DIY Computer Build

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I got a CoolerMaster 690 when I upgraded my videocard and power supply, really like the extra room and additional fan spots. Having the power supply at the bottom of the case is nice too, along with the tool-free drive bays.
 
holy cow, has this been delayed yet again.

im slowly putting together my htpc so please look forward to promised new pictures and grammar corrections (thanks mike =P). also, i will include new recommended parts list too. part of the reason i kind of lagged on this was because in the past 3 months, a lot of new product came out and will continue until release of Fermi and Thuban.

anyway, for those who are curious my parts list for htpc is as follows:

-AMD Athlon II X4 630
-MSI 785gm-e51
-Antec NSK 2480 w/380 earth watts power supply
-1 tb Western Digitial Green Edition
-Most likely Sony Optirac optical
-2Gb DDR3 1600mhz RAM (only item waiting to pick up. prices are so high)

all for around $200 because reusing hard drive and Frys allowed me to pick up cpu+mobo for $100 and htpc case for $30. woot woot!
 
:thumbsup:

DDR3 is quite expensive, but there are good deals at Fry's today. 4GB of DDR3 is about the same as 4GB of DDR2 these days, so it's realy not too bad. Your build looks similar to my HTPC:

Athlon II x2 240 (2.8GHz I think)
Gigabyte 785G board
Antec Earthwatts 430
WD 400GB x2 RAID 0
Asus ATI HD4670
ATI HD 650 (don't recall exact model name) tuner card
4GB OCZ DDR2
Lite-On BD-ROM
Bigass Zerotherm HSF for air-cooled overclocking fun
 
how do you like the ati 650 chipset? i was thinking about getting one since ive seen it at frys for $30. but i dont watch too much tv and i have dvr for recording already.

and for ram prices, actually ddr2 is starting to fall again. if you look at frys ad and newegg, you can see that ddr2 is going for roughly $20-30 cheaper than ddr3 after rebates or whatever specials they have. and i figured 2gb should be good enough until ram prices fall once production moves to smaller process.

btw mike, how come youre running raid 0 for htpc? just faster and you have all media backed up anyway?

lastly, im waiting to get the case and take some measurements. hopefully my old thermalright si-120 will fit, then i will crank the clock on the processor too (@2.8ghz stock right now). if not, probably will try undervolting to keep temps down and 4 cores @2.8ghz is plenty for htpc anyway. :p
 
I actually haven't used the 650 yet- the HTPC is in pieces right now waiting for other things to finish. I don't actually need it- just had an extra PCI-E slot and it was cheap. I might not use it at all.

DDR3 is at about $20 a gig right now too after rebates, so not too bad. I picked up an Athlon II X3 + AMD 770/710 board today for $70 for a friend, but it takes DDR3 memory- so I need to find a good deal for him to finish the system.

RAID-0 because I had extra matching 400GB drives, and I wanted the fastest bootup times because the HTPC is supposed to act as much like an appliance as possible. All the media sits on the Home Server, so I wouldn't actually store much on the HTPC. I still haven't worked it all out yet.

I literally have a huge pile of hard drives, and since all the key data outside of the main systems sits on the server anyway, none of the secondary machines need storage beyond the OS. The 400s are what I had left from the initial build of the WHS, so they came out (4 of them).
 
Hey, just wanted to say, nice write up. I like the purple motherboard, reminds me when sapphire used the white pcb baord with red connectors back when Athlon 64 X2 were awesome and 7800GT's and GTX's.
 
thanks strawberry (ichigo :p).

just a little update, i was in sacramento this weekend and sort of blew part of my pay check at frys:ph34r:. a few things i picked up.

