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Thinking of getting this lot, what do you think?
Antec Fusion V2 MATX MediaCenter Case with 430W PSU
ASUS M2A-VM
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4000+
Corsair Value 2GB Kit (2x1GB) DDR2 667MHz
Samsung SpinPoint HD501LJ 500GB SATAII
Hauppauge WinTV-PVR150 Media center upgrade kit - Includes MS certified remote control
Gonna hook it up to my NTL digi box to pause live TV and record TV.
Seems good enough, is it gonna get used for much else apart from recording tv? otherwise a discreet gpu might be a good idea if you wanna be able to watch HD stuff.
Agred on teh GPU side - an 8500/8600 or 2400/2600 fanless would be a good bet for HD.
Your CPU is powerful enough to play most stuff anyway, but the DXVA card will give you that extra bit of grunt.
Other than that, you should be sorted for capping - you can cap HD feeds on 256mb ram with a processor fast enough to decode the stream (which yours is for BBC HD and Sky HD h.264 feeds) so mpeg2 will be a doddle
I have a fusion with 3000+ cpu on an Asus motherboard with Nvidia integrated graphics (I use Linux based Mythtv so it had to be Nvidia) and just 1GB of ram and am very happy with it.
Not tried analogue capture yet, my box takes a freeview feed for which my spec is way overpowered.
Unless you are going straight to HD, I would stick with integrated graphics until you are forced to upgrade. Graphics hardware gets relentlessly cheaper and better.
Check the dimensions of the Fusion, I was shocked to see mine only just fitted on my HiFi shelf. Nice case though.
as above - I'm playing with mythtv
See www.parker1.co.uk for a great guide.
I built one using an ASUS P1-AH2 from scan and a couple of Nova-T freeview cards works a treat.
:)
one more thing, gonna get a new TV to go with the system, this is all going in our bedroom so i dont need a massive TV, but should i get a TV or a PC monitor? Looking on scan i can get this 22" Hyundai IT X220WA monitor for £157.44, or 20" LG M208WA TV for £209.14, or a 22" Mirai DTL-522P201 TV for £229.00, or a 22" LG M228WA TV for £251.44.
What do ya think? :confused:
oh and i've orderd the system above. cheers.
I would go for one of the pc monitor /tv's as you've picked above.
The LG's are very nice expecially the 22" one. They tend to need a bit of setting up to find the best picture results but they are nice once they are sorted.
Possibly too late, but ASUS M2A-VM HDMI could be worth the extra few quid.Quote:
Originally Posted by Karl The Gimp
Ah, cheers Giraffe, it is the ASUS M2A-VM HDMI 690G Socket AM2 onboard VGA 6 channel audio mATX Motherboard, forgot there is 2 versions of this board.