thought would be a start.

Any input welcome.
 
how much u looking to spend on upgrade?

for 110 ish u can get:

p31 ga ds3l mobo
e2160 dual core cpu
2gb geil ram

or u can get that 2ghz cpu and upgrade the ram
 
duvet77 said:
IntelD845WN motherboard (socket 478 400fsb)
Pentium 4 1.7GHz CPU
768Mb RAM (3x 256Mb - MB only has 3 ram slots)
ATI radeon 9200SE gfx card
120Gb IDE hard drive
160Gb IDE hard drive
70Gb SCSI hard drive
Click to expand...

Isn’t that SCSI abit noisy for an HTPC? You could try and get a 3ghz P4 skt 478 instead if you find one that isn’t expensive.
 
malachi said:
Isn’t that SCSI abit noisy for an HTPC? You could try and get a 3ghz P4 skt 478 instead if you find one that isn’t expensive.
Click to expand...

it's not too noisy. the pc will be in the cellar anyway so i won't hear it.

i don't think i can get a 3ghz p4 because the mobo only supports 400mhz fsb cpus. i think the max it supports is 2.6Mhz.

Another question; when does it become worthwhile to have a sound card? I'm not hooking this up to a surround sound system, just my TV, so is onboard sound good enough?
 
Your looking to send avi files to the TV via a AV lead or do you have some kind of medai player receiveing digital files from the server?

If the former what OS does it have? Can it play back the kind of files you want to watch smoothly? How do you intend to remote control playback? Possibly a graphics card with decoding abilites for mpeg1 to 4 would help the cpu out.
 
errata said:
Your looking to send avi files to the TV via a AV lead or do you have some kind of medai player receiveing digital files from the server?

If the former what OS does it have? Can it play back the kind of files you want to watch smoothly? How do you intend to remote control playback? Possibly a graphics card with decoding abilites for mpeg1 to 4 would help the cpu out.
Click to expand...

TV has a vga input so the box will be in the cellar under the TV, with a cable coming through a sneaky hole in the floor (already there for aerial wire), a usb infra red receiver will come thru same hole for my remote control which will run windows media centre.

I'm thinking of creating a long power header cable that can come thru the floor so i can power it on and off properly rather than it being in standby mode.

i did a test playback the other day and it was smooth but i only watched a couple of minutes, haven't watched a whole movie yet. the problem is actually booting the OS... it takes fooooooooooooooreeeeeeeevvvvveeeeeerrrr!!!
 
This thing is nearly ready to rock and roll.

I've upgraded it to a 2.5 ghz for the princley sum of £6 and got the RAM up to 1gb. Top specs or what?!

First tests indicate it will play 720p files but i didn't have speakers in so i don't know whether it was playing sound. 1080p files make smoke come out of the back!:rolleyes: It looks pretty good picture quality hooked up to my 32" lcd tv.

my proudest moment of this rather unexciting project was extending my power switch header cable to 3m long so i can switch it on from the lounge!
 
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