media pc, part 3: component selection
Note: All cooling components and strategies will be reviewed within the next few posts, as will the respective performances of the components mentioned in this post.
Tuner Card
The majority of HTPC nuts swear by Hauppage's tuner cards. Hauppage cards have an excellent reputation, and supposedly provide the most flexibility in terms of configuration. Despite their overwhelming popularity, I had a hard time finding anyone who claimed that Hauppage cards offered the best picture quality. In card-to-card comparisons, with all other things equal, ATI's then-new Theatre 550 chipset seemed to offer a superior picture. Disregarding convention, I bought an ATI TV Wonder Elite; a single-tuner card which employs that chipset.
Note: I avoided ATI's All-In-Wonder line, which has been said to overheat and provide lesser picture quality.
Monitor
Media PC (HTPC) devotees prefer LCD or HDTV to SDTV, for their excellent picture clarity. If you intend to use your media PC to read substantial amounts of text, or to browse the web, an LCD monitor is preferable. However, those units are prohibitively expensive for some of us. We replaced our 20" Sony Trinitron SDTV (standard-definition TV) with a 32" Sony Wega SDTV. It cost less than $450, while comparably-sized LCD units cost over $2,000.
Video Card
This required a lot of research. There are many different opinions on how various GPUs perform in a media PC. My research revealed that the NVidia 5800 chipset seemed to provide the best picture on SDTVs, without exceeding the capabilities of SDTVs. This was important, because higher quality means more money, and invisible quality means money wasted. Further research revealed that a minimum of 256MB of video memory is ideal. A DVI or component video connection are best, and S-Video is second-best. I found a fanless (shhh) eVGA PCI card with 256MB and an S-Video output, for about $50.
CPU
AMD CPUs are more popular in the media PC community because they tend to stay cooler. I have nothing against AMD, but I'm not at all familiar with their CPUs or their performance. I've used only Intel CPUs in the past, and I didn't want to risk choosing the wrong CPU for this project. I went with an Intel P4 2.66GHz Prescott, which would do the job initially, and leave a lot of room to upgrade.
Hard Drive
For the initial project, I bought a 160GB single-platter Seagate Barracuda 7200.7, which was said to be very quiet. 160GB wasn't a lot of space, but I couldn't be certain of how much space we would need. I decided that the TV storage partition would be 90GB in size. The OS would get 20GB, and the remaining 20GB would be set aside to store miscellaneous files.
Input Devices
For times of dire need, I bought a Logitech wireless RF mouse and keyboard combination. For a remote, I bought a Streamzap product which was compatible with SageTV. I was nervous about committing to an expensive PC-capable remote, such as those made by Logitech, and $25 seemed reasonable for the Streamzap's capabilities.
Power Supply
I recall finding only glowing reviews of Seasonic PSUs. Indeed, Seasonic products are popular in the quiet computing community. I went with the Seasonic S12-430 (430w). I reasoned that it should provide enough stable power for at least a few years' worth of upgrades.
Sound Card
The budget-priced ($25) Chaintech AV-710 was getting positive reviews on HTPC sites, and on NewEgg, so I bought it. For the left and right front channels, it uses Wolfson DACs, which are supposed to sound great, and it produces output for up to 7.1 channels.
Case
This is the look-and-feel part of the computer; the part that everybody sees. It had to look good, but it also had to be efficient, and allow for unforeseen future upgrades. Oh, and it had to be inexpensive. I ruled out any case with a proprietary power supply; inflexibility by design absolutely sucks. My wife was, of course, heavily involved in deciding upon a case. She likes clean and minimal designs, and isn't particularly crazy about components which look like component receivers (I am, though). Without finding a case that was absolutely flawless in any price range, we settled upon the Silverstone Lascala LC-13 (in silver). This case strongly resembles some professional audio amplifiers, and we liked its minimalist design. Functionally, it's large enough to fit ATX motherboards, ATX power supplies, up to three hard drives, and two optical drives. $100 isn't bad for a heavy steel case with an aluminum front fascia.
Motherboard
I used an ECS ATX board that had high ratings and a reasonable price on NewEgg at the time. It had the features that I needed, and no frills. No further research went into this decision. As soon as I opened the box, I knew that it had been returned or refurbished, then resold as new. Indeed, the first board was bad, and when I got a new one (of the same model), it was in brand new packaging, and worked perfectly.
Optical Drive
An NEC Combo Drive, in silver. It had fallen hard during packaging or shipping, and the bezel was dented. Fearing possible internal damage, we got an RMA for exchange from NewEgg. UPS was supposed to pick up the original unit, but they never did. The damaged drive is now in use, and has produced a couple of coasters, but that's probably due to the media.
Memory
The initial memory purchase was 512MB of Corsair ValueSelect. My wife commented on the cheap sound of"ValueSelect", and I agree with her; but as the name says, it's a good value.
