new home theatre pc/gaming pc build

[bezz]

Hi guys, got two builds going atm, one htpc for me and one htpc/gaming pc for a mate. Just wondering if you guys have any opinions on them:

htpc/gaming pc:
case: antec fusion remote silver
cpu: intel q9400
motherboard: Asus P5QL-EM
ram: 2x 2gb G-Skill ddr2 800
video card: HIS 1gb hd4870
optical drive: Pioneer 216 dvd burner
hard drive: wd 750gb sata
power supply: zalman 460w or 500w
tv tuner: unknown
keyboard/mouse: logitech lx310

my htpc:
case: antec fusion remote black
cpu: amd 4850e
motherboard: gigabyte ma78gpm-ds2h
ram: 2gb kingston ddr2 800
video card: onboard
optical drive: pioneer bluray combo
hard drive: wd 1tb sata
power supply: zalman 360w
tv tuner: unknown
keyboard/mouse: n/a


not 100% sure on the asus mobo as yet, as I haven;t looked into it much. Not sure on tv tuners yet either...

[Juztin]

PSU should be atleast 750w mate

I suggest for the gaming one
Welcome to Corsair :: TX Power Supply Product Information

How much you willing to spend?

[bezz]

PSU should be atleast 750w mate

I suggest for the gaming one
Welcome to Corsair :: TX Power Supply Product Information

How much you willing to spend?

why should it be 750w? im not running crossfire, only running 1 hdd, 1 optical drive, 1 tuner card.

[Tom_1569]

**** I knocked "back" and lost everything I had written.
Heres goes again.

For the Gaming pc i would look at 1066mhz DDR2 ram.
640gb HDD are real good value for money at the moment, and for the HT pc you could two 640's cheaper then you can get a 1tb drive.. food for thought anyway.

The 500 watt PSU should be fine, though id be more inclined to go 550w, a bit of overkill is always a good thing.
The 216 DVD writer is good, I bought 5 of them the other week and will get more eventually.

What do you plan on running, XP or Vista, if Vista go 4gb of ram.

Cbf'd to look up your mobos or cpu lol.

[bezz]

my mate is budgeting around $1500.. the build i have above comes out to $1600, ($150 towards tuner card)

[bezz]

**** I knocked "back" and lost everything I had written.
Heres goes again.

For the Gaming pc i would look at 1066mhz DDR2 ram.
640gb HDD are real good value for money at the moment, and for the HT pc you could two 640's cheaper then you can get a 1tb drive.. food for thought anyway.

The 500 watt PSU should be fine, though id be more inclined to go 550w, a bit of overkill is always a good thing.
The 216 DVD writer is good, I bought 5 of them the other week and will get more eventually.

What do you plan on running, XP or Vista, if Vista go 4gb of ram.

Cbf'd to look up your mobos or cpu lol.

Actually i was looking at the faster ram, will there be a noticable difference on the gaming pc?

I was also leaning more towards the 500w on the gaming pc. I could go a 550w thermaltake for less than the 460w zalman, however I have a feeling the Zalman would perform better anyway, and quieter too.

In the Antec case there's limited room,in my htpc I'm already gonna run a 250gb that I have lying around in there for OS and random things, and have the 1tb for storage. Otherwise I would be looking at 2 smaller ones.

The gaming PC will be running XP with SP3, my htpc will be running Mythbuntu.

[Tom_1569]

my mate is budgeting around $1500.. the build i have above comes out to $1600, ($150 towards tuner card)

Have you tryed MSY, they are ALOT cheaper.

[bezz]

Have you tryed MSY, they are ALOT cheaper.

lol 3/4 of the build is from msy.
Here's the price breakdown on the gaming pc:

Case antec fusion -- 215
CPU Intel Q9400 -- 333
Motherboard Asus P5QL-EM -- 142
RAM 2x2gb Gskill DDR2 800 -- 82
Video Card HIS 1gb HD4870 -- 389
Optical Drive Pioneer 216 DVD Burner -- 34
Hard Drive Western Digital 750gb -- 106
Power Supply Zalman 460w -- 106.6
TV Tuner unknown -- 150
KB and Mouse Logitech LX310 -- 54
Total -- 1611.6

[Tom_1569]

Oh, didnt realsie your mates was the gaming one.
If its gaming why not make it AMD, alot cheaper path in my opinion, bahhh go search for the AMD one I built, its in a few threads but it was made on a tight budget and still an excellent machine. (its in minux's thread and 2 others )

The 1066 ram is worth it in my opinion especially for a gaming pc or something that will be running alot of resource hungry apps.
CBF'd to research the graphics either and im not up on latest graphics, but I tend to stick to around/under 150 bux for graphics card as thats where value for money seems to be around, either that or I let the client choose there own haha.

[bezz]

Oh, didnt realsie your mates was the gaming one.
If its gaming why not make it AMD, alot cheaper path in my opinion, bahhh go search for the AMD one I built, its in a few threads but it was made on a tight budget and still an excellent machine. (its in minux's thread and 2 others )

The 1066 ram is worth it in my opinion especially for a gaming pc or something that will be running alot of resource hungry apps.
CBF'd to research the graphics either and im not up on latest graphics, but I tend to stick to around/under 150 bux for graphics card as thats where value for money seems to be around, either that or I let the client choose there own haha.

Yea went fair high end with both the cpu and video card. However the PC is going to be running 1920x1080 on a 40" sony bravia, and he doesn't want to sacrifice graphic detail for such a high resolution.

I'm more of an amd person myself, but at this price range i think the intel quads outperform the amd phenoms.

Will look into the faster ram but i think it was about twice the price (pushes up the cost of the pc even further!) Cheers for your opinion mate, much appreciated!