-Corsair XMS3 C9 1600mhz 2x2GB = $105 AR
-Antec Minuet HTPC case = $99.99
-Biostar A760g + Athlon II X4 635 = $79.99 AR

im building two htpc, one for a friend and one for me.im going with a bigger Antec NSK 2480 and hes going witht he smaller Minuet because i wanted room for a full size vga card down the road. and i couldnt resist the quadcore for $80 for my parents (Athlon XP 2600+) since I already have a stick of ddr2 just sitting around.

anyway, i took a few pictures of one of the builds so ill resize and clean them up and post those when i get a chance. and hopefully by sometime this week, ill have all the recommend parts list up too.
 
should have done the fusion case, looks much better IMO.

but my next HTPC will be a dual-core Atom/Ion setup, fanless in miniITX. either diskless or with a solid state drive. will handle Blu-Ray and be dead silent. and small. i havent found the perfect case yet though.
 
yeah the fusion does look better but its either out of stock or at around $120, where as I got my NSK2480 for $30. Its a little rough, but nothing a can of spray paint wont fix =). and mainly for these particular builds, it will act as main and it had to be budget friendly.

ideally, i wouldve went with a mini-itx h55 board with core i3 530 but that would be an additional $150 over my current set up.

i dont like the atoms because the whole set up is anemic unless you get a good low profile fanless gfx card. and for the same amount of money, you can get a faster system.
 
i want it for the very low power consumption. the ion setup doesnt need a discrete card for HTPC duties. and the dual-core atom/ion boards with a built in PSU are sweet, get a case, some ram, and a HDD and you have a full on low power HTPC with high def capability. will be perfect for a frontend to play blu-rays or stream content to.
 
the zotac ion boards? or just a mini-ITX setup?

the only gripe i have with mini-ITX right now is cases. all of them are that dumb cube type case. i want one more the size and shape of a DVR/DVD/Blu-Ray player so it fits in well in a home theater setup.

my ideal case would be just big enough to house the MB and a 5.25" blu-ray drive next to it (not on top like most), a 2.5" HDD and an LCD/IR receiver on the front and no PSU spot. that would come out to be like 13x10x2.5" WxDxH. perfect size IMO. something like this size/shape:
Newegg.com - APEX MD-100-C Black Metal with piano finish Mini-ITX Tower Computer Case - Computer Cases

but its sill not right because it takes a slim optical drive($$ for BR) and no LCD/IR panel. basically i want the antec fusion type front panel on that size mini-ITX case. its possible, just no one makes it. i can't be the only one wanting a case like that lol.
 
Go look at Fry's inventory- they have a few that take standard size 5.25 drives. Thermaltake makes one, and I think CoolerMaster does too.
 
that antec fusion case almost makes me want to build a real htpc to replace my ps3 that doesnt do blu-ray.
 
oh yeah, forgot about the ions. still, 790gx > 785g = ion > h55, but all these are not far apart because it is igp after all. however, h55 does true losseless hd bitstreaming audio, and the only other video/audio combo that does it is ATi 5xxx series.

another reason i chose the bigger case was i dont currently have a server. so need room for 2 hard drives with full size video card. eventually this will be moved from bedroom to living room and i will replace it with a mini-itx set up as well. then upgrade to 4gb and serve as living room gaming machine for "lower res" pc gaming.

anyway, now trying to find a cheap cooler to put on it and order some mx3. i mustve seated it wrong because with 2x120mm exhaust and stock cooler, the X4 635 was idling at 47c right after boot ??:ph34r:
 
that was my assumption. so no blu-ray games either???

man that sucks hard on plenty of levels.

out of curiousity, what percentage of PS3 titles are actually blu-ray? i ask because a lot of games are on xbox 360 and on ps3, and the xbox can only do dual layer dvd unless you get the defunct hd-dvd drive.

on a side note, ff xiii is on 3 dl-dvds for xbox and 1 blu-ray for ps3.
 
FINALLY. What a hellish weekend. With my infinite wisdom, I was too lazy to back up the data on my 1tb drive and was playing with the partitions. Lesson learned, dont fu*k with it and just back up everything. Windows ended up formatting all 3 partitions I had on it and making it unbootable. 400gb of porn, games, photos, etc were gone. Suffice to say, 4 hrs later, I was able to recover everything I had on it. THANKS TESTDISK!

So 4 builds, 2 windows re-install and 1 data recovery session later, I was able to put everything together and get them running.

Took pictures of 1 of the builds from start to finish with fresh OS installation. Plus, there is a treat. I was able to turn a triple core $75.00 processor to a quad-core $120.00 for free. "It so easy, you say, 'I don't believe.'"
 
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