Whew! That was long. Let me know if I missed anything.
Tuner Card
The majority of HTPC nuts swear by Hauppage's tuner cards. Hauppage cards have an excellent reputation, and supposedly provide the most flexibility in terms of configuration. Despite their overwhelming popularity, I had a hard time finding anyone who claimed that Hauppage cards offered the best picture quality. In card-to-card comparisons, with all other things equal, ATI's then-new Theatre 550 chipset seemed to offer a superior picture. Disregarding convention, I bought an ATI TV Wonder Elite; a single-tuner card which employs that chipset.
Note: I avoided ATI's All-In-Wonder line, which has been said to overheat and provide lesser picture quality.
Monitor
Media PC (HTPC) devotees prefer LCD or HDTV to SDTV, for their excellent picture clarity. If you intend to use your media PC to read substantial amounts of text, or to browse the web, an LCD monitor is preferable. However, those units are prohibitively expensive for some of us. We replaced our 20" Sony Trinitron SDTV (standard-definition TV) with a 32" Sony Wega SDTV. It cost less than $450, while comparably-sized LCD units cost over $2,000.
Video Card
This required a lot of research. There are many different opinions on how various GPUs perform in a media PC. My research revealed that the NVidia 5800 chipset seemed to provide the best picture on SDTVs, without exceeding the capabilities of SDTVs. This was important, because higher quality means more money, and invisible quality means money wasted. Further research revealed that a minimum of 256MB of video memory is ideal. A DVI or component video connection are best, and S-Video is second-best. I found a fanless (shhh) eVGA PCI card with 256MB and an S-Video output, for about $50.
CPU
AMD CPUs are more popular in the media PC community because they tend to stay cooler. I have nothing against AMD, but I'm not at all familiar with their CPUs or their performance. I've used only Intel CPUs in the past, and I didn't want to risk choosing the wrong CPU for this project. I went with an Intel P4 2.66GHz Prescott, which would do the job initially, and leave a lot of room to upgrade.
Hard Drive
For the initial project, I bought a 160GB single-platter Seagate Barracuda 7200.7, which was said to be very quiet. 160GB wasn't a lot of space, but I couldn't be certain of how much space we would need. I decided that the TV storage partition would be 90GB in size. The OS would get 20GB, and the remaining 20GB would be set aside to store miscellaneous files.
Input Devices
For times of dire need, I bought a Logitech wireless RF mouse and keyboard combination. For a remote, I bought a Streamzap product which was compatible with SageTV. I was nervous about committing to an expensive PC-capable remote, such as those made by Logitech, and $25 seemed reasonable for the Streamzap's capabilities.
Power Supply
I recall finding only glowing reviews of Seasonic PSUs. Indeed, Seasonic products are popular in the quiet computing community. I went with the Seasonic S12-430 (430w). I reasoned that it should provide enough stable power for at least a few years' worth of upgrades.
Sound Card
The budget-priced ($25) Chaintech AV-710 was getting positive reviews on HTPC sites, and on NewEgg, so I bought it. For the left and right front channels, it uses Wolfson DACs, which are supposed to sound great, and it produces output for up to 7.1 channels.
Case
This is the look-and-feel part of the computer; the part that everybody sees. It had to look good, but it also had to be efficient, and allow for unforeseen future upgrades. Oh, and it had to be inexpensive. I ruled out any case with a proprietary power supply; inflexibility by design absolutely sucks. My wife was, of course, heavily involved in deciding upon a case. She likes clean and minimal designs, and isn't particularly crazy about components which look like component receivers (I am, though). Without finding a case that was absolutely flawless in any price range, we settled upon the Silverstone Lascala LC-13 (in silver). This case strongly resembles some professional audio amplifiers, and we liked its minimalist design. Functionally, it's large enough to fit ATX motherboards, ATX power supplies, up to three hard drives, and two optical drives. $100 isn't bad for a heavy steel case with an aluminum front fascia.
Motherboard
I used an ECS ATX board that had high ratings and a reasonable price on NewEgg at the time. It had the features that I needed, and no frills. No further research went into this decision. As soon as I opened the box, I knew that it had been returned or refurbished, then resold as new. Indeed, the first board was bad, and when I got a new one (of the same model), it was in brand new packaging, and worked perfectly.
Optical Drive
An NEC Combo Drive, in silver. It had fallen hard during packaging or shipping, and the bezel was dented. Fearing possible internal damage, we got an RMA for exchange from NewEgg. UPS was supposed to pick up the original unit, but they never did. The damaged drive is now in use, and has produced a couple of coasters, but that's probably due to the media.
Memory
The initial memory purchase was 512MB of Corsair ValueSelect. My wife commented on the cheap sound of"ValueSelect", and I agree with her; but as the name says, it's a good value.
Whew! That was long. Let me know if I missed anything.
posted by dallas and/or kris at 3:16 PM
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