Media PC Spec

lolwtfbbq · 10 Mar 2006 at 07:36

Is this good for a Media PC

Asus A8N-VM CSM Micro ATX (Socket 939) PCI Express Motherboard (MB-119-AS) £64.57

AMD Athlon 64 3500+ Venice 90nm (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA3500BPBOX) (CP-119-AM) £140.94

OcUK Value Aspire X-Qpack Cube Case - Silver (CA-008-AS) £70.44

Corsair 1GB DDR Value Select PC3200 CAS3.0 Kit (2x512MB) (VS1GBKIT400C3) (MY-061-CS) £56.34

Terratec Cinergy 2400i DT DVB-T TV Tuner (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-000-TT) £93.94

NEC ND4570 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM (CD-030-NE) £29.32

Akasa Rounded Ultra ATA133/100/66 IDE Cable (0.45m) - Black (CB-004-GE) £3.47

Western Digital Caviar Special Edition 120GB 1200JS SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-055-WD) £51.64 x2

OcUK Value Floppy Drive - Black (HD-001-OK) £6.99

Akasa Rounded Floppy Cable (0.45m) - Blue (CB-046-GE) £2.29

Antec NeoHE 430W Modular ATX2.0 PSU (CA-044-AN) £64.57

Akasa AK-183-L2B Ultra Quiet 120mm Fan - 3 pin (FG-024-AK) £10.52

Microsoft Windows XP Media Centre 2005 Edition - OEM (SW-008-MS) £78.67

Microsoft Windows XP Media Centre 2005 Remote Controller (SW-009-MS) £23.44

Vantec Cable Sleeving Kit - Blue (CA-002-VA) £5.82

Microsoft Remote Keyboard for Windows XP Media Center Edition - Retail (KB-053-MS) £64.57

Linksys WUSB54G Wireless-G USB Network Adapter (NW-013-LS) £28.14

HIS Excalibur ATI Radeon X300SE 128MB DDR TV-Out/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (RX300SE) (GX-021-HT) £35.19

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Welcome any changes

vinh24

ajgoodfellow · 10 Mar 2006 at 08:06

Hi!

That looks good - I've put my recommendations under each item on your spec

vinh24 said:
Asus A8N-VM CSM Micro ATX (Socket 939) PCI Express Motherboard (MB-119-AS) £64.57

Great motherboard for a media centre PC

vinh24 said:
AMD Athlon 64 3500+ Venice 90nm (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA3500BPBOX) (CP-119-AM) £140.94

The extra £5 for the 3700+ is really worth it - encoding will benefit from the extra cache

vinh24 said:
OcUK Value Aspire X-Qpack Cube Case - Silver (CA-008-AS) £70.44

Corsair 1GB DDR Value Select PC3200 CAS3.0 Kit (2x512MB) (VS1GBKIT400C3) (MY-061-CS) £56.34

Terratec Cinergy 2400i DT DVB-T TV Tuner (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-000-TT) £93.94

NEC ND4570 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM (CD-030-NE) £29.32

Akasa Rounded Ultra ATA133/100/66 IDE Cable (0.45m) - Black (CB-004-GE) £3.47

These are fine - no problem with this! The motherboard will come with the cables you need though

vinh24 said:
Western Digital Caviar Special Edition 120GB 1200JS SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-055-WD) £51.64 x2

Have you gone for two hard drives for RAID? If so then great, if not it's cheaper to buy one larger drive

vinh24 said:
OcUK Value Floppy Drive - Black (HD-001-OK) £6.99

Akasa Rounded Floppy Cable (0.45m) - Blue (CB-046-GE) £2.29

Great although the motherboard will come with the cables you need

vinh24 said:
Antec NeoHE 430W Modular ATX2.0 PSU (CA-044-AN) £64.57

The PSU included with the case should be fine for a low drain media centre PC. If you do want to upgrade it though that's a great choice

vinh24 said:
Akasa AK-183-L2B Ultra Quiet 120mm Fan - 3 pin (FG-024-AK) £10.52

Microsoft Windows XP Media Centre 2005 Edition - OEM (SW-008-MS) £78.67

Microsoft Windows XP Media Centre 2005 Remote Controller (SW-009-MS) £23.44

Vantec Cable Sleeving Kit - Blue (CA-002-VA) £5.82

Microsoft Remote Keyboard for Windows XP Media Center Edition - Retail (KB-053-MS) £64.57

