Hey guys, Happy new year first off hope you all had nice hols. Im putting together my media PC finally and after finding out i cant use my bros parts from his upgrade im in need off some new ones. It needs to play .mkv files 1080p + Normal DVD, do some browsing, play some music and thats all really. Budget wise im not fixed on a price as such but cheaper the better really. Ooo also i already have a 500W seasonic PSU + 3GB of DDR 3 so all good there and dont need the monitor obviously. Any suggestions on alternative parts or reasons not to opt for the list below feel free to add. CASE - Silverstone GD05B Grandia - £78 (not sure on this one to be honest) case can only be 450x400x150mm MAX really. CPU - AMD A4 3300 - £47 (do i need more ompf ?) MOBO - GByte GA-A75M-D2H- £66 (only chosen as it has HDMI, S/PDIF + SATAIII) OS HDD - Crucial 64GB m4 - £88 (HDD are too expensive to justify a small 160GB drive for £50-60) STORAGE - 1xSamsung HD204UI 2TB Spinpoint F4 - £105 (RAID1) OS - Windows 7 Home prem 64-bit - £72 kb/mouse - Keysonic KB-ACK-540BT Mini Bluetooth - £36 )(i have no idea how good this is but need kb with trackpad for sofa surfing ) TOTAL - £492 Any thoughts ? kinda pricey but its mainly the storage drives that kill it at £210 !!!!. I could just grab 1 2TB for now and keep a back up on my main PC as i have a 1TB storage there. havent filled it yet but think im around 500GB for films and music
If it wasn't for the internet browsing I would buy a NAS box (Synology DS211J) and the WD TV Live instead. And as you stated I would buy 1 x 2TB drive and back up to PC. You can buy a second when prices are sensible again.
What's wrong with streaming videos and music in WMP to an Xbox 360? + you can still surf the web. So a Xbox 360 at £150 is a pretty good media player.
Its still painful experience. It supports very few formats both audio and video. Browsing works but not fully, Its more like advanced mobile web browsing. I dont want to have my main PC on just watch/listen either. I know its alot cheaper but i would have to make compromises.
I'd look to see if you could pick up a 30gb SSD, I got one for my media build, arrived today, tis an older model (ocz core v2) but since it's just for a media pc, is still overkill Apart from that looks good, and I'd agree with others, just buy the 1 drive now.
an E-350 mobo CPU combo would use less leccy so if it it to be on 24/7 as file server I would go with it plus they do not need active coolers so it would be very quite with 1 good 120mm fan in the case.
I can recommend the Logitech diNovo Mini keyboard: http://www.logitech.com/keyboards/keyboard/devices/3848 Bit pricey (£73 on Amazon) but I've been very pleased with mine. Not familiar with the CPU but my old dual core Athlon (4850e) with onboard graphics (780G chipset I think) worked well playing blu-rays, 1080p mkvs etc. The SSD approach works really well for Media Center. The UI was sometimes a bit sluggish with 1 disk recording TV, running the OS and everything but it's very smooth now I have an SSD. Are you getting a nice quiet CPU cooler? I have a Scythe Ninja mini (or something like that) and I can run it fanless at low temps in an Antec Fusion case. Silent components are the way forward with Media PCs. You should throw in a TV tuner too.
make sure to get a quite Disk spinner like: LG BH10LS38-AUAU http://www.quietpc.com/gb-en-gbp/products/caseaccessories/lg-blu-ray-writer Much more important they people give credit
not getting a blu-ray player yet or if i do it will be on my main as i rip all my DVDs to MKVs. I was gunna go with stock cooler and if i find it noisey switch it out. E-350 would be sersiously underpowered for HD stuff and i want to use the PC as a general one too to some extent. My E2160 i have sat in a box is faster than E-350 by quite alot. Was thinking about a tuner later down the line one of the blackgold DVB-T2 tuners.
But it is sold out and they only have preorders now with no date . http://www.solid-run.com/ Or maybe a HP Microserver + some low profile card with HDMI ? But in the end if it needs to be a generic PC, then none of these ideas are good for you .
Strange my house mate has an E-350 netbook from Asus and it runs HD 1080p content on an external 23" TFT without any issues, though he does use Linux.
I've not had much luck with blackgold DVB-T2 tuners. I recommended the BGT3620 to a mate and we can't get it working reliably. It is currently disabled awaiting a driver update. I bought a BGT3650 and it is sat on my desk as it just doesn't work properly. My old DVB-T Hauppauge card is working brilliantly still.
Just for reference, I recently built a media pc for less than £230. It runs windows 7, and plays full HD, very high bitrate video and music perfectly using xbmc software. Component-wise I went for: £15 - Corsair XMS3 4GB £45 - ASRock AM3 M3A770DE/A/ASR Motherboard £30 - Sapphire HD 6450 512MB DDR3 Graphics Card £44 - AMD Athlon II X2 250 - 3.0 GHz AM3 CPU, Retail Packaged £58 - SAMSUNG 2TB F4 ECO GREEN SATA II £36 - Cooler Master Elite RC-334U I chose the 6450 HD as it supports hardware acceleration for h.264 and others, so it takes a lot of strain off the processor. I haven't had any performance related trouble in the last 3 months of use, even with 12GB .mkv files As regards the comments about a NAS box or similar, I bought a D-link ShareCenter Pulse 2-bay previously, and played video through a ps3. Apart from the ps3 not playing half my videos, the NAS box was very slow, and just left me frustrated when trying to stream content to more than one device. Hope that helps p.s. - I realise hard drive prices have doubled since, but the other components are similar
Well ive adjusted to remove 1x 2TB drive. Has anyone seen ANY reviews on the lower end AMD FM1 chips ? cant find anything on tinternets. Specifically A4 3300 and A6 3500. Was looking at a Intel G620/G840 as an intel comparison.
From looking at the spec you shouldn't have any issues playing MKVs but it'd probably be slow creating them. http://www.anandtech.com/show/4742/amds-first-dualcore-llano-apus-a43400-a43300-launched
yeah ive read that but its just "look AMD released some new APUs !!!" I havent seen a single review of any of the lower end APUs only the 3800 and 3600 have proper reviews and benchmarks. Not too worried about encoding mkvs as i have my main rig (4Ghz i7 920) and it flys through full DVDs in around 10 mins.
Best I can find is this: http://www.google.co.uk/products/ca...&sa=X&ei=P6UFT_QqycLxA8W8kNMB&ved=0CD8Q8wIwAQ The german translates to (blame Google if it sounds odd): So now I have the APU has a good 2 months of continuous use and can not complain much. Photoshop runs. and the games are playable. Although not comparable with ner extra graphics card, the newer GENERATION, but Duke Nukem Forever, Dungeon Siege 3, Call of Duty 4 and 6, Anno 1701, ... can play very well. There were no driver issues. Some of the boxed fan is partially bisl loud, but at the quite normal. : D Conclusion: strong buy recommendation especially given the price. ... So customer reviews seem good (apart from those with DOA parts).
I recently built a media PC and went for the i3-2120 coupled with a HD6450. There was only about £30 difference between this with motherboard and the AMD FM1 with motherboard. Yet I now have something that is more powerful in both games and for general use. The HD6450 is passively cooled and bitstreams perfectly. I plumped for a 64gb SSD with no other internal storage. It's completely silent, except as mentioned above when the optical drive spins up. Chuffed to bits with mine.
