Media PC Build

[ajfromuk]

Just wondering if anyone could give me some advice.

I want to build a media centre PC, have around £800 - £900 bugjet to do it. It will maily be used for accessing my stored movies and music, secondaly to watch TV through and thirly to play games (its replacing my 360 which I am sick of).

I have done abit of research and come up with the following spec and wondering if anyone could comment on it. Especially what PSU I should get to replace the Antec 430W that comes with the case and also what TV card to get. I cant get Freeview where I am or even a decent tv signal, but I do have a sky dish with a dual LMB feed I can use to get FreeSat.

OS: Vista home Premium
Case: Antex Fusion Black 430
MoBo: Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS4
GFX: Zotac 8800GT Amp Edition
Processor: Inted Quad Core 2 Q6600
Heatsink: Artic Colling AC-FRZ-7P
Memory: Cosair 4gb (2 x 2GB)
DVD: LG Blu-Ray/HD Combo
HD: Western Digital 500gb (x2)
TV Card: ?
PSU: ?

Cheers for your advice in advance.

AJ

[staffsMike]

I would get the sythe ninja mini, works so well with that case, you can run it passive too

Speaking of which I would try and get a passive cooled HD3850 or HD3870, than way you noise will be kept to a minimum. Or get a decent cooler for the 8800GT.

The 430W PSU is probably up to the job of all that tbh, give it a try. If not I would get something modular to make cabling that thing easier. Corsair 520W HX gets my vote.

[SiM]

The whole PC is completely overkill... My £250 setup does the job perfectly.

[aidanjt]

The whole PC is completely overkill... My £250 setup does the job perfectly.

++

Any dual core and an ATI card can easily handle anything you throw at it, unless you're talking about transcoding multiple live video feeds at the same time.

[ezri]

OS: Vista home Premium
Case: Antex Fusion Black 430
MoBo: Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS4
GFX: Zotac 8800GT Amp Edition
Processor: Inted Quad Core 2 Q6600
Heatsink: Artic Colling AC-FRZ-7P
Memory: Cosair 4gb (2 x 2GB)
DVD: LG Blu-Ray/HD Combo
HD: Western Digital 500gb (x2)
TV Card: ?
PSU: ?

The Antec Fusion would be no good for you with your current spec, it will not allow a 8800GT to fit in the case, and it does not support full sized ATX boards - only mATX. You'd also never get an Artic Freezer 7 Pro in it. The Q6600 is also not a good idea if you are using it for media and even gaming, just get a E8400 - unless you are doing a lot of video editing, then go for the Q6600.

Here's something I've spec'd up for you to you budget, all the items are from Scan:

Case: Silverstone LC17 Black - £72.79
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 - £114.43
Motherboard: Asus PQ5 Pro - £84.00
Blu-Ray: LG GGC-H20L - £68.14
HDDs: 2x Samsung F1 500GB - £89.79
GFX: PowerColor HD4580 512MB - £116.31
RAM: 4GB (2x2GB) Corsair XMS2 PC2-6400 DDR2 - £54.57
PSU: Corsair HX520W Modular PSU - £64.38
TV Card: Terratec Cinergy 2400i DT - £59.84
Heatsink: Scythe Mini Ninja - £27.60
OS: Vista Home Premium 64Bit OEM - £62.15

Postage: £11.95
Total: £825.95

There are plenty of upgrade routes for you to take here if you wanted to push further to your budget limits:

• Replace the 4850 with a 4870 for more graphics power
• Replace the E8400 with a Q6600 if you need quad power
• Space left over for a sound card if you want dedicated sound (Asus Xonar D2 is perfect)
• Upgrade the HX520W PSU to a Corsair HX620W PSU
• Upgrade the 500GB drives to 1TB drives, same type (Spinpoint F1)
• Replace the Blu-ray reader with a Blu-ray writer
• Vista Home Premium to a non-OEM or to Ultimate if you wanted the extras

[aidanjt]

The Q6600 is spot on for media. Video software was among the first to benefit from mutli-core SMP code. It's not that the CPU is a bad choice, it's just overkill.

[ajfromuk]

cheers for the advice.

I will go back and have a look around at some alternatives. Ezri, your list seems okay. The case I dont think will suit my living room but I will mooch around some more and see what I come up with.

[ezri]

cheers for the advice.

I will go back and have a look around at some alternatives. Ezri, your list seems okay. The case I dont think will suit my living room but I will mooch around some more and see what I come up with.

No prob, although you might be limited to Silverstone HTPC cases as from what I'm aware of, Antec HTPC cases only support mATX (Fusion and NSK definitely only do mATX - I've had both).

[aidanjt]

The solution is simple, get an mATX motherboard instead, there's plenty of reasonably priced ones out there.

[staffsMike]

Is this just for video or gaming? I was rushing out before so forgot to ask..

[ajfromuk]

Here goes then:

Case: Silverstone LC20B-M Black - £148.14
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 - £114.43
Motherboard: Asus PQ5 Pro - £84.00
Blu-Ray: LG GGC-H20L - £68.14
HDDs: Samsung F1 500GB - £44.90
GFX: PowerColor HD4580 512MB - £116.31
RAM: 4GB (2x2GB) Corsair XMS2 PC2-6400 DDR2 - £54.57
PSU: Corsair HX520W Modular PSU - £64.38
TV Card: ??
Heatsink: Scythe Mini Ninja - £27.60
OS: Vista Home Premium 32Bit OEM - Already Have

Total: £722.47

I need a TV card that takes the inputs from a sky satalite and it looks like the Hauppauge Nova-HD-S2 is my best bet although it only takes one input. I've gone for a slightly different case that has a VDU on the front and also a remote.

If anyone can suggest anything else because again I dont know if this is overkill :s I wount be doing any editing on it (I have my laptop for that) and it wount store any media on it (I have my D-Link 1.5TB for that).

It will just be for streaming from my D-Link, watchin iPlayer stuff on it, HD Films and occasionally playing games like Unreal 3 etc...

Cheers again everyone.

[aidanjt]

A bit of both, according to the first post.

[ajfromuk]

Is this just for video or gaming? I was rushing out before so forgot to ask..

bit off both. I was using the unreal 3 as a kind of benchmark. Oh and it will be runnin on a 42" samsung LCD if that helps lol.

At the moment I stream my media through XMBC on my xbox 1 and its good enough as it is, but I want to access iPlayer and HD stuff so I though Media PC would be best way around it and then get rid of Xbox 1 and Sky+ box.

I would have just used the Xbox 360 but the media centre extender on it is rubbish and wount play avi's.

[staffsMike]

Tbh I would build the following

Antec Fusion ~ £120 (The power supply will easily be enough)
Abit 780G mobo ~£50 (or Asus M2A-VM 690G which is lower power as you don't need the better integrated gfx ~£35 )
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4850e ~£50
640GB Western Digital AAKS ~£55
ATi HD4850 ~£115
LG Blu Ray/HD Drive ~£70
Mini Ninja ~£30
Home Premium ~£60

That £550 + whatever TV card you want.

The only advantage of a bigger case is you could just stick an arctic cooling accelero on the HD4850 which is better for temps and noise

The above PC will be great on power, heat (apart from gfx) and noise

[ajfromuk]

considering the racket that came from the 360 i dont think anything could be as bad!