TANK
Shared on Sun, 03/23/2008 - 12:56For those keeping tabs, you know i'm gradually buying pieces to put together a BluRay/DVD/CD/Streaming Video playing home theater PC with 6.1 surround and HDMI output. 6 weeks ago i picked up the video card, a VisionTek ATI HD2400Pro OverClocked video card with HDMI and VGA outputs designed for Vista and BluRay playback. 1 week ago i picked up the chassis, an Antec Fusion Black 430 which has an energy efficient 430watt power supply and takes a microATX motherboard.
Well last night i picked up a few more pieces. FRYs had an excellent deal on a motherboard/processor combo. For 79.99, i picked up an ECS 945GCT-M/1333 board and an Intel E2200 Core2 Duo processor.
The Motherboard looks like this
It's Micro-ATX size. The 4 slots it has are just enough, the PCIx (red) slot will be used for the video card, the small PCIe-1 slot will be used for an 802.11n WiFi card and one of the regular PCI slots will be use for an HDTV DVR tuner card leaving one spare. It has 6.1 audio which i will 'pass thru' to the VisionTek video card HDMI interface , the on-board video i don't need though but good to have a spare i guess. Anyway the major specs are Vista Ready, 4 Serial ATA-2 ports, 1333MHZ Frontside BUS , two PC5300/667mhz DDR2 memory slots. Complete specs can be found here but it seems like it's enough of a foundation to build a home theater pc on.
The Processor in the bundle is an Intel Core 2 Duo E2200 : SPECS
Now what i REALLY like about this processor is that it's low wattage. It's 65nm which is nice and has some great power management. The E2200 is 2.2ghz if you're into clock speeds BUT i've read numerous accounts of it being stable if you overclock it up to 3ghz. The minimum processor requirements on BluRay Drives is a Pentium D 3ghz with the recommended being a core2 duo 2.4ghz. So i figure this processor running at the native 2.2ghz will be sufficient but if I need to, i have the option to overclock it to 2.4 ghz up to 3ghz. So that really sold me, the lower wattage and the overclocking ability. Plus with the bundle, the processor and motherboard were cheaper than the processor alone from newegg.com so whicked deal this weekend.
The last thing i picked up was some ram, Kingston DDR2 PC5300 667mhz 2x1GB kit.
I picked it up at frys with the bundle which was a mistake. IT was 49.99 for this packet of two and i thought that was a fair price but to be honest, i hadn't researched my prices. So i'm going to for sure take this back to frys for a refund, with tax i paid $54 for 2gigs. When i got home i checked newegg.com and they had the same stuff for $44 with taxes and shipping. So i placed an order with newegg. BUT in todays frys add, they have a single strip of 2gb ram PC5300 for $19.99 although that's after a $28 mail in rebate. So i'm not sure if it's worth it or not given that it's 'Crucial' memory and i've never heard of them . So i think i may just stick with the newegg.com stuff.
So still left on the to-buy list:
BluRay Drive: Sony BluRay/DVD/CD drive (they've been on sale for as cheap as $159)
HD/SD TV Tuner/DVR card : VisionTek TV Wonder HD 600 is what i'm looking at so far
WiFi : Either a PCI or PCIe-1 DLink 802.11n card, Most likely this one
HDD : Seagate 7200 or 10,000 rpm 500gb SATA or SATA-2 hard drive. With a 50 gig 'system' partition and a 450 gig 'data' partition, that should give me 45 hours of DVR.
Interface : I need some type of home theater pc remote control and interface for Vista. No idea on this yet, if you have any recommendations, shoot them my way.
So that's the latest. If i grab a standard DVD rom and an old hdd out of parts i've got laying around, I think i'll start to build this after i'm back from my business trip. I'd like to make sure all the current parts all work fine and it's good to get a bit of a jump on the build. Getting a new machine just to fire up and turn on can be frustrating since it's all new parts and you have no idea what part could be causing a problem. So the sooner i do that, the better i think :)
Happy Easter everyone!
Well last night i picked up a few more pieces. FRYs had an excellent deal on a motherboard/processor combo. For 79.99, i picked up an ECS 945GCT-M/1333 board and an Intel E2200 Core2 Duo processor.
The Motherboard looks like this
It's Micro-ATX size. The 4 slots it has are just enough, the PCIx (red) slot will be used for the video card, the small PCIe-1 slot will be used for an 802.11n WiFi card and one of the regular PCI slots will be use for an HDTV DVR tuner card leaving one spare. It has 6.1 audio which i will 'pass thru' to the VisionTek video card HDMI interface , the on-board video i don't need though but good to have a spare i guess. Anyway the major specs are Vista Ready, 4 Serial ATA-2 ports, 1333MHZ Frontside BUS , two PC5300/667mhz DDR2 memory slots. Complete specs can be found here but it seems like it's enough of a foundation to build a home theater pc on.
The Processor in the bundle is an Intel Core 2 Duo E2200 : SPECS
Now what i REALLY like about this processor is that it's low wattage. It's 65nm which is nice and has some great power management. The E2200 is 2.2ghz if you're into clock speeds BUT i've read numerous accounts of it being stable if you overclock it up to 3ghz. The minimum processor requirements on BluRay Drives is a Pentium D 3ghz with the recommended being a core2 duo 2.4ghz. So i figure this processor running at the native 2.2ghz will be sufficient but if I need to, i have the option to overclock it to 2.4 ghz up to 3ghz. So that really sold me, the lower wattage and the overclocking ability. Plus with the bundle, the processor and motherboard were cheaper than the processor alone from newegg.com so whicked deal this weekend.
The last thing i picked up was some ram, Kingston DDR2 PC5300 667mhz 2x1GB kit.
I picked it up at frys with the bundle which was a mistake. IT was 49.99 for this packet of two and i thought that was a fair price but to be honest, i hadn't researched my prices. So i'm going to for sure take this back to frys for a refund, with tax i paid $54 for 2gigs. When i got home i checked newegg.com and they had the same stuff for $44 with taxes and shipping. So i placed an order with newegg. BUT in todays frys add, they have a single strip of 2gb ram PC5300 for $19.99 although that's after a $28 mail in rebate. So i'm not sure if it's worth it or not given that it's 'Crucial' memory and i've never heard of them . So i think i may just stick with the newegg.com stuff.
So still left on the to-buy list:
BluRay Drive: Sony BluRay/DVD/CD drive (they've been on sale for as cheap as $159)
HD/SD TV Tuner/DVR card : VisionTek TV Wonder HD 600 is what i'm looking at so far
WiFi : Either a PCI or PCIe-1 DLink 802.11n card, Most likely this one
HDD : Seagate 7200 or 10,000 rpm 500gb SATA or SATA-2 hard drive. With a 50 gig 'system' partition and a 450 gig 'data' partition, that should give me 45 hours of DVR.
Interface : I need some type of home theater pc remote control and interface for Vista. No idea on this yet, if you have any recommendations, shoot them my way.
So that's the latest. If i grab a standard DVD rom and an old hdd out of parts i've got laying around, I think i'll start to build this after i'm back from my business trip. I'd like to make sure all the current parts all work fine and it's good to get a bit of a jump on the build. Getting a new machine just to fire up and turn on can be frustrating since it's all new parts and you have no idea what part could be causing a problem. So the sooner i do that, the better i think :)
Happy Easter everyone!
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