Please check before I order (HTPC)

Andybtsn · 20 Jun 2008 at 13:31

Guys, don't want to clutter the HTPC build thread up anymore and I changed my order so much that it was getting confusing.

My budget is £500.

I have priced the following up:

The reason I chose that case, it seems to be the only one under £100 that offers two optical drives which i require for the sound card I'm ordering.
The PC will be mainly used for music and video with occasional gaming on Football Manager and maybe WoW.

Should I upgrade anything else there or does that all look ok to you?

Would like to order in the next hour so ay help appreciated.

Andy

mitch212k · 20 Jun 2008 at 13:36

Only thing I'd possibly say is as it's a HTPC will 500GB suffice? If yes then it looks fine but if not you may want to whack a 1tb or larger hd in with the spec

mitch

Andybtsn · 20 Jun 2008 at 14:46

I'll stick in another 500gb then.

Will the motherboard support two monitors?

siege2 · 20 Jun 2008 at 15:09

for two monitors u require 2 dvi or vga outputs on your GPU ?
do u have them ?

Andybtsn · 20 Jun 2008 at 15:24

siege2 said:
for two monitors u require 2 dvi or vga outputs on your GPU ?
do u have them ?

Well does the motherboard have both vga and dvi can anyone tell? I know it has HDMI...

Should I just get a VGA to dual VGA for my two monitors?

siege2 · 20 Jun 2008 at 15:29

although it does have onboard, would u be able to plug in an pciexpress gpu card for addtional output to monitor?

Grimley · 20 Jun 2008 at 21:11

I'd stay away from that motherboard - I'd look at the £400 spec in shaffaaf27's thread.

Andybtsn · 20 Jun 2008 at 21:14

Grimley said:
I'd stay away from that motherboard - I'd look at the £400 spec in shaffaaf27's thread.

How come?

thefishdude · 20 Jun 2008 at 21:57

alo of people go got the amd route with a amd board using the 780g chipset. like in that £400 pound spec he mentions. this is because the 780g chipset has built in hd decoders that can do 1080p. thus taking all the strain of the cpu

InkZ · 20 Jun 2008 at 22:16

gigabyte 780g board, athlon 4450e x2, scythe ninja mini, job done

crazyDAJT · 20 Jun 2008 at 23:44

InkZ said:
gigabyte 780g board, athlon 4450e x2, scythe ninja mini, job done

second that, 780g motherboards have hardware decoding on, do very well with HD media and you can get away with a <£40 processor.

shaffaaf27 · 21 Jun 2008 at 03:14

try this:

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=11934061&postcount=95

Aod · 21 Jun 2008 at 04:12

i'd reccommend that you get something other than the Creative X-fi. Asus Xonar DX would be much better (software wise) and just as good hardware-wise.

Grimley · 21 Jun 2008 at 10:07

andybtsn said:
How come?

Read a few horror stories about its reliablity on here & elsewhere.