Hi guys, I've been out of the hardware game for a long while now as I've not needed anything faster than my XP2500+ but after deciding to build a media PC I've found myself completely lost with the number of different CPUs you can get! Whatever happened to the easy Athlon/Duron or Pentium/Celeron choices! I'm pretty sure I'm going to use the Antec Fusion case, which restricts me to a MATX motherboard and I plan to use a Hauppauge WinTV-Nova-T 500, PCI wireless card and PCI sound card, so the matching motherboard must have 3 PCI slots. This restricts the selection somewhat, but can anyone recommend me a CPU for this PC. I don't want to spend too much, (£60 or less ideally!). I don't care if it's Intel or AMD, but it looks like there are way more LGA 775 motherboards that would fit the bill, so I'm kind of looking at Celeron D 356, Pentium 531, 524, 630, 541, 640, 650 or 4E, but I'm totally confused what any of the numbers mean!! Any help would be appreciated for a n00b to the latest CPU world Thanks in advance.
is the mobo Intel LGA 775? or AMD 939 or AM2? EDIT: just saw that ur leaning towards intel. Anyways most of the P4/Celeron series are all based of the old "netburst" design so not very power efficient or cool. These chips will be very hot and not amazingly fast but they are cheap and still do the trick. The best bang for buck is the Dual core 820. These can be had uber cheap and are dual core. these chips were highly saught after due to the fact that they can OC very high with top-noch cooling. I'd easilly go with the 820.
Right... The 531 and 541 and Prescott cored with 1MB of L2 cache and an 800MHz FSB. The 531 runs at 3GHz (200*15) and the 541 at 3.2GHz (200*16). The 524 is also Prescott based with 1MB cache but runs on a 533MHz FSB at 3.066GHz (133*23) The 630, 640 and 650 are Prescotts again, but with 2MB cache. They run at 3GHz (200*15), 3.2GHz (200*16) and 3.4GHz (200*17) respectively. Not quite sure what the 4E is though. Anyway, if you can, I'd say save up a bit more and see if you can get a second hand Core2Duo E6300. They run a lot cooler than the Prescotts so will be more suitable than the P4's for an HTPC, and they're quite a bit quicker, not to mention being dual core.
Prescott is definitely not the way to go with a media PC. They heat up and require either ridiculously large or noisy cooler. If (and as, I guess) you aim for even some level of silence that is bad news. Obviously the best option would be C2D, but they may be a bit too pricey for you. Maybe an AMD-setup would be OK. After all they are faster than 2500+
Thanks for the replies so far. The problem with an AMD setup is the lack of motherboards at the moment. I only found a couple that were MATX, and none had 3 PCI slots. Ok, so if I see a C2D second hand I'll seriously consider it. The 820 at £60 looks pretty good, so that'll probably be my choice; and dual core has to be a good thing for the dual digital TV card so that recording can be undisturbed while watching another channel. With regards to heat, the Antec case has two 120mm fans right next to the CPU socket. I was planning on buying a large CPU cooler, getting rid of the attached fan and building an air tunnel directly to those two big fans. So heat shouldn't be that much of an issue.
That's a good idea as far as the cooler actually fits to the Fusion There's no way you could stick the largest Scythes in to one.
For £60 you could look for an Pentium D 805, or an 820 / 915. They are dual core, and will do 3.5Ghz or so easy. Or go the Fleabay route and try to find a very cheap e4300 or e6300
Quite right. I just want something that'll do the job! MCE2005 with a single DVB-T tuner worked fine on my XP2500+, the only thing that worries me is whether something at the lower end of the market would handle the dual tuner with no problems. I'm going to buy the Dual DVB-T card this week and see how well it works in this PC. That'll give me an idea as to what I need to aim for. Thanks for your replies.
Either way i think dual core would be a bonus and will easilly handle two streams of signals and encoding any recording jobs.
Ok, one more question for now... Intel Pentium D 820 or 915? The power dissipation is the same (95W), same speed, but the 915 uses a smaller process and has twice as much cache. They're both the same price, so is there a downside to the 915? THANKSSSSSSzzzzZ yeah , Keep going !!
Why's everyone mocking him? We don't want to scare him off... Though the ,,,,, in this thread's title is utter genius.
I was just encouraging people to continue with the excellent replies that have been received so far...
It is indeed...there aren't really any drawbacks to the Presler based 915: more cache so slightly better performance in some situations, will draw less power than the Smithfield 820 so lower temps and cheaper electricity bills. Can't think of any downsides right now anyway...
well, the 820 is an even number, whereas the 915 is an odd number...do you want other cpu's calling ur cpu "odd"...thats all i can come up with
