Home Multimedia Center Build

[Orion2010]

Hello everyone as I have just signed up and new here I have a large task for myself around March next year.

Give you a little bio: I am currently in Afghanistan with the US Army and stationed in Fort Richardson. When I come home around March time frame I want to build a home media center for me and my wife. Below ill give you exactly what want. My knowledge of computers, networking, gaming, building is very expansive as I do alot of programming and have been building networks and computers for the last 10 years. Over the last 4 years ive been in the army i have gotten out of the loop as far as whats best out to go for and things of that nature. So here is what I want.

This is the unofficial decsion ive made on items.

Gigabit Router: D-Link DIR-655
Gigabit Network Storage: DNS-323
2 Desktops: Gamer Xtreme SI (from cyberpowerpc.com) (added GTX 285 2gb and upgraded Sound card)
2 1.5 TB Harddrives for the Network storage: Seagate ST31500341AS
4 24" Monitors: Samsung TOC T240


Ok now here is the plan: I am going to be using this setup for gaming with my Wife as well as i currently have a computer at home that houses all my movies and is connected to my big screen. Now my biggest stump right now is i want to be running a XBox 360 through my computer. For Example I will have 2 24" monitors on each computer I want to run the HDMI cable from Xbox into the HDMI on the monitor. The problem i am seeing is eventhough HDMI carries audio there isnt audio on my monitor. So i want to know if there is a way or a cable to split that and go to the sound card in my computer that will be a Fatality card.

Now this is the start of my research and expansion of this idea. Please feel free to tell me what better route i should go on the items above, or if you have a solution to my xbox issue. Also if you feel that i can build that dekstop computer that is above for less then 1950.00 by buying it all seperate and doing it on my own let me know.


Thanks again for any support.

Also given that i am in afghanistan and my internet is terrible and it takes me about 20 minutes to get back to this post. If you want to reply here that is fine or if you can email me at jisenhart21 (a)(t) gmail.com

 

[sighQ2]

I cannot advise re HDMI issue.

BUT = on the video card issue, you will want to rethink because ATI will have it's 5800 video cards out by then featuring DIRECT X "ELEVEN" !! and approx 50% more shaders - I don't think nvidia is even on board with that yet.

As for building it, you already know that building it yourself is really where it's at, soldier.


Got some friends in Canadian forces in Afghan - you take care.


A friend has a bumper sticker on his car that says:

"If you don't want to stand behind our troops, try standing in front of them".


Build that pc yourself, and have a look at AMD AM3 stuff cos it's still rolling out, and will still be rolling out in March 2010 - Phenom II 965 releases mid August in a month at 3.4Ghz. Expect at least a 3.6 or more by March next year.

I wish you well.

sigh
.

 

[Orion2010]

To be honest as far as the PC is concerned im looking around right now. Unfortunantly my internet here is so damn slow that if i tried building my own computer on say newegg for example. I think my deployment would be over before all the pages loaded to give me a damn total. lol. But yea i am almost confident that i will be building my own PC.

As far as the video card goes ive used Nvidia cards forever. Ive never used ATI so as with things go im a little uneasy going with them. Though given it will support direct x 11, i will look into over time. This is just a rough idea but we will see.

Where would you say buy the computer parts from?

 

[Orion2010]

anyone else have anything to add


Probably hard to read cause i copied it from excel but here is the idea i have on the desktop

Case: $200.00 Thermaltake
Motherboard: $100.00 ASUS
Processor: AMD 955 $245.00 AMD Phenom II 955
Memory: $100.00 8GB
Video Card: XFX GTX 285 $329.00 XFX Nvidia Geforce GTX 285 1GB
Hard Drive: $100.00 1 TB Western Digital
Sound Card: Sound Blasted $199.00 Sound Blaster Fatality Champion Serials
Power Supply: $60.00 850 Watt
Cooling System: $90.00 Liquid Cooling System
Network Card: D-Link $22.00 10/100/1000 GB Network
DVD Writer: $40.00 2 Per Computer
Operating System: Microsoft Ultimate $218.00 Windows Vista Ultimate 64bit