Help - building a Media PC

[edp33]

Media PC

I’m about to do a pc upgrade and have lots of left over parts(below) and would like to build a media pc. Can anyone advise if I can use any or ideally most of the items to create a media pc.

System 1
Biostar 200V (SFF Case) with motherboard and psu (230W)
Athlon 2000 XP (166 fsb, I don’t think the case can take 200fsb cpus)
AGP Geforce TI 4200, cable for svideo/composite output
1gb ram (2x512mb, only 2 slots on motherboard)
LG 4x DVD RW
PATA 80GB HDD
PS2 Keyboard
USB Mouse

System 2
Lian Li PC 60 Tower Case
Antec Truepower 430W PSU
Athlon 3200XP (200 fsb I think,)
A8N Sli 939 Motherboard
2GB Ram (1GB pinched from Biostar 200V at the moment)
Plextor 8X DVD RW
PCI-E Gigabyte 6600GT silent heatpipe edition, , cable for svideo/composite output
SATA 120GB HDD

To output to 17” TV (non widescreen, 4x3?) with SCART and Composite input

I’m thinking I will need

• TV Tuner
• Wireless USB/PCI adaptor
• Windows XP Media Centre Edition or software for windows XP, MythTV etc
• Remote Control
• Possibly wireless keyboard/mouse

i) I’m not too bothered about hdtv, so would the tv and graphics card suffice?

ii) Will the Athlon 2000 CPU be ok? I plan to mainly use it for playback rather than simultaneous recording and playback as I have a pvr downstairs.

iii) Noise – The ti4200 is pretty noisy, but the 6600GT won’t fit in the Biostar case as it’s PCI-E, any recommendations for a fairly quiet agp graphics card or a cheap SFF case which supports PCI-E?

iv) Storage, my hard drives are kind of small by today’s standards, I was going to get a 150gb WD raptor and 400gb WD Cavier for storage in my new pc, should I use an existing hard drive for the media player and connect via wireless network to the 400gb in the new pc, or just put the raptor in the new pc, and 400gb in the media pc.

v) Could I put together a media pc fairly cheaply (ideally less than £300) with bits and pieces from above? The other option I’m thinking of is to buy a wireless media player unit they sell for around £120 but don’t offer the range of features a media pc can provide.


Apologies for all the questions, would really appreciate any help

James

[Zak33]

Hi chap

I shall move this into the hardware forum, as you're much more likely to gain some assitance there

[directhex]

HEXUS.net - Article :: Run your own home-entertainment server with Linux and MythTV: we show you how. : Page - 1/9

[kungpo]

Some of this depends on how you want it to look like. The second PC looks like a better donor - it's reasonably powerful, and is only really lacking hard disk space, tv tuner, remote (if desired) andsuitable operating system.

TV tuner will depend on whether you have a desire to record Sky, or just use freeview and/or analogue services.

Hard disk - single decent drive would be better (and quieter and cooler). Samsung spinpoint or WD AAKS series drive. I think 250 or bigger will be ok (mine has 250GB).