[Tom_1569]

Yea went fair high end with both the cpu and video card. However the PC is going to be running 1920x1080 on a 40" sony bravia, and he doesn't want to sacrifice graphic detail for such a high resolution.

I'm more of an amd person myself, but at this price range i think the intel quads outperform the amd phenoms.

Will look into the faster ram but i think it was about twice the price (pushes up the cost of the pc even further!) Cheers for your opinion mate, much appreciated!

A side option for running to the bravia which me and my brother both plan on doing is get a Mobo with HDMI support. We plan on using the HDMI straight to the plasma, and run a graphics card to the monitor for gaming. If you plan on gaming off the plasma then a high end graphics will be the go.

At that price range Intel will be the go, but you could drastically reduce your price rang using AMD lol, yeah its all personel choice, on a non budget computer I choose Intel hands down, but AMD is just so cheap lol.

Yeah the RAM would work out around double the price. Last prices i have are DDR2 2 X1 gb 800 was $54, and 1066 2 a 1gb was $79, then the mobos are need to be higher spec so more $$$.

[bezz]

A side option for running to the bravia which me and my brother both plan on doing is get a Mobo with HDMI support. We plan on using the HDMI straight to the plasma, and run a graphics card to the monitor for gaming. If you plan on gaming off the plasma then a high end graphics will be the go.

At that price range Intel will be the go, but you could drastically reduce your price rang using AMD lol, yeah its all personel choice, on a non budget computer I choose Intel hands down, but AMD is just so cheap lol.

Yeah the RAM would work out around double the price. Last prices i have are DDR2 2 X1 gb 800 was $54, and 1066 2 a 1gb was $79, then the mobos are need to be higher spec so more $$$.

Yea both motherboards have hdmi out. I'm just going to run vga to my tv anyway and optical cable to my amp- saves buying hdmi cables.

A good feature of my motherboard is support for hybrid crossfire, if i wanted to add in an extra video card it would run crossfire with the onboard card (ati 780g) for extra performance. When not required, the motherboard would switch the video card off and just use the onboard for desktop stuff to save power. Quite cool I thought.. I don't need a dedicated video card anyway for fullhd/bluray playback but at least it leaves it open for future expansion.

[AirStrike]

Buy a cheaper case and put it towards the PSU and ram I just upgraded the ram in my PC. From MSY $150 for 4gb of 1066 Kingston Hyper-X.

[bezz]

Buy a cheaper case and put it towards the PSU and ram I just upgraded the ram in my PC. From MSY $150 for 4gb of 1066 Kingston Hyper-X.

already have the cases pretty snazzy things too haha

[Ozzie]

Why spend the money on a fast CPU?

You will be limited due to the hard drives slowin you down.
Buy 2 or 3 smaller hard drives for the same price and Stripe0 raid them.

otherwise its a waste of a powerful quad that i could be using in mine

[bezz]

I would run raid0 if it was my setup but it just overcomplicates it for my friend I reckon

[bezz]

So pretty much confirmed on these specs for the htpc/gaming one.. its gonna be one hell of a computer. Will probably have to modify the case slightly to fit the video card in...

htpc/gaming pc:
case: antec fusion remote silver
cpu: intel q9400
motherboard: Asus P5QL-EM
ram: 2x 2gb G-Skill ddr2 1100
video card: HIS 1gb hd4870
optical drive: Pioneer bluray combo
hard drive: wd 1tb sata
power supply: zalman 500w
tv tuner: unknown, most probably hauppage
keyboard/mouse: logitech lx710 or wave

[Ozzie]

That will be a nice setup

Ar you gunna run vista? If so what is it mainly going to be used for? gaming?
The ram looks good but youll still probebly need more of it.
You could get away with ddr2/800 x 4gb for the same price of the 2gb
You wont need the 1100 ram with only one hard drive as I said before your hard drive will slow you down.

[bezz]

That will be a nice setup

Ar you gunna run vista? If so what is it mainly going to be used for? gaming?
The ram looks good but youll still probebly need more of it.
You could get away with ddr2/800 x 4gb for the same price of the 2gb
You wont need the 1100 ram with only one hard drive as I said before your hard drive will slow you down.

yea i was weighing up that exact point in my head about ram but in the end its not my computer and that's what he wants... oh and its 2x 2gb sticks so 4gb in total.

Spose It'll have to run vista in order for it to actually see all that ram (unless I can track down a copy of 64 bit xp?). Its gonna be used probably equally for gaming and htpc applications..

How come no ones interested in my own htpc build? Costing me less than half of what my mate is paying!

[Ozzie]

The ram is a good start if he plans on raiding it.
Vista is a hell of alot quicker than XP when were talking quads with that type of ram lol
The setup i have at the moment wont even run XP.

The setup you have there for yourself is ok if you run xp.
Though i wouldnt overclock with a 360w psu lol

[bezz]

The setup you have there for yourself is ok if you run xp.
Though i wouldnt overclock with a 360w psu lol

Doing away with windows altogether with that one. My aim with that build is to have enough processing power to run full hd/bluray on mythbuntu as well as video encoding etc. Also want to run mame and a bunch of emulators on it

[Tom_1569]

I prefer xp 64 over vista. The 64 has an emulator for 32 bit apps, so its a very stable version unlike its first release. Im running it on 4 comps no problems.

EDIT: No probs... details removed lol.

[MudBlood]

Doing away with windows altogether with that one. My aim with that build is to have enough processing power to run full hd/bluray on mythbuntu as well as video encoding etc. Also want to run mame and a bunch of emulators on it

That would be a sweet setup,, aaahhhh to play space invaders on a 42"

[bezz]

That would be a sweet setup,, aaahhhh to play space invaders on a 42"

livin' the dream my friend

dont worry bout the torrent tom, if he really wants it he can get it