Help me plan my next workstation/fileserver/mediacenter

Torque · Post by **Torque** » Mon Aug 25, 2008 1:07 am

Hi, I've been browsing these forums for the last week or so, and I'm about to plan a new system for my office and I have the following requirements for it:

Vista compatible
Somewhat snappy
SILENT
Power efficient
HDMI
>1tb storage
Budget friendly

I have been looking at the following components:

Q6600 cpu - I would like to be able to work at my pc while media center is running in the background, (my xbox works as the extender in my living room)

4gb of kingston valueram memory

ABIT Fatal1ty F-I90HD motherboard (on board HDMI)

Antec Sonata III miditower - 500watt 80plus psu

Cooler Master Hyper 212 CPU-Cooler

And some Samsung spinpoint drives

And a cheap dvd-rw dl burner

Any input is very welcome

Torque · Post by **Torque** » Tue Aug 26, 2008 12:17 am

Really? no one?

Emyr · Post by **Emyr** » Tue Aug 26, 2008 12:47 am

Motherboard

Any Fatal1ty board will be overpriced, since you're funding someone's lifestyle. They are intended for marketing-victim gamers.

You should be able to find a cheaper board which satisfies your requirements.

Processor

Not sure what everyone else thinks, but for the next few months, I'd still choose a Dual-core rather than a 3 or 4 core processor, for bang-for-buck reasons.

sjoukew · Post by **sjoukew** » Tue Aug 26, 2008 1:31 am

The Core2Quad Q6600 is already 2 years old, and not that fast, compared to other dual and quad cores. It also generates an awful lot of heat which is difficult to get out of a computer case, that makes it more difficult to create a silent pc.

I don't know what you are intending to do with your new pc, but there are a lot of cpu's which don't even use half the power of the Q6600 and are almost as fast, or faster.

Windows Media Center is using 8% of my C2D E6600, while recording 2 tv-channels, using a hauppauge pvr 500 dual tuner card. Disk IO is more of a problem than cpu power, as all media center approved tunercards need to have onboard mpeg encoding chips.

In stead of onboard hdmi, also a cheap ATI card can do wonders. They are cheap, silent (passive cooling) , and very good at playing movies, hdtv movies etc.

Torque · Post by **Torque** » Tue Aug 26, 2008 1:55 am

Thanks for your input guys, I really appreciate it

I was thinking about the Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H and a AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+, that combo is also cheaper, and the gigabyte motherboard has gotten quite good reviews!

Torque · Post by **Torque** » Tue Aug 26, 2008 3:06 am

I just placed my order, and I'm quite excited to be honest hehe!

Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H

AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ 2.6GHz Socket AM2

Antec NSK4480B New Solution

Corsair TWIN2X 6400 DDR2, 2048 MB CL5

Samsung SpinPoint M5 250GB 5400RPM SATA 2,5"

Samsung DVDÂ±RW burner, SH-S223F

Cooler Master Hyper 212 CPU-Cooler

Akasa Ultra Quiet A MBer blÃ¦ser 80 mm

maxxy · Post by **maxxy** » Tue Aug 26, 2008 4:43 am

Congratulations! One question, why did you pick that CPU over other (more energy efficient) CPUs? price?

Torque · Post by **Torque** » Tue Aug 26, 2008 12:21 pm

maxxy wrote:Congratulations! One question, why did you pick that CPU over other (more energy efficient) CPUs? price?

Price and availability, and furthermore I wanted to get it all from the same retailer

Cant wait to put it together!