Building a media center....

[stevo1210]

Hello Everyone,

I am going to build a new media center PC for my father sometime soon and I am not sure of what parts I'll have to use to make a quiet and reliable media center.

Currently my father has a media center PC in the lounge room and it's running fine, but he wants one that runs cooler and is also quieter....

This is what he currently has:

* Intel Pentium 4 Prescott 3Ghz w/HT (1MB L2 cache, socket 478)
* Gigabyte GA-8i848P-G motherboard (Intel 848P chipset)
* 512Mb Veritech DDR400 PC3200 RAM
* Samsung 16X DVD-ROM drive
* Hipro/ Dell 250W ATX PSU (I had a look through the vents and I can see Teapo caps. )
* Netcomm 802.11b/g Wireless PCI card
* Motorola 56K modem (not needed)
* ATi Radeon 9250 128MB AGP 8X graphics card.
* Asus TA881 ATX case.
* Western Digital 20GB WD200BB IDE hard drive (It's small in size and makes clunking noises when turned on.... I guess it's going to die sooner or later.)

At the moment, the DVD-ROM drive is dead.... it will read CD's but struggles with DVD's. The PC also runs quite hot at times because it uses the Prescott series processor and the case is also smaller than a usual ATX case and has only one 80mm exhaust fan.

So I've devised a solution to the problem. Since I want a mediocre gaming PC in my room, my dad let me have his motherboard and CPU. I don't know what to use for my gaming PC yet.... but that's a different story for now.

The RAM, graphics card, DVD drive etc. stays with him.

For the build, I am thinking of using an Asus P4P800S-X motherboard (currently in RMA) and maybe an Intel Pentium 4 2.4Ghz Northwood series CPU because they run cooler and don't have a high power consumption.... I'm not sure about the CPU yet. I have a choice between a 2.4GHz P4 (which I have in my PC now) or buying a Celeron D type CPU off ebay or similar.... I'm just wondering what type of Celeron D series processor would be suitable for a media center?? I don't need something so powerful that I could play games on it.... just something so we can watch a few DVD's, listen to some MP3's, surf the web and use some VOIP at times.

I'll need a new DVD drive too, this time I'm thinking of buying for my father a Pioneer or NEC branded DVD burner because they seem quite reliable.
For the hard drive, I'm thinking of buying for him a SATA drive. He told me that he wants something that he'll be able to fill up and not leave too much spare room and also not too expensive. So I am looking at the Seagate 80GB - 160GB drives for around $50 -70AUD.... I'm not very much concerned with brands.... I just need something quiet and reliable because this is a media center I'm talking about.

As for fans and cooling, these play a big role in the media center. I need a CPU fan that is quiet and also cools well. Same with the ventilation fans.... I need a quiet 80mm fan that will do the job properly.... does anyone know of some quiet fans that I could use?? Currently my fathers media center PC uses a stock Intel CPU cooling fan and that is quite noisy at times. The exhaust fan on the case is just a generic 80mm fan that's connected to the 12V line. The PSU fan isn't an issue because it is very quiet.

Some extras I may get for the media center could be a TV Tuner card and also a Firewire card.... I am just not sure what brand of TV tuner I should buy.... currently I am using a Leadtek DTV2000H for my PC and it has a few bugs here and there sometimes.

I just need some recommendations into building a proper media center PC.... In the past, I just basically got a standard desktop PC and put it in the lounge room.... My budget isn't an issue either. .

Thanks.

[stevo1210]

Re: Building a media center....

Oh, I just noticed that that the Gigabyte board has a 3 phase VRM and that the Asus board only has a 2 phase VRM.... and it still supports Prescott processors??

For the CPU, would a Celeron D 2.66GHz CPU (533MHz FSB, 256KB L2 cache) be faster than a Pentium 4 2.4GHz CPU (533MHz FSB, 512KB L2 cache) ?? or will the Celeron be slower compared to the P4??

For the CPU cooler, I have seen some stores sell a Zalman copper CPU cooler orb for socket 478, but it's quite costly at $70....

[pentium]

Re: Building a media center....

I hear WInTV cards are pretty reasonable.
I have one and it supplies not only television but radio too.

[stretch0069]

Re: Building a media center....

ooooo....the can or worms is opened again....

what exactly is a media center PC???? what does it do????

i've been trying to figure out how to put together a media center for a while now. well....let me rephrase that, i've been trying to put together a Home Theatre PC (HTPC). It is easy to go over the $2000 mark.

