Home Entertainment PC

[artimus]

Need a mobo recommendation and possibly a sanity check. Looking to build a home theater / entertainment PC. It will be hooked into the existing LAN at home, and its job will be (in order of decending importance) a PVR machine (TiVo - Replay TV genre), digital picture/movie storage (digital camera and DV movie camera), NLE digital movie editing, MP3 server for the rest of the house, game machine (ala XBox/GC, etc), and a always-on data server for the rest of the machines on the LAN. All output will go to an A/V reciever, which will output the video to TV. Simple, huh? We are open to comments on the feasibility of what we are trying to do (are we crazy trying to put this much on one machine?) and suggestions for improvement.

Decisions made so far (assuming we're not crazy): P4 2.2 to 2.4 (this puppy has the potential for being very busy at times so I want plenty of processing power). ATI AIW 8500DV for video. SB Live for the sound (higher quality than mobo based, and doesn't take up clock cycles). Trendtronics Cooler Master ATC 600 case in black.

Mobo considerations: Must be microATX form factor to fit in the case, 533, AGP4x, Firewire, USB2, ATA133 RAID 0,1 (Highpoint preferred), headers for memory stick/compact flash/smartCard, Wake On Lan. Highly interested in stability, then speed, not so much in overclocking capability. DDR333 nice. DDR400 nicer! PC1066 too expensive... I'm crazy, not rich.

I imagine we're looking at the 845g or SIS648 chipsets, or? Any recommendations highly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Crashman]

Actually, that soundcard takes up a lot of CPU cycles! Not only that, but I had endless problems with the drivers on mine! I suggest a Turtle Beach Santa Cruiz. My favorite card for sound is the Aureal SQ2500.

I've been recomending a lot of P4's lately, but for your system, the best chipset I can think of is the nForce. Why? Because mATX has one problem, 3 PCI slots. The nForce has one of the best audio solutions on the market, built in! You'll probably want to get one without the onboard video. BTW, these boards only support Athlons.

You won't find RAID on a mATX board, at least any I've seen. So that's one slot down for that card, TWO left. You see where this is going?

The Radeon 8500DV gives you firewire. You can probably find nForce boards with USB2.0

<font color=blue>By now you're probably wishing you had ask more questions first!</font color=blue>

 

[jankphil]

I would probably try to follow the instructions from my friend above me, try not to spend to much money, because from what it sounds like you might need to buy a few HD's, Tivo or any video can take up an ENORMOUS amount of disk space, I watch a lot of imported anime and 2 hours can take up 1~2 gigs pretty quickly, which they aren't even dvd quality =(

"What kind of idiot are you?"
"I don't know, what kinds are there?"

 

[poorboy]

Sounds pretty cool, but I'd be concerned about the noise. You've got A LOT going on in there, and the plan of lots of drives and fast, hot CPUs is likely to cause trouble with the accoustics. You can certainly quiet them down, it's just something to keep in mind. Take a look at <A HREF="http://www.quietpc.com" target="_new">www.quitepc.com</A> for some quiet examples. There's a <A HREF="http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/07/29/0333237&mode=thread&tid=137" target="_new">link</A> on slashdot recently about Home PC Theater too.


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