HTPC Specs

[robj20]

What do you think of these. Is everything ok for Windows MC?

Zalman HD160 Silver
Asus P5B Deluxe
Zalman CNPS9500-LED Aero Flower
Intel Core 2 DUO E6600
LG GSA-H22NBA 16x16 DVD±RW
OCZ 2GB (2 x 1GB) PC2-6400 Platinum DDR2
Seasonic S12 500W Silent ATX2.0
Sapphire X1600 XT Ultimate SILENT 256M TV-Out/DVI PCI-E
Hauppauge WinTV Nova-T-500 Dual Freeview TV Tuner
Western Digital Caviar RE 160GB 1600YS SATA-II 16MB
2X Western Digital Caviar SE16 500GB 5000KS SATA-II 16MB

Do i just media centre with this for it to work?

[siu99spj]

Hmm, very similar spec to me that one, though mine's only a fantasy at the moment (Buying a house kinda limits one's outflow of cash!).

Anyway, everything there seems to be fine to run Windows XP Media Centre (I'm assuming this is what you meant by 'media centre'?), but I do have a comment about your DVD drive.

From personal experience I've found LG drives to be exceptionally noisy optical drives. Being this is going to be sat in your lounge, I'd recommend an NEC drive. Certainly they have been practically silent, even at 'full whack', reading and burning. Admittedly I can't comment on the latest series (7XXX), but to all accounts they're just as quiet.

Just as a personal request, what screen are you plugging this in to? And can you let us know how it turns out when you take the plunge?

[5lab]

i'd be worried by the noise of 3hdds. might be worth getting one in a silencing caddy, then having the other 2 in your main box/a nas somewhere?