[willawake]

Re: Building a media center....

i have a 2.66 celeron in a "media center" which basically just plays mp3 and sometimes dvd also ripping and burning.

in real terms i could not tell the difference between 2.8 northwood and 2.66 celeron except the stock fans for the prescotts are much louder than the northwoods. your old version hdd is probably slowing the show down anyway.

is there any tv cards equivalent to actual tv? i have not been impressed really. actually the best analog-digital conversion for copying from vcr i have seen was in a sony handycam...pity they never made pci cards. maybe the digital tv cards are better solution in the end.

[toastygoodness]

Re: Building a media center....

hauppauge wintv PVR-series i thought had really good tv. they have onboard MPEG, which is required for WinMCE. Plus good caps. I record House (oh yeah) on it every tuesday, and when I play it back on a 19-inch LCD in full screen, it looks just like House would be on normal TV tuned to FOX. If you go with Northwood procs, I think they're cool enough for the passive heatsinks on Newegg. Otherwise Gigabyte's and one of those korean cooling brands (Zalman? I don't remember but i installed one in my friend's compy) are pretty good.

[Maxxarcade]

Re: Building a media center....

I have a Hauppage WinTV-PVR 150MCE card in my HTPC. It has great picture quality, but the software is terrible.

Does anyone know how I could possibly use the A/V inputs on this card for a VCR or game system?

Apparently, it's only meant for cable boxes, which means if you use the inputs, it disables the onboard tuner. You can't have both enabled at the same time and use the inputs for something else, at least not while running Windows MCE

[toastygoodness]

Re: Building a media center....

You cna use the A/V inputs but it has to be a non-MCE PVR150. i think though, if you have MythTV or use the open source WinTV drivers, it will support it. Vista's MCE is like, twice as good as WinXPs, but too bad everything else about vista is only okay. You can actually use the A/V inputs in Vista without going through that remote nonsense.

[stevo1210]

Re: Building a media center....

I got the media center up and running about a week ago. I got what I had lying around to put it together. I haven't changed the hard drive yet, but I will have to soon.

This is what it has now:

* Intel Celeron 2GHz
* Asus P4P800S-X
* 20GB Western Digital IDE HDD
* 512MB Veritech DDR400 RAM
* 128MB ATI Radeon 9250 AGP graphics card.

I am currently powering the PC off a Delta 180W PSU which has issues so I got a replacement today.
The replacement is a Dell L350N-00 24 Pin 350W PSU. It feels very heavy and high quality and has OST caps all inside it.
My question about it is the 24 pin connection. My motherboard has only 20 pins so I don't know how to get around it. Any solutions??
Is this PSU a standard ATX type?? .... I heard that Dell once used proprietry ATX connectors and I don't know if Dell does that anymore today??

Thanks.

[Spacedye69]

Re: Building a media center....

You dont need the extra 4 pins. Alot of PS came with a "20+4" plug when 24 pin first hit. The 20 pin part is exactly the same as the old PS. It should plug in if you could somehow notch the connector by the pins you dont need.

I dont think Dell has used proprietary PS since the PIII days.

[stevo1210]

Re: Building a media center....

I looked online and I found a converter cable which allows me to use a 24 pin PSU with a 20 pin motherboard.
The cable is made by Silverstone and splits the extra 4 pins from the 20 pins on the PSU.
http://www.silverstonetek.com/produc...pno=pp04&area=

What I don't understand about this PSU is why the 24th pin has an extra red coloured cable connected to it?? is that red cable important in the operation of the PSU??

Thanks.

[Harvey]

Re: Building a media center....

I looked online and I found a converter cable which allows me to use a 24 pin PSU with a 20 pin motherboard.
The cable is made by Silverstone and splits the extra 4 pins from the 20 pins on the PSU.
http://www.silverstonetek.com/produc...pno=pp04&area=

What I don't understand about this PSU is why the 24th pin has an extra red coloured cable connected to it?? is that red cable important in the operation of the PSU??

Thanks.

If by that you mean there are two red cables connected to one pin of the plug, then yes, its a vital feature - its a reverse fold-back signal monitoring cable that is used to detect the outgoing voltage drop on the cable and adjust the output impedance and load drive of the PSU in real time to compensate, two cables being used to normalise the effects of magnetism, and the cables spun using counter-clockwise rotation with added zero-ohm feeders.










































.. either that or its just that the manufacturer used cable that isn't rated sufficiently for the current and rather than buy a new roll of cable they just doubled them up.

- I think the second option is more likely

[stevo1210]

Re: Building a media center....

Well, today I plugged the PSU into my system without using a converter cable so I have the excess 4 pins outside the ATX connector.
The locking clip on the ATX plug and socket don't touch each other but I've checked very closely and the connector fits very tightly even without the locking clip.
Everything worked out fine in the end and now I have a very good PSU for the media center. It's also very silent and makes no noise compared to the old PSU.