With the hardware in my sig, can i build a....

Abz Hussain · 6 Apr 2011 at 19:00

media centre pc?
I have just been browsing around and came upon an article which said that instead of getting rid of your old bits you could easily and affordable media centre pc. This article was dated 2006.
Would it be possible to do such a thing today? i know i would have to get a new case and a few other bits n bobs but if it means getting rid of my sky digibox and dvd player and the remotes then im up for it...maybe i could even post on here as a project.

Look forward to hearing your thoughts, opinions

teknokid · 6 Apr 2011 at 19:01

The cpu would probably be up to it, but you'd probably need new hard discs and maybe a gfx card.. Id be interested to hear if it works out

saitrix · 6 Apr 2011 at 19:53

Just get a cheap passive graphics card and you are good to go. Remove the overclock on the cpu too, if anything undervolt it to allow you to make the pc quieter.

I use a low speed mobile Core Duo cpu (1.6ghz) and that works perfectly with my ati 4350. You just need to get your drivers correct so they offload the video to the graphics card and it will handle 1080 no problems.

Oh and just get a 1/2tb green hard drive for the video storage.

Abz Hussain · 6 Apr 2011 at 21:17

Thanks teknoid & saitrix.
Do you know what component i would need to plug my sky viewing card into (is there such a component)? Could you also recommend a GPU - i dont like the 4200Ti i have at the moment. The fan is very noisy. Hard discs are not a problem as they are fairly reasonable to pic up.
What about software - whats the latest offerings that work well and are reasonably affordable?

I have a budget set aside for a new build but im sure i can push the boat out a little further and get this done.

andy_mk3 · 6 Apr 2011 at 21:28

I assume your graphics card is AGP, if so replace it with soemthing like a ATI HD 3850.

As far as I know there's no way you can use your Sky viewing card in your PC.

Other than that, bang in a 1TB Samsung F3 hard drive, big, fast and quiet.

Put your CPU back to stock settings, everything else is good

Maybe upgrade the RAM too, depending on what you already have.

saitrix · 6 Apr 2011 at 21:46

Use XBMC software, will take a bit of researching but once sorted its excellent.

Abz Hussain · 6 Apr 2011 at 21:53

andy_mk3 said:
I assume your graphics card is AGP, if so replace it with soemthing like a ATI HD 3850.

As far as I know there's no way you can use your Sky viewing card in your PC.

Other than that, bang in a 1TB Samsung F3 hard drive, big, fast and quiet.

Put your CPU back to stock settings, everything else is good Maybe upgrade the RAM too, depending on what you already have.

Yes its AGP 8x & i have 2GB of PC2700 RAM 166MHZ (Micron)
Bit disappointed that i cant use my sky viewing card in my pc, that would have been handy.