Computer guys, hardware recommendations?

[z31maniac]

I'm going to build a Home Theater PC for the living room and most likely ditch the cable bill, but keep the internet.

I want a dedicated video card that that is HDMI capable (or DVI with an adapter cable), good sound card, strong mobo/CPU combo and 4gb of ram. 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.

Can you guys make some good suggestions for "value" type stuff? I don't need the latest and greatest, just solid stuff.

Budget is $600-700 not including the case.

[Kershaw]

www.newegg.com just start browsing.

i love them. even if you can find slightly better prices elsewhere, i use them because of their absolutely remarkable customer service. i have spent over $12k there.

[TheEtaUnderdog]

do you need a dvd drive?

the acer aspire revo is crazy good. I have 2 personally. the run atom processors with and ion graphics. What that means is it does hardware accelerated graphics so you can run 1080p smooth. And it has hdmi. Total cost of the box is $199. oh, and it uses 64 watts of power :D

[Desaevious]

Get an asus board, quality is bar none although currently I'm rocking an Intel brand board for my i7 920. Asus has a large range of options, but look at customer reviews too. Another big thing is different boards have different types of ram. DDR2 ram is considerably cheaper than DDR3 ram and will work for you, so try to find a mobo that has that. You don't need to go for a quad core for what you're looking to do. A strong dual-core like the Intel Core 2 Duo 8400 would work fine.

[TheEtaUnderdog]

Get an asus board, quality is bar none although currently I'm rocking an Intel brand board for my i7 920. Asus has a large range of options, but look at customer reviews too. Another big thing is different boards have different types of ram. DDR2 ram is considerably cheaper than DDR3 ram and will work for you, so try to find a mobo that has that. You don't need to go for a quad core for what you're looking to do. A strong dual-core like the Intel Core 2 Duo 8400 would work fine.

you don't even need that. Hardware accelerated graphics is the future of htpc. its magic i tell you!

[Desaevious]

No he doesn't need that for running a media PC. I have an old shit box with Windows XP and an external harddrive into it that I use my Sharp XR-30X DLP HD projector with. But he did list some specs he was looking at so I ran with it.

[TheEtaUnderdog]

touche salesmen, touche :)

ps props on the projector setup, i got my own ghetto one running :D

[StereoInstaller1]

1080P or die!

From what I have read, BD take a minimum of a 2.8 dual core and 2GB of good RAM (DDR2 minimum) to be 100%.

Personally, I just wanna be able to rip BD to the HDD and play them back smoothly, with full AC3 support.

Do you plan on a tuner card?

[Kershaw]

quadcores are so cheap now i wouldnt buy anything else.

i've been running a quadcore for.. 3 years now? i bought mine 2 weeks after they came out. paid over a grand for the cpu alone. haha. 6 months later the same cpu was $500. fail.

[TheEtaUnderdog]

1080P or die!

From what I have read, BD take a minimum of a 2.8 dual core and 2GB of good RAM (DDR2 minimum) to be 100%.

Personally, I just wanna be able to rip BD to the HDD and play them back smoothly, with full AC3 support.

Do you plan on a tuner card?

BD. Do you mean playing the actual disk?

I have blu ray rips, mkvs, about 12 gigs in size each, running on my acer with 10% cpu usage because of hardware accelerated graphics, i'm telling you, its magic

@ Kershaw quad-cores use a lot of power tho, depends if you care about the electric bill

[Kershaw]

not really. i have a nice bfg 800w psu.

and they run really hot. with the stock HSF it was running at +80C. in the winter, gaming heats up the room pretty damn fast. finally got the temps down with a tuniq tower. but they are not practical for a media machine.

[TheEtaUnderdog]

not really. i have a nice bfg 800w psu.

and they run really hot. with the stock HSF it was running at +80C. in the winter, gaming heats up the room pretty damn fast. finally got the temps down with a tuniq tower. but they are not practical for a media machine.

800w is way more than 64 watts. If he's just looking for an htpc and doesn't need cpu power, than using ion graphics is the way to go.

also, bam, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dg5WjGmzMDU

[Desaevious]

Eh Kershaw cheap by my standards and your standards are radically different than some buyers here, that's why I figure a $160 E8400 would suffice. I have a Q6600 and i7 920, which are "cheaper" quad core processors, but still hella expensive compared to what a college kid should be buying.

And yeah Underdog, it's the shit. I plug my 360 into it with and sit there amazed at 1080p taking up my whole wall.

[TheEtaUnderdog]

And yeah Underdog, it's the shit. I plug my 360 into it with and sit there amazed at 1080p taking up my whole wall.

you sir, know how to do it right

[StereoInstaller1]

BD. Do you mean playing the actual disk?

I have blu ray rips, mkvs, about 12 gigs in size each, running on my acer with 10% cpu usage because of hardware accelerated graphics, i'm telling you, its magic

@ Kershaw quad-cores use a lot of power tho, depends if you care about the electric bill

agreed 100%, but I wanna be able to rip the movie too. That requires some CPU power for simple number crunching to squeeze 40ishGB into 10ish.