Speculous checkulous please

Soldato
Joined
10 Mar 2006
Posts
3,975
Hi, looking to build a new system that will be just used for browsing and outputting 1080p videos. Trying to keep the price as slim as possible, which I think I've done but any suggestions are welcome thanks. :D

Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 64-Bit Edition DVD - OEM - 1Pk (66I-00788) (£70.49)
Western Digital Caviar SE16 250GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (WD2500AAKS) (£44.64)
PowerColor ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO SCS3 SILENT 512MB DDR2 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (£51.69)
OcUK Value IP35 Pro Intel P35 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard (£58.74)
Intel Core 2 Duo E2200 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.20GHz (800FSB) - Retail (£58.74)
OCZ 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-6400C4 Dual Channel Platinum Revision 2 XTC Series DDR2 (OCZ2P800R22GK) (£54.02)
Akasa AK-ZEN-01-BK Zen Black Case - No PSU (£29.36)
OcUK Huntkey 450W PSU (£35.24)
OcUK Value L-2041W 20" Widescreen LCD Monitor - Black (£117.49)


Total : £535.62
 
I'd swap out the disk you have there for a Seagate 7200.10 250 GB. It's faster and only marginally more expensive.

4 GiB RAM is massive overkill for the tasks you mention. a single set of the RAM you specified will be enough and then some.

In fact, you could save even more by getting a mATX mobo with integrated ATi or nVidia graphics. It'll perform hardware acceleration of the video and will save on heat dissipation. It's what I use in my HTPC and it doesn't struggle in the least with 1080p content encoded with aggressive codecs like H.264 video and AAC audio.

EDIT: To what TV will you be connecting this? You are aware that a 20.1" monitor is not sufficient for viewing 1080p at full resolution, right?
 
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I can't see any particularly obvious ways to save money there and it is all compatible although you may want to check that the OcUK IP35Pro supports the right voltage for the Ram on first boot or if it has to be set manually like on some of the Abit motherboards.

//edit although apparantly Billy can find ways to save you cash, go with his suggestions. :)
 
Well the plan is to connect it to a 1080p projector when I move out in the next few months. I'd like to just get 4 gigs of RAM as - though I've had no practical experience of Vista yet - I'm sure the more the merrier, but I suppose I really haven't a clue.

It will be linked to a 1080p monitor also. Billy - I'm intrigued as to the spec of your HTPC - could you post up some specs? Micro ATX would be very nifty come to think of it. Cheers.
 
With my HTPC setup I have a client/server model. The server sits in the cellar holding all the hard disks and the capture card. The client sits on the TV doing nothing but playback. I boot the client from a 2 GiB CompactFlash card so it has no hard disks to make noise.

Server, Dell Dimension I picked from the rubbish,
800 MHz Pentium III
512 MiB PC-133 RAM
Hauppauge PVR-150
running Ubuntu Server 6.06.1 LTS

CPU usage when encoding hovers around 20% since the card is doing all the heavy lifting.

Client:
AMD X2 3800+EE
Asus M2NPV-VM
1 GB generic PC2-4200 RAM
boots from a 2 GiB CompactFlash card and streams all necessary video/audio from the server
running Ubuntu Server 6.06.1 LTS 64-bit with fluxbox WM and the MythTV frontend
 
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Come to think of it, I'd like to be able to run the projector as an extended desktop at 1920x1080, with the monitor running at 1920x1200.

Is that even possible? What GFX card would I need to do that?

EDIT: THanks BIlly, that's interesting. Looks pretty low spec for a 1080p machine - quite surprising!! I think I'm going for something slightly different and want a PC that can do PC things (bar gaming, I just my xbox for that these days, much more my style :p) but with the ability to output 1080p over HDMI to a projector.
 
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