media pc, part 7: upgrades
The P4 2.66GHz Prescott wasn't quite fast enough. We experienced slightly choppy TV when burning DVDs, and that was simply unacceptable. Did the super-hot Prescott teach me that I should listen to popular opinion, and upgrade to an AMD processor? Of course not. I upgraded to an Intel Pentium D 805 2.66GHz (Smithfield); a dual-core CPU that's something like two Prescotts stuck together. I also doubled the memory, settling on 1GB. The new processor idles in the mid-30s, but still doesn't exceed the low 40s. Now the media PC is as fast as it should be; we can burn DVDs while watching full-screen TV and streaming music over our network, with no slow-down.
As I said previously, a 90GB partition isn't much for TV, and we filled ours within a week or two. We then added a 250GB (232 actual) Seagate Barracuda 7200.9, but we filled that as well. After several months of diligently deleting watched shows, and being unable to archive everything that we wanted to keep, we realized that we were spending too much energy in maximizing free drive space. Buying for the long-term, we added two 250GB (232GB actual) Samsung Spinpoint drives to the system. Now, space is no longer a concern, and we can archive as many shows and DVDs as we like. A gigabyte is nothing to worry about, and when the minimum file size is 1GB, that's the way it should be. We also created enough space to grow our music collection in a care-free fashion. Our current partitions look like this:
Media PC
OS & Apps - 40GB (on original 160GB Seagate)
Music - 90GB (on original 160GB Seagate)
TV 1 - 232GB Samsung
TV 2 - 232GB Samsung
Kitchen PC
OS & Apps - 40GB (on 80GB Seagate)
Misc File Storage - 40GB (on 80GB Seagate)
TV 3 - 232GB Seagate
We had to move the 250GB Seagate drive to the kitchen PC, since the media PC case only holds 3 hard drives. Although the 250GB drive raised the kitchen PC's temperatures by a few degrees, it has many degrees to spare, and it's no louder, thanks to the sound-dampening qualities of solid wood. This configuration will work well for the foreeseable future.
Note: Our network is wired.
The wireless mouse and keyboard are not used at all, and I've disconnected them from the HTPC altogether. Instead, we use RealVNC (www.realvnc.com) to control the HTPC from the kitchen PC, which allows us to listen to music without turning the TV on.
As I said previously, a 90GB partition isn't much for TV, and we filled ours within a week or two. We then added a 250GB (232 actual) Seagate Barracuda 7200.9, but we filled that as well. After several months of diligently deleting watched shows, and being unable to archive everything that we wanted to keep, we realized that we were spending too much energy in maximizing free drive space. Buying for the long-term, we added two 250GB (232GB actual) Samsung Spinpoint drives to the system. Now, space is no longer a concern, and we can archive as many shows and DVDs as we like. A gigabyte is nothing to worry about, and when the minimum file size is 1GB, that's the way it should be. We also created enough space to grow our music collection in a care-free fashion. Our current partitions look like this:
Media PC
OS & Apps - 40GB (on original 160GB Seagate)
Music - 90GB (on original 160GB Seagate)
TV 1 - 232GB Samsung
TV 2 - 232GB Samsung
Kitchen PC
OS & Apps - 40GB (on 80GB Seagate)
Misc File Storage - 40GB (on 80GB Seagate)
TV 3 - 232GB Seagate
We had to move the 250GB Seagate drive to the kitchen PC, since the media PC case only holds 3 hard drives. Although the 250GB drive raised the kitchen PC's temperatures by a few degrees, it has many degrees to spare, and it's no louder, thanks to the sound-dampening qualities of solid wood. This configuration will work well for the foreeseable future.
Note: Our network is wired.
The wireless mouse and keyboard are not used at all, and I've disconnected them from the HTPC altogether. Instead, we use RealVNC (www.realvnc.com) to control the HTPC from the kitchen PC, which allows us to listen to music without turning the TV on.
posted by dallas and/or kris at 1:04 PM
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