Media PC for lounge room

Livzz

Livzz

New Member
hi,

we're keen for a bit of a technology boost in our lounge... we want to get a multimedia computer to replace our dvd player, amp/receiver, and set top box...

what kind of specs do you folks reckon i should be looking at?

heres my initial thoughts:
dual core processor, not fussed about intel/amd
2Gb ram
10k or 15k ~80Gb drive for OS
~500Gb SATAII hdd (maybe 2 of them?)
X-Fi platinum
2x tv tuner cards (must be high definition digital)

i'm not sure about the video card, but it seems 512Mb is about right...

any suggestions??

I am experienced in building computers, but are there any reasons not to build a media pc myself?

cheers guys,
Paul
 
as long as you have drivers, etc there is no reason to not build it yourself.

ps- that looks to be a damn fine computer, but a 10-15k drive is not really needed for the os. a 7200 will be noticibly (few seconds) slower for stuff like booting windows/linux but to me being 3-4 times as expensive outweighs those seconds. on the video card, the core matters more than the amount of memory on it. ex, a 7900 with 256 would haul arse over a 7600 with 512 or even 1gb.
 
seems a little overkill for jsut a media pc......unless u are using it for your main pc too. then sounds pretty cool
 
Well if its just a media center PC for playing music and movies, then that would be extreme overkill. For just display i would suggest 1gb of ram, just one single 500gb harddrive unless you were storing massive amounts of music, and a Geforce 7300gt 256mb would be more than enough. If you plan on playing games then take your original set up and just put in a 7950GT 256mb or an 8800GTX. Its up to personal preference at that point.
 
yeah i might have over estimated a bit... what do you guys reckon?
with computers it always seems that whatever you buy is immediately out dated... like when i bought my computer the AM2 came out 2 weeks later.
what kind of specs to you think would be good to make sure its still a reasonably good performance machine in 4 or 5 years time?
 
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