Computer guys, hardware recommendations?

[TheEtaUnderdog]

Ion!

My roommate has an Ion, phenominal little machine! Streams HD movies like it was meant to.. Oh wait it was! He also has a wireless keyboard and a gyration remote for it (Remote used as a mouse $70-90)

I swear you sound just like my roommate btw underdog! Even the touche salesman is something that he says on a weekly basis.

haha he must be a family guy fan

[TheEtaUnderdog]

PC power supplies are switched. it doesn't use anywhere near 800w all the time, that's just the peak power it can supply.

don't waste money on something with a shitty CPU (atoms are great - in a netbook). I've always been an Intel fan, but the newest AMD quad cores (even 6 cores) are just too cheap to pass up. Look for an AM3 board and at least 4 gigs of DDR3, plus whatever quad core CPU you can get and then use the rest of the money for your video card. a quad core athlon 2 will crush a core 2 duo and probably cost less at the same time..

the last thing you want is to find out your computer you just spent $500 is too slow to play the movie your girlfreind really wants to see because you're worried that your PC might draw too much power.

oh, if you aren't an audiophile you don't even really need a sound card. any decent mobo will come with 7 or 8 channel audio built in. Some of them even have SPDIF or optical out (my gigabyte does).

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&source=hp&q=acer+revo+1080p&aq=f&aqi=g3&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&fp=56fa4ceda65d5bbf

Believe me or not, hardware acceleration makes cpu a moot point in video playback. Its all about the gpu and the ion was made specifically for htpc's and small power usage

http://www.nvidia.com/object/sff_ion.html

[StereoInstaller1]

Are there HA based cards that are low profile and fanless in PCIe?

[TheEtaUnderdog]

Are there HA based cards that are low profile and fanless in PCIe?

a lot of info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VDPAU
Device drivers and hardware supporting VDPAU

Each hardware video GPU capable of VDPAU video acceleration requires a X11 software device driver to enable these features. Currently only second generation of PureVideo HD bit-stream processor in some of NVIDIA's GeForce 8 series and later graphics cards hardware that has support since the Beta device driver version 180.06.[4] Unsupported hardware from the GeForce 8 series includes the 8800GTS 320/640MB editions and the 8800GTX. Later cards based on the G9x series cores e.g. the 8400GS and the 8800GTS 512mb (G92 core) are supported. Nvidia currently has no plans to introduce support for the unsupported hardware.[8] All supported graphic devices are listed in Nvidia PureVideo.
S3 Graphics added support for VDPAU to the Linux drivers of its Chrome 400 video cards since version 14.02.17 of its device driver for Linux, it supports the S3 Chrome 430 GT, S3 Chrome 440 GTX, S3 Chrome 530 GT and the S3 Chrome 540 GTX hardware.[9]
Intel and ATI - there is currently no support for VDPAU. Nvidia hopes these GPU designers will follow open source VDPAU library and provide drivers with VDPAU acceleration by mentioning example names of hardware specific drivers for Intel and ATI: libvdpau_intel.so and libvdpau_ati.so.[10] Intel has mentioned that they are looking at VA-API and VDPAU in particular. From their cursory examination, the API to VDPAU looks nice.[11]


i personally have an 8400gs that is fanless and slim pci-e that is doing it in one of my other boxes

not mine but http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-473-_-Product

or all of em http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...8400gs&x=0&y=0

sub 40 bucks, works fine

[StereoInstaller1]

Hey, lookit this! http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/24/p...me-theater-pc/

So my low-profile cards are NVidia 8300GS, according to the wiki, they are the absolute bottom card that supports VDPAU...but I am running le Windows and I do not care if my card supports unix...do I?

[StereoInstaller1]

This one comes with Asian girls: http://www.techfresh.net/pegatron-nv...owered-nettop/

[TheEtaUnderdog]

Hey, lookit this! http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/24/p...me-theater-pc/

So my low-profile cards are NVidia 8300GS, according to the wiki, they are the absolute bottom card that supports VDPAU...but I am running le Windows and I do not care if my card supports unix...do I?

i know windows 7 supports vdpau out of the box. CoreAVC codec supports hardware acceleration on any version of windows

go grab that codec and ull have a windows box with hardware acceleration!

[z31maniac]

this combo would do everything you need
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboD...t=Combo.381162
you just need ram ($100), BD drive ($50) and storage ($100)

the board has optical out, so you can output it to a nice reciever and not lose anything in audio quality.

Thanks for the link!

That looks like it will be a nice powerful "core" to build a computer around.

Looking up the RAM/HD/etc now, going to try to make an order by the end of the day.

[z31maniac]

I'll most likely run two hard drives, a smaller faster one with the OS on it, then a BIG one for media/pics/music/etc.

Do you guys have any thoughts on this?

Bad idea? Good idea? Should I do something different?

[StereoInstaller1]

Yeah, if you are gonna use that PC for storage, you wanna do an extra drive for storage.

Maybe even find a 32GB SSD for the OS

[nando]

Not a bad idea. I run a 500gb with windows7 on it and a 1tb with all my movies etc. it's actually getting too small these days. Neither are the fastest on the market but I've never noticed the HDD being a bottleneck - they're fairly inexpensive WD "green" series drives. you could splurge on a SSD to load Windows off of, don't know how much better the performance is but there are several under $100 these days.

[StereoInstaller1]

If I didn't have a brand new 1TB and 2 fresh 200GB SATAs for my 3 machines (I am SO ready for 7!) I would totally rock a SDD....hell, for heat reduction if anything!

[StereoInstaller1]

buddy, have you checked your zip for ATSC DTV signal?

The picture is so damn good, it is just stunning, far better than the best cable can do. Limited programming, but WTF, its free.

I use a Happague Hybrid HVR1250. Since I am planning on 7, I have not done much with it, but it works fine, especially considering the $50 I spent on it.

[z31maniac]

Hmmm, no I haven't. I'll look into that, but I'm assuming we do.

Alright so I'll look for a speedier smaller HD to run the OS off of, and a 1-2TB drive for storage.

Oh, how big a power supply should I buy for all this?

[nando]

well if you aren't running dual top-end video cards, 8 hard drives and a bunch of fans, 500w should be enough. :p