Now I don't know if I'm gonna get told off for this or this thread gets moved but anyway....
As some of you may know I've been getting parts together over the past year or so to build myself a kick ass media center Pc, I just thought i'd share with you how the build was going (and people wonder why I havn't been working on my Cat)
First off a Media Center Pc isn't nothing with-out a decent case, so I've gone for one of the best, the Zalman HD-135
As you can see its about the size of an old-skool DVD player or Hi-Fi amp, with a brushed aluminium front and a digital display (which I've found can display loads of different info) It also has a apperture for a standard Optical Drive and a 3.5" Card Reader Drive, plus External input ports for USB/Firewire(which i'm not using)/Headphones and Microphone.
I've gone for a Abit KN9S motherboard, however not the SLi version (apparently the twin Graphics cards wouldn't fit under the cover) and a dual-core AMD Athlon64 AM2 6000+ CPU [about 3.2Ghz]
Graphics card wise, the nVidia 9400GT has been instaled along with a Pinnacle Dual tuner Freeview card.
For system performance I've gone for 4x 1Gb DDR2 PC6400 800mhz ram modules from Corsair (a fan will be arriving soon to cool them) :rolleyes5: and yes I'm fully aware that a 32bit system will not recgonize all 4Gb of ram due to computaion limitations, but I've heard the system still runs lightning quick so no problems there.
HDD wise I've gone for 2x 250Gb SATA drives (possibly running RAID) and a 80Gb Drive for the O/S {Windows Media Center} and Programs. Plus a DVD multi-drive with lightscribe capabilitys and a multi-card reader drive.
I will also be adding a Bluetooth Dongle to communicate with my mobile phone
and Wi-Fi via a Lap-top Card pluged into a convertor card
However :nonod: due to space limitations in the case I've come to a bit of a problem the IDE cable to the O/S drive and the Optical drive was too short so I cant connect them both :frown2::nono:
But I've come up with a solution in the form of Two SATA to PATA convertors (I still had Two SATA ports on my motherboard) so I can use the thinner SATA style cables to connect them both seperatly at slightly increased speed due to the SATA terminal.
So far its looking good just a few more things to connect (those SATA connectors + the RAM fan) and I can fire it up and get loading the O/S etc. :sosp: then its THREE days of updates no doubt from Microsoft
Need a new Security Suite too, have heard Norton 2009/10 is good. Looking at a 28" HD monitor (i've only got a 14" portable Tv) and gonna link the computer to my A/V amp for full on surround sound.
I'll keep you all informed how it goes.
Matt :ihih:
As some of you may know I've been getting parts together over the past year or so to build myself a kick ass media center Pc, I just thought i'd share with you how the build was going (and people wonder why I havn't been working on my Cat)First off a Media Center Pc isn't nothing with-out a decent case, so I've gone for one of the best, the Zalman HD-135
As you can see its about the size of an old-skool DVD player or Hi-Fi amp, with a brushed aluminium front and a digital display (which I've found can display loads of different info) It also has a apperture for a standard Optical Drive and a 3.5" Card Reader Drive, plus External input ports for USB/Firewire(which i'm not using)/Headphones and Microphone.
I've gone for a Abit KN9S motherboard, however not the SLi version (apparently the twin Graphics cards wouldn't fit under the cover) and a dual-core AMD Athlon64 AM2 6000+ CPU [about 3.2Ghz]
Graphics card wise, the nVidia 9400GT has been instaled along with a Pinnacle Dual tuner Freeview card.
For system performance I've gone for 4x 1Gb DDR2 PC6400 800mhz ram modules from Corsair (a fan will be arriving soon to cool them) :rolleyes5: and yes I'm fully aware that a 32bit system will not recgonize all 4Gb of ram due to computaion limitations, but I've heard the system still runs lightning quick so no problems there.
HDD wise I've gone for 2x 250Gb SATA drives (possibly running RAID) and a 80Gb Drive for the O/S {Windows Media Center} and Programs. Plus a DVD multi-drive with lightscribe capabilitys and a multi-card reader drive.
I will also be adding a Bluetooth Dongle to communicate with my mobile phone
and Wi-Fi via a Lap-top Card pluged into a convertor card
However :nonod: due to space limitations in the case I've come to a bit of a problem
the IDE cable to the O/S drive and the Optical drive was too short so I cant connect them both :frown2::nono:But I've come up with a solution in the form of Two SATA to PATA convertors (I still had Two SATA ports on my motherboard) so I can use the thinner SATA style cables to connect them both seperatly at slightly increased speed due to the SATA terminal.
So far its looking good just a few more things to connect (those SATA connectors + the RAM fan) and I can fire it up and get loading the O/S etc. :sosp: then its THREE days of updates no doubt from Microsoft
Need a new Security Suite too, have heard Norton 2009/10 is good. Looking at a 28" HD monitor (i've only got a 14" portable Tv
) and gonna link the computer to my A/V amp for full on surround sound.I'll keep you all informed how it goes.
Matt :ihih:
