Mutimedia rig

[lexus2]

Hello guys,

My brother is asking me to build him a multimedia rig for about £600. On my very limited knowledge of computers I don't now if it could be done for that price.
My thoughts were to get a good system and spend maybe around £1000.

CoolerMaster haf 932

Corsair 850 PSU or Be Quiet Dark power Pro 650

Gigabite GA-EX58-UD3R

Intel coreI7 920

Titan Fenrir TTC- NK85TZ

Not sure about GPU

Ram Corsair XM TR3XG 1333C9

Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB

Cheap Optical drive, maybe go for the Blue Ray

Hauppauge wintv

Win 7 Home & acquire Multimedia remote

Any advice would be much appreciated

Thanks

lexus2

[shaithis]

What exactly does he want to do with it?

[handscombmp]

What exactly does he want to do with it?

Exactly. Does he need it to be quite or isn't he bothered.

[lexus2]

well, watch tv, dvd's, still use it for the net etc. I suppose pretty quiet. He has a small living room and wants to replace the tv, and upgrade his pc as well so I suggested a M/Media system. oh and also a monitor maybe a samsung 23" oh also a sound card maybe a Creative X-Fi.

[handscombmp]

Any gaming as if not he's probaly best to go down the AMD route.

[lexus2]

no gaming thanks for the quick response.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The build specced is OTT unless your brother is needing to do high end gaming,high end image editing and video encoding and rendering.

For instance this is what you could look at getting:

Athlon II X4 620 ~ £72

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/173368

ASUS M4A785TD-M EVO ~ £68

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/170277

The integrated graphics card has UVD2 and offloads decoding of HD content.Also the IGP has 128MB of dedicated DDR3 RAM too which means no system RAM needs to be used AFAIK.

4GB DDR3 RAM ~ £79

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/166996

Antec NSK 3480 MATX Micro Tower - With 380W EarthWatts PSU ~ £71

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/130946

Samsung F3 1TB ~ £62

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/173804

Windows 7 Home Premium ~ £90

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/168373

Compro VideoMate Vista T750F Dual PCI DVB-T and Analog TV/FM with remote ~ £40

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/143322

Samsung SM2333SW ~ £163

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/158382

LG CH08LS10 Super Multi Blu-Ray Reader & DVD±RW with LightScribe ~ £80

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/169682

OR

Pioneer BDC-S03XLB Blu-Ray Reader & DVD±RW ~ £84

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/178172

The total comes to under £730.

[Will404]

A HAF for a media center in a small living room... thats a bit well bold, surly it would blend in better if you went for a smaller media center case??

[lexus2]

Thanks guys for the help, cat-the-fith, many thanks for the spec I will put it to him. ps cool monitor fancy one myself.

[abaxas]

Weird option.

PS3
Nas with upnp server.
Sofatop/netbook.

It'll look nicer and provide better functionality.

[brad_whitwell]

I'll add my voice, that HAF is an awsome case (have one myself) and ver quiet... however its VERY big.

You are better off with a PS3, you will need some type of PC for media conversion though as the PS3 still needs to have some formats converted to play on it....

[abaxas]

I'll add my voice, that HAF is an awsome case (have one myself) and ver quiet... however its VERY big.

You are better off with a PS3, you will need some type of PC for media conversion though as the PS3 still needs to have some formats converted to play on it....

I always recommend a ps3, simply as it will play PAL 50hz media at a 50hz refresh rate.

If you are in the uk, this is vital, even the apple tv doesnt do this properly.

[lexus2]

I'll add my voice, that HAF is an awsome case (have one myself) and ver quiet... however its VERY big.

.

i did think of the haf 922, as an option, and maybe for upgrading at some point. I thought the MM/cases were small and had bad air flow? Could be totally wrong here.

[shaithis]

ASUS M4A785TD-M EVO ~ £68

CATs spec is good, although if he is thinking of plugging it into an HDMI AV receiver, you want to stay away from the onboard 780/785 VGA and use a cheap ATI PCI-E card (4350/4550) instead.

[brad_whitwell]

Yeah, a HAF 932 is completely wrong for a HTPC, great for gaming rigs though

Would say that there are some very good HTPC cases out there, with nice on box controls / taseful LCD's etc

[lexus2]

I phoned my bro and after a long discussion he has decided to by a Dell Studio. So thanks any-way guys it was fun trying to sort out the spec for a Multimedia Pc.