Rate my HTPC!?!

[JeromeF]

Hello,

I've spent the last 3 months building and sourcing components for my HTPC after being in a car accident and left house bound.

My system compiles of the following hardware:

• Thermaltake Mozart case with Media Lab (iMON Remote + SW)
• Intel Pentium D805 2.66GHz with stock cooling
• ASRock 775TWINS-HDTV motherboard
• K-World PCI 100 DVB-T
• 1Gb (2x512Mb) DDR333 Corsair Value memory
• Samsung Spinpoint 250Gb hard drive
• LG DVD+/-RW Dual Layer DVD drive

I'm currently using the onboard sound and video. The onboard video has a component output too, which i use in conjunction with my DMTECH 26" LCD.

I bought the motherboard as i was curious about the HDTV/COMPONENT output, it seems ok but i can not get it quite as i expected to with my TV, i think it was more of a 'gimic' / selling point than anything of real performance.

I have been using Media Portal for about three days so far, i really do like it but i am having lots of problems. It seems to crash and give me the BSOD quite often, maybe i just need to give it some time and tweak my setup until it is a little bit more stable.

So what does everyone think of this system?
Any recommendations on upgrading?

JeromeF

[Geon106]

Thats a nice lil set up, though you might want to consider getting a seperate graphics card. Onboard video just doesn't cut it on performance both on video streaming and TV and gaming. You can pick up a half decent GPU from about £40[bout $60]. Go for nVidia or ATi, they're the manufacturers that supply cards for game consoles and are very reliable and better than Intel/IBM and so forth.

Nice work

[JeromeF]

I've been having lots of problems with my set up to be honest now i have installed MediaPortal.

So...

I'm rebuilding it all

I am going to use my current gaming rig and upgrade that, so the new spec will be (as for now)

Asus P5ND2-SLI Motherboard
2Gb Geil 800MHz 2 x 1Gb Memory
Intel Pentium D915 2.8GHz CPU @ 3.6GHz
Geforce 6600GT

All of the other components are now up for sale on ebay, the motherboar, cpu and other GFX card.
If anyone is interested then the link is here.

[Geon106]

nice graphics card!! i'm using a 6600GTOC and its a great card!

That setup will give you great gameplay and great multimedia. Good job

[JeromeF]

Yeah i do like the 6600GT's, i been using two in SLI mode for my gaming rig. I am currently buying new parts, going for the Conroe(Core 2 Duo) and a 7950... maybe the GX2 if Santa Clause pops some extra money down the chimney

Oh and to add. The HTPC will be used soley for just watching videos and TV. I have a thing about using sperate machines for different purposes. And my gaming rig sounds like a hovercraft as it is immensly overclocked.

[Geon106]

Originally Posted by JeromeF

Yeah i do like the 6600GT's, i been using two in SLI mode for my gaming rig. I am currently buying new parts, going for the Conroe(Core 2 Duo) and a 7950... maybe the GX2 if Santa Clause pops some extra money down the chimney

Oh and to add. The HTPC will be used soley for just watching videos and TV. I have a thing about using sperate machines for different purposes. And my gaming rig sounds like a hovercraft as it is immensly overclocked.

lmfao! yeah i agree with all of that. I to have a machine for different uses, altho i play games on my HTPC too, but my gaming rig is for the high end stuff lol. And my gaming rig is very loud with the fans, can be heard all around upstairs nice machine tho.

[JeromeF]

Originally Posted by Geon106

lmfao! yeah i agree with all of that. I to have a machine for different uses, altho i play games on my HTPC too, but my gaming rig is for the high end stuff lol. And my gaming rig is very loud with the fans, can be heard all around upstairs nice machine tho.

The best machines are the loudest

I had mine watercooled all round with a koolance system at one point, but got too scared using it in the end with all my new equipment so sold it and bought Scythe cooling.


Anyone know if the nForce chipset is going to be a wise choice to be using with MP?!

[Geon106]

Originally Posted by JeromeF

The best machines are the loudest

I had mine watercooled all round with a koolance system at one point, but got too scared using it in the end with all my new equipment so sold it and bought Scythe cooling.


Anyone know if the nForce chipset is going to be a wise choice to be using with MP?!

nForce is prolly the best chipset going. All of my computers[other than 1 of them] have nForce chipsets

[JeromeF]

Originally Posted by Geon106

nForce is prolly the best chipset going. All of my computers[other than 1 of them] have nForce chipsets

Excellent.

So my P5ND2-SLI will do the job fine then, i'm happy

[Geon106]

Originally Posted by JeromeF

Excellent.

So my P5ND2-SLI will do the job fine then, i'm happy

oh yes, it'll be fine running pretty much anything