Got a shopping cart of parts that you want opinions on? Get advice from members on your planned or existing system (or upgrade).
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furymouse
- Posts: 29
- Joined: Wed Oct 06, 2004 9:14 pm
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by furymouse » Mon Nov 21, 2011 3:39 pm
This year, I've decided someone will be receiving a special Xmas present! The system currently being used for HTPC duty is a P4 Northwood, which was a star back in the day, but hasn't been in quite some time.
A few of the parts I'm considering are:
- Intel Pentium G620 $63 (would love to ditch the Pentium name, but Core i3 is double the price)
- 2x2GB DDR3 1333 ~$15 (best deal I can find when I am ready to purchase - 2GB, 4GB, or whatever amount)
- Reusing: Cooler Master CM Stacker case (full tower), PSU (400W Corsair), HDD
Motherboard:
- Manufacturer hopefully allows for cross-shipping if defective
- Needs optical/coaxial SPDIF as receiver doesn't have HDMI, but TV does (only stereo sound pass through AFAIK)
- ITX or mATX
- May need integrated WiFi unless I can reuse the PCI based WiFi
Any thoughts on the build so far?
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Arbutus
- Posts: 234
- Joined: Wed Jun 02, 2010 9:15 pm
- Location: Calgary, Alberta, Canada
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by Arbutus » Mon Nov 21, 2011 4:27 pm
The G620 has enough horsepower for a HTPC.
The ASUS P8H61-M mATX motherboard, CAN$84.99, features optical audio and a PCI slot.
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furymouse
- Posts: 29
- Joined: Wed Oct 06, 2004 9:14 pm
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Contact:
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by furymouse » Mon Nov 21, 2011 9:42 pm
When I looked up the Asus P8H61-M, I was excited to find out about the ASRock H67M and its richer feature set for the same price.. until I read that they don't do cross-shipments. Looks like the total will be $143 not counting memory.
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furymouse
- Posts: 29
- Joined: Wed Oct 06, 2004 9:14 pm
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Contact:
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by furymouse » Thu Nov 24, 2011 11:35 pm
Currently awaiting shipment of the G620 and Asus P8H61-M. I managed to obtain 4GB of 1600MHz DDR3 (2 x 2GB), which I am giving to this build since I found a deal on 12GB for my own system.
Total cost thus far +$30 = $173
Sounds all good except,
problem: The previous optical drive and HDD are both IDE and the new Asus motherboard only has SATA. I looked into IDE>SATA converters but they seem to have problems with sleep and hibernation. While this is a budget build, I don't really want to deal with that. Perhaps I could do with just booting off a USB drive in order to stick to a low budget. What do you think?
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Hazelrah
- Posts: 89
- Joined: Thu Jul 22, 2004 6:53 pm
- Location: Taipei, Taiwan
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by Hazelrah » Fri Nov 25, 2011 3:19 am
I would suggest a budget SSD. You don't need a lot of space for an HTPC (30-40 GB for Windows 7, even smaller for something Linux based like XBMC Live), and even a cheap SSD will give you nice bootup speeds and system response compared to an old IDE drive.
Then connect the HDD with a USB enclosure or move it to a NAS or something else to act as a storage drive for the other computers. Or use a PCIe expansion card with IDE ports.
