Mediacentre specs advice

[alexthecheese]

My girlfriend's dad is looking to put together a PC of reasonable spec. to set up a mediacentre, where he can rip his DVDs, play media files, stream off the internet and all that jazz.

I suggested that he use Mediaportal as that's all I know, and it does seem excellent to me.

He found a PC for £200, with no O/S but the following specs:

AMD A6 3500 triple core 2.1ghz
8gigs RAM
AMD 6530D

So, RAM is OK, but what about the CPU and graphics card? Will it be able to hack the reasonably demanding mediaportal, or will he need to spend another £100 or whatever to get something with a bit more muscle?

Would it also be worth him getting an SSD to speed up things? Cheers.

 

[honosuseri]

YOUR BASKET
1 x Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST2000DM001) £92.99
1 x Intel Core i3-2120 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £83.99
1 x Asus P8H61-M LE/USB3 Intel H61 (Socket 1155) DDR3 MicroATX Motherboard £40.80
1 x BitFenix Outlaw Gaming Case - Black £36.98
1 x Corsair Builder Series CX 430W V2 '80 Plus' Power Supply (CMPSU-430CXUKV2) £36.98
1 x Kingston Blu 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9AD3B1K2/4G) £23.99
1 x Samsung SH-S222BB/BEBE 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £14.99
Total : £343.32 (includes shipping : £10.50).



He won't need 8GB of RAM. I've gone intel simply to get quick sync which greatly speeds up the encoding process of ripping DVDs. HDD has plenty of storage to keep his movie collection.

Hope this helps