Ongoing HTPC: nice looks, performance and price;P (1 Viewer)

[runarius]

earlier I have just been using my laptop with s-video output, which is not really all that good. it is slow, and the quality is really crap, especially since I have a hd-tv. So therefore I have just started my htpc-project.
The case is a Antec Fusion Black 430, shown below:

The specs are as follows:

Prossesor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 2,1 ghrtz 4200+ cooled by a Zalman CNPS9700
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-MA69GM-S2H which outputs full hd, hoping it will be enough.
Memory: Kingston ValueRAM DDR2-667 1GB
Harddrive: Samsung SpinPoint T166 500 GB SATA

and a Logitech Harmony 555 remote control to comtrol both my computer and my tv. Also, there is ofcourse a dvd-burner from asus which I have lying around here, and a wifi-dongle. Hoping that this will be a good enough htpc. I will get a tv-card later on, also, maybe a really good graphics card if the one on the mb doesn't prove good enough. At the moment, I will only watch series and movies in non-hd-resolutions since I don't want to download an episode which is above 1gb when I can have it at 350 with fine quality. But I'll ofcourse do a test to see how much better the quality actually is I'll get my htpc in a couple of weeks, so I'm really excited

 

[Spragleknas]

Dude!

 

[runarius]

yeah, I kinda stole much of the setup from some norwegian fella on this board, maybe it was you? thanks to that person anyway for showing me how cheap these prossessors and motherboards had gotten, I was in belief that they still costs 250 dollars or something to get something useful.

I wanted a different case though, something with a little bit better looks, and the price was much the same.

 

[Spragleknas]

I have bought a couple of NSK/Antec systems for friends. Note to others: The Gigabyte board requires angled s-ata cables (well, you can use normal, but it's not recommended).

 

[runarius]

hmm... I didn't know that. why? I bought one which was angled(becouse they didn't have the normal ones), and I have a normal one her lying around, so I thought I was going to use that one. Why shouldn't I? Will it come loose?

 

[Spragleknas]

No room for it due to the special placing of the SATA-connectors on the GB board. They ltterly hit the wall.