Linksys WUSB54G Wireless-G USB Network Adapter (NW-013-LS) £28.14

These are all fine choices

vinh24 said:
HIS Excalibur ATI Radeon X300SE 128MB DDR TV-Out/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (RX300SE) (GX-021-HT) £35.19

The motherboard comes with integrated graphics which will be fine for a media centre PC so you don't need this

Hope that helps

ACESHIGH · 10 Mar 2006 at 12:18

All looks good, but also agree that the extra paid foir the Athlon 64 3700+ is worth it.

lolwtfbbq · 10 Mar 2006 at 18:27

Ok i might do it in RAID 1 and go for the 3700+.I chose the Modular psu cause i can remove all the unused cables

ajgoodfellow · 10 Mar 2006 at 18:33

OK cool

Just in case you didn't know - RAID 1 will mirror your drives so with two 120GB drives you'll have 120GB of storage. If either drive fails though you won't loose your data - you won't get a speed boost though

RAID 0 stripes the drives. This will give you a speed boost and 240GB of space. If either drive fails though you'll loose all of your data

lolwtfbbq · 10 Mar 2006 at 20:33

ajgoodfellow said:
OK cool

Just in case you didn't know - RAID 1 will mirror your drives so with two 120GB drives you'll have 120GB of storage. If either drive fails though you won't loose your data - you won't get a speed boost though

RAID 0 stripes the drives. This will give you a speed boost and 240GB of space. If either drive fails though you'll loose all of your data

thaks for telling me

lolwtfbbq · 21 Mar 2006 at 19:39

Here we go with a Amd 64 3700+ oem

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Asus A8N-VM CSM Micro ATX (Socket 939) PCI Express Motherboard (MB-119-AS) £64.57

AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego 90nm (Socket 939) - OEM (CP-150-AM) £140.94

Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940) (FG-000-AR) £15.22

Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound (3.5g) (AC-000-AC) £6.46

OcUK Value Aspire X-Qpack Cube Case - Silver (CA-008-AS) £70.44

Corsair 1GB DDR Value Select PC3200 CAS3.0 Kit (2x512MB) (VS1GBKIT400C3) (MY-061-CS) £56.34

Terratec Cinergy 2400i DT DVB-T TV Tuner (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-000-TT) £93.94

NEC ND4570 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM (CD-030-NE) £29.32

Akasa Rounded Ultra ATA133/100/66 IDE Cable (0.45m) - Black (CB-004-GE) £3.47

Western Digital Caviar Special Edition 120GB 1200JS SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-055-WD) £51.64 x2

OcUK Value Floppy Drive - Black (HD-001-OK) £6.99

Akasa Rounded Floppy Cable (0.45m) - Blue (CB-046-GE) £2.29

Antec NeoHE 430W Modular ATX2.0 PSU (CA-044-AN) £64.57

Akasa AK-183-L2B Ultra Quiet 120mm Fan - 3 pin (FG-024-AK) £10.52

Microsoft Windows XP Media Centre 2005 Edition - OEM (SW-008-MS) £78.67

Microsoft Windows XP Media Centre 2005 Remote Controller (SW-009-MS) £23.44

Vantec Cable Sleeving Kit - Blue (CA-002-VA) £5.82

Microsoft Remote Keyboard for Windows XP Media Center Edition - Retail (KB-053-MS) £64.57

Linksys WUSB54G Wireless-G USB Network Adapter (NW-013-LS) £28.14

ajgoodfellow · 21 Mar 2006 at 19:43

That all looks good

mcmad · 21 Mar 2006 at 22:22

what media are you planning to playback ?

Wakinglimb · 22 Mar 2006 at 00:17

I just want to big up that mobo. It's really rather nice, but you'll need an optional TV out bracket if you are wanting that functionality.

Also, that TV tuner looks awesome, been looking at it for a while, let me know if it works out well!