Suggest me a spec for a friend?

-Mike- · 13 Feb 2006 at 00:53

Hi all,

A friend has asked me to build him a new pc (media centre based) when he moves house in the next two weeks. I have a budget of 1k to play with and I need everything bar a monitor, keyboard, mouse and memory.

The graphics card must support HDTV also, so I thought as a good starting point a leadtek 6600GT TDH like mine. (he wont play many games if any)

It needs to have a dual tuner digital card and its also gotta be quiet so that the new television and surround sound setup is louder than it. He wants a small case but full ATX size as a bad experience with an IDEQ has put him off sff!!

Cheers

-Mike- · 13 Feb 2006 at 01:04

I did a system for him earlier but it still came out slightly under budget, was based on the following -

AMD athlon 64 3700 SD
Abit AN8 Sli Fatality
Leadtek 6600GT TDH
2x320gb WD Sata 2 hdd's
Vapochill Micro extreme
Sony DL DVD/RW
Coolermaster WaveMaster
Antec 430w Neo PSU
AS5
and finally - terratec Cinergy 2400i Dual tuner card for

Total £863.92

From ocuk of course

Any reccomendations would be great

Zefan · 13 Feb 2006 at 01:08

Really get an X2 if it's a media centre especially if you're watching, recording two channels and doing anything else at the same time.

-Mike- · 13 Feb 2006 at 01:20

Then the question is, surely if I get an x2, I need something that actually supports it? Would I be better off getting a dual core opteron?

Its got to be dual tuner and to record and watch at the same time, they currently fight over what they will record with the single tuner

Zefan · 13 Feb 2006 at 01:25

Dual core doesn't HAVE to have extra support for it. Say you're recording TV, watching TV and playing a game in a window (Rare as it may be) a single core will have to run from one to the next very quickly. Dual core will be able to handle it better. Especially if it's processor heavy things like encoding.

Dunno about tuners :S

-Mike- · 13 Feb 2006 at 02:00

Zefan said:
Dual core doesn't HAVE to have extra support for it. Say you're recording TV, watching TV and playing a game in a window (Rare as it may be) a single core will have to run from one to the next very quickly. Dual core will be able to handle it better. Especially if it's processor heavy things like encoding.

Dunno about tuners :S

I've just realised, media centre is based on pro anyway so it should be all good with the dual cores. Do the dual core chips support cool n quiet do you know? Good suggestion on the chip front, thanks for your input

Zefan · 13 Feb 2006 at 02:16

Cool n Quiet is built into every 64bit chips now I think, the X2's for sure. Just check ocuk they say there

-Mike- · 13 Feb 2006 at 02:24

Zefan said:
Cool n Quiet is built into every 64bit chips now I think, the X2's for sure. Just check ocuk they say there

Brilliant, he wants something that runs cold, he must be cold blooded or something the temperature they have their current living room at

Zefan · 13 Feb 2006 at 02:27

Why does it need to run cold :confused:

all athlon64's run only a few degrees above ambient now anyway.

-Mike- · 13 Feb 2006 at 02:58

He's a bit heat crazy with his computers, current athlon xp mobile runs at 55 odd celcius and he doesn't like it :confused:

I don't know but if the numbers are low he will be happy

Zefan · 13 Feb 2006 at 11:12

TBH any Athlon64 will do him fine. The 55deg's he'#s got there are probably in a case with very poor airflow. Standard athlons shouldn't exceed the ambient by more than 20 degrees even on full load.

Defcon5 · 13 Feb 2006 at 12:20

If hes got some cash left over what about an x-fi?

-Mike- · 13 Feb 2006 at 14:45

Well he wants to attach it to a new surround sound setup. The current one doesn't have spdif in and I'm assuming I need that to link it to the computer?

Case with very poor airflow you say? Its a ideq 200n with 2 hard drives a graphics card and a tv card. Its pretty cluttered alright