Hi, First of all, im from Holland, so i hope you guys understand my English. Im going to build a HTPC/Server box on a budget. This is the hardware i wanted to use, what do you think of this? Case: TT Lanbox Lite PSU: Be Quiet Pure Power 350W Mobo: XFX MIA78S8209 (GeForce 8200 chipset) Ram: 2x 512MB which i've got after a ram upgrade on my sisters PC CPU: Amd Athlon x2 4850e HDD: 2x 1TB Samsung (in Raid-1) Also, i've got some questions - What is better for a little gaming (UT2004/UT1999/Wolfenstein). A Geforce 8200 or a ATI Radeon HD3200. - Samsung disks fail in raid? I heard of it, but i dont know it. And, what do you guys think of this system.
I know nothing, but that never stops me replying! My only question is whether your HTPC can play 1080p at those specs, which I expect you want it to be able to? I'm not sure 2x512mb is conducive to 1080p playback but again, I'm just guessing. Do you intent to do the little bit of gaming on this computer with those graphics cards? About Samsung's drives failing, I'm don't think they're particularly susceptible to RAID-death; they don't have any features that mark them out as especially risky, but essentially RAID kills drives. That's why you have RAID-1, so if you lose a disk, you don't actually lose the contents of the disk. So even if one of your drives does die it should be fine, no?
looks good, tbh. can't help on hard drives or gpu (bindi will probably weigh in) although i recommend you store your files on a server and use a smaller, quiet drive in your HTPC to lower noise and overall TCO (a server is easier to upgrade for storage without faffing) what OS will you be running on this machine? the CPU you've got will handle HD video fine, but 1GB ram is... OK. for a HTPC it should be workable, but consider upgrading to 2gb when the opportunity presents itself. if you're going to be running XP media centre or vista, have a look at the following plugins: my movies - www.mymovies.dk mediabrowser (sorry vista only) - http://www.mediabrowser.tv/ tunerfree - http://www.milliesoft.co.uk/tunerfree.php media control - http://damienbt.free.fr/ vista/xp codec pack - http://shark007.net/ (one-stop solution for all your media playback needs in media centre - doesn't install odd codecs, just mainly ffdshow and splitters, and comes preconfigured and mostly ready to go)
that looks better than my htpc my only suggestion is a new case that one it pretty ugly look at this one http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811112151
V350 is a lot bigger than the TT Lanbox, though I agree the TT is pretty ugly.. The 8200 looks like it's a big more powerful than the HD3200, but that's based on a different benchmark, though both of them will be just fine for such old games. My friend has a bunch of 'misfit computers' of varying ages with far older graphics cards than that, and we have LAN parties with UT2k4 on them, you're safe.
Both GPU's can decode FullHD, they support GPU decoding so that works. Thats why i chose for this setup. IT has an energy-efficcient CPU so thats better for the energy bill True, but its a new setup, and its a lot of money for me, so i want stuff that is good for some years, not for half a year. Thanks for the links and suggestions. I want a all-in-one box. I already got an freenas box. It works nice, but its slow at gigabit speeds because of the 433mhz CPU. Thats why i chose for this all in one box. Those drives are marked as silent on Silent PC Review. The 2 gb will get in as soon as i got money for it. Thats personal, the main thing what i dont like about that case is that the opticals are on the right or left side of the case, i want them to be on the front. But, if you got any suggestions, maybe ill take an Antec NSK1380, thats also an nice case with a 380w quality PSU. choises
I've got a tt lanbox lite and its a pretty decent case for the money... I would suggest replacing the fans that come with it tho, as the ones that come with it are pretty loud for an htpc environment (it has 1x92mm at the front, and 2x60mms at the rear, tho i dont bother with the 60mms)
Thanks for your reaction. Do the fans have a 3 pin connection so i can hook them up to my fan controller?
