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On Friday night, I put together a new PC that will be used as a Home Theater PC to replace my DVD player, DVR cable box, CD Player, etc.
Components:
Motherboard: MSI K8NGM2-FID
-- $85 from zipzoomfly.com
-- Its a micro ATX board but had everything I need including dual video out including DVI and S-Video and pretty good over clocking capabilities.
Procesor: AMD Athlon 64 3500+ (Venice)
-- Picked it up for $210 at CompUSA (using gift cards from work)
-- Its a VERY solid processor that didn't break the bank like an X2 would
RAM: 2GB (2x1GB) PC3200 Kingston CL2 HyperX
-- $171 from Kingston
-- I get an HP Employee Discount rhough Kingston or it would have been $310
-- CL2 so I can overclock it and avoid bottlenecks.
Case: ANTEC 2650-BQE
-- $75 at CompUSA (again w/ gift cards from work)
-- 350W power supply that is QUIET and good quality
-- A little plain but some rattle can for plastics can take care of that
-- Did I mention quiet?
DVD Burner: Sony 16x single layer
-- Basically free since I bought it 6 or 8 months ago for other purposes.
Hard Drives:
-- $90 from zipzoomfly.com
-- Western Digital 250GB SATA II (300MB/s transfer!) (8mb cache, 7200rpm)
-- Will be great for the PVR I'm adding next month - over 80 hours of recording!
-- I'll add two 80s for the OS/applications/documents later and RAID them though.
-- $40 last year on Black Friday
-- Western Digital 160GB Ultra ATA 133 (8mb cache, 7200rpm)
-- Holds a lot of MP3s.
-- Will be on RAID soon because I lost a different drive a month ago with 100GB of music and I dont want that to hapen again.
Current Setup:
Over clocked from 2.2Ghz to 2.5Ghz with stock memory settings (I'll go higher tonight!) and VERY stable.
Multi-User hack to allow multiple users at once so that I can have it doing HTPC in the living room and I can still using the processing power via Remote Desktop from elsewhere AND have MP3's streaming in my garage via a 3rd computer!
FUTURE (1 month probably)
PVR CARD: Hauppauge WinTV 500MCE
-- Dual tuner PVR card with hardware encoding to keep my beastly processor free.
That is way way way over kill for a Home Theater PC but that is cool. That PSU is not up to snuff for a serious rig. Dont want to short ot the hard drives again like I did with my antec.
The antec PSU's were fine for the oldP4s but when they started useing the 12 volt rail for just about everything the antecs got left behind. MSI soes have a forum you can check. DFI recomends 480W and 26A on the 12 volt rail.
Dont forget memtest and prime too dont want to loose your files again.
__________________
Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing.
Sylvia Plath
get some new cooling and you'll be able to run faster....the venice can blaze. is the multi unlock or is that purelt fsb OC?
I wasn't looking to do much over clocking (really only did it because I could) so I stuck with the budget MSI motherboard. I can't up the processor voltage and the multiplier isn't unlocked so I won't be going much higher with it with just FSB tweaking.
The rig actually runs quite cool, I haven't had any need for better cooling at this point.
That is way way way over kill for a Home Theater PC but that is cool. That PSU is not up to snuff for a serious rig. Dont want to short ot the hard drives again like I did with my antec.
The antec PSU's were fine for the oldP4s but when they started useing the 12 volt rail for just about everything the antecs got left behind. MSI soes have a forum you can check. DFI recomends 480W and 26A on the 12 volt rail.
Dont forget memtest and prime too dont want to loose your files again.
I know the PSU isn't well suited for overclocking but, with the limitations of the motherboard and the fact that I only overclocked because I could (I don't play games... AT ALL), I figure this will do.
When I was setting the machine up and testing the overclocking, I ran memtest, prime (SP2004 - a variant of prime95), and Super PI all night long for a few days to ensure stability. I manage to burn in my CPU and memory at the same time so it was good to do.
I ordered the Hauppauge WinTV-PVR500 (dual tuner CATV recorder) yesterday to get my PVR functions under way. Last week I also put in one of those memory card readers that can handle 8 different types of cards.
__________________
"when a nation is on the downward path, when it feels its belief in its own future, its hope of freedom slipping from it, when it begins to see submission as a first necessity and the virtues of submission as measures of self-preservation, then it must overhaul its god." -- Nietzsche
I wasn't looking to do much over clocking (really only did it because I could) so I stuck with the budget MSI motherboard. I can't up the processor voltage and the multiplier isn't unlocked so I won't be going much higher with it with just FSB tweaking.
The rig actually runs quite cool, I haven't had any need for better cooling at this point.
No real need to anyway...an HTPC don't need peak, just stability. Damn AMD for lockin the multi's....my old Barton (pre wk37 '03) turns a 30%OC solid....ram limited. post wk37 won't even run 200fsb.
No real need to anyway...an HTPC don't need peak, just stability. Damn AMD for lockin the multi's....my old Barton (pre wk37 '03) turns a 30%OC solid....ram limited. post wk37 won't even run 200fsb.
Nice rig!!
Err they are no locked downward dosnt matter ton the 64's though with the on chip memory controller there is no real cost to a divider so overclock is not limited by the multi assuming the MB can handle the increased speed.
Some of the opteron 146's are overclocking by half from 2.0 to 3.0. I went from 2.2 to 3 though I would play it safe just 2.2 is crazy fast compaired to the old barton at 2.4
__________________
Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing.
Sylvia Plath
Err they are no locked downward dosnt matter ton the 64's though with the on chip memory controller there is no real cost to a divider so overclock is not limited by the multi assuming the MB can handle the increased speed.
Some of the opteron 146's are overclocking by half from 2.0 to 3.0. I went from 2.2 to 3 though I would play it safe just 2.2 is crazy fast compaired to the old barton at 2.4
u said it yourself...."assuming the MB can handle the increased speed."
Err they are no locked downward dosnt matter ton the 64's though with the on chip memory controller there is no real cost to a divider so overclock is not limited by the multi assuming the MB can handle the increased speed.
Some of the opteron 146's are overclocking by half from 2.0 to 3.0. I went from 2.2 to 3 though I would play it safe just 2.2 is crazy fast compaired to the old barton at 2.4
Its nice that they left the Multi unlocked downward because it does allow some tweaking. Its also nice that memory speed is not locked to FSB speed in the newer AMD chips (since technically, there is no FSB - just the HTT).
An unlocked Multi would still make for easier OC, however.
A MOBO that supported CPU voltage tweaking would have really helped too but, like I said before, the OC wasn't my intent with the machine, I just did it because I could.
The next machine I build will probably be OCed to hell and back simply to see what I can do with it
And yes, that last post was just for Spike. Sadly, what I wrote is WAY easier to read that most threads in the overclocking forums.
Holy hell, I thought my head was gonna explode every night while I read through that stuff.
New HTPC and mild OverClocking
Linear Mode
