Hi there. Not really go much of a clue when it comes to building pc', but I am learning. I'm building a media pc, with no graphics card. I have already bought an A-BIT Matx Mobo with HDMI, a I also have a slimlime Pioneer optical slot loading drive and a slim line 300w psu. a. What connectors do I need to connect the optical drive to the motherboard? b. Could I use a 1.8 AM2 opteron? C. How much RAM could I install and what should I get D. The cables on my psu are too short can I get extenders for these and where do I get them? e. Wheres a good place to buy a 500 gig hard drive sata 2? Many thanks in advance. I just need to make sure really that the psu will cop ok. Gareth
a) Can you give the model number of the Pioneer drive? b & c) What motherboard model is it? d) You can get these, not 100% sure where e) www.scan.co.uk
A 500GB disk is a good place to start. Personally I have 2 x laptop 2.5" 100GB HD's for the main os drive as they are very quiet! I then have one 250GB SATA 2 HD for the tv recordings. They encode them in MPEG2 so they do get rather large. At the moment scan do a smasung 750 GB drive at < £100 with NCQ which will help a little. I would go for this and if your budget stretches and you have disk through put issues like me (not many people do) then I would get a smaller second drive for the os. I would have thought all the cables you need for you DVD drive would have come with your motherborad (probably an IDE one, i dont think pioneer do sata on dvd drives yet). As for RAM scan do corsair (some of the best memory) for £36 for 2gb. This is very good, especially now the prices have come down a lot recently!
Just for HTPC - what software are you using and are you recording TV? Are you playing back HD content or just SD? What codecs (or file sizes/types)? The Nvidia 7025 chipset has no PureVideo acceleration so all of your video processing will be done by the CPU. What case are you using? You realise a slim-line will likely be noisy? You can get ATX extenders for very cheap, although it's quite easy to make molex extenders yourself. What's your budget?
Thanks Phil. I appreciate the advice I think I will go for the corsair ram as it seems the best value and is a decent name. As for the pioneer, well I do have ide that came with my mobo, but as it's a slimline drive the IDE won't match. What I really need to know is what connector I do need. I've had a look and 400 gb seems to be the best value for money at the moment.
Thanks Bindi I have bought a Freecom usb freeview stick and hope to record from that. To be honest even though I am hot very knowledgable I have designed a prototype of my case and will add dimsnsions to it once I have all the hardware bought and tested. The motherboard, dvd drive, and slim psu fit my design quite well as far as I can tell. The most pertinent question is how much ram and whats the best cpu I can get away with considering I've only got 300 watts to play with? I'm hoping around 200 pounds should buy the rest of my hardware.
Make sure it all works before you build. 300W will be plenty for a small system. If you're watching HD or recording get a dual core Athlon - we ran a 2.6GHz in my latest review and that sufficed. Either that or grab a cheap BE-2150 and overclock it. If it's for a HTPC you need it as quiet as possible, right?
Yeah, I suppose. I don't mind a bit of noise, but at the same time I don't wanting it sounding like a vacum cleaner. I have this thing about getting an opteron 1.8 Maybe it's just so I can boast about having one!lol I will tho be using it ALLOT to replace my normal tv. I'll just use a 22 inch monitor to keep me going. I do tho want everyting to run as quitly as possible without a gfx card. Does 4 gig cheap corsair seem undeeded.
If you're watching HD, a 1.8 won't cut it imo. We had to invest in at least a 3800+ X2 to playback even medium bitrate 720/1080p HD.
