Hardware Brainstorm

So he wants to watch Blu-Ray movies and loves music and videos, so we'll need a decent video card, sufficient amount of RAM, sufficiently fast CPU, good sound card (HD sound card as a friend pointed out), and obviously a Blu-Ray player (burner?). Since we're going multi media heavy, I'm considering a TV-tuner so he can also record television shows. Also a remote control of some type, even if a tuner doesn't go in it, would be essential so he can sit back and relax and not have to touch the keyboard to pause, FF, rewind, etc. And definitely wireless keyboard/mouse. Should the keyboard have a mouse integrated? He's used to laptops, and it would allow him to just sit back and have everything in reach.

Selecting Case

Hmmm. Let's begin with the case. We can go with conservative solid Mini-ATX case. Or with a little more fun of a case.


Looking at the Hero 25 by ChiefMax. I love ChiefMax cases. They're solid and look great. However, it only allows for 2 case fans. 1 80mm on the side and 1 90mm on the rear panel. But I like the LCD output for the temperature. The price is $39.99 at 3BTech, which is a great store to deal with. Here are the specs for this case:

• Type ATX Mid Tower
• Color Black and Silver
• Power Supply Not Included
• Motherboard Compatibility Micro ATX, Standard ATX
• With Side Panel Window No
• Expansion
• External 5.25" Drive Bays 3
• External 3.5" Drive Bays 1
• Internal 3.5" Drive Bays 4
• Expansion Slots 7
• Front Ports
• Front Ports 2x USB 2.0, audio & speaker ports
• Cooling System
• 80mm Fans None; supports qty 1 on side panel
• 90mm Fans None; supports qty 1 in rear
• Physical Spec
• Dimensions 17" x 7.5 " x 19.5 "(H x W x L)

But I may be leaning towards a barebones system from 3btech:

• Features the AMD Phenom II 965 Black Edition quad core Deneb CPU 3.2 GHz
• NZXT Gamer Case with 550W true wattage Power Supply. Front USB
• Gigabyte GA-MA785GM-US2H Socket AM3/AM2+ MotherBoard with AMD 785G Chipset
• Onboard ATI Radeon HD4200 VGA, HDMI, and DVI video
• This mainboard supports up to 16GB DDR2 1200/1066/800
• 7.1 Channel High Definition Audio sound card integrated2 PCI expansion slots and one PCI Express 2.0 x16Onboard 10/100/1000 gigabit Ethernet Network and Serial ATA (SATA) 300 RAID
• SPDIF audio, Six USB Ports, and IEEE1394 Firewire

After crunching some numbers, we just decided to go with a MB/CPU combo and a case from Portatech. The case is the Raidmax Tornado. It has a blue LED 80mm fan in the front panel to cool the hard drives and standard 120mm fan in the rear panel to circulate the hot air.

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Choosing Memory

After doing a lot of research, we're going to go with G.Skill DDr2 1200 RAM. It took a lot of searching to find how to over clock it properly. However, there is a bare bones combo that doesn't support 1200 but come with a 6-core CPU. So that's still in the air. After doing more research on the AMD AM2/3 CPU, DDR2 800 is the best way to go. There's a limitation in the CPU's that 1066 and faster can only run 1 DIMM per channel. So going to go that route.

Video Cards

So the the options here are:

1. Use the on-board Video
2. Buy an add-on PCIe card

The motherboard we're going with for the 6 Core CPU is GA-M68M-S2P. The on-board video card is the NVIDIA GeForce 7025. Because the best RAM for an AMD CPU is DDR2 800, it's not a problem that the max for this board is 1066. But because of the AM2/3 limitations, 1066 and higer only runs single DIMM per channel. However, the biggest gripe with this board is it only has 2 DIMM bays and maxes out at 8 GB. There's another board that has 4 bays and maxes out at 16 GB, but still suffers from the same limitations because of the CPU.

Dong some more research, it seems best for us to put in another PCIe card for better gaming and multi media experience. We've decided to go with the Sapphire ATI Radeon HD4350 with 1 GB of RAM. Reading some reviews on this card, people are having no problems playing some intense games and watching Blu-ray and streaming HD videos.

Now, to make this a true multi media computer, it surely needs a video capture card. This took a lot research and going back and forth between the ATI and Hauppauge cards. Reading reviews and because of what's included with it, we're going to go with the HauppaugeWinTV-HVR-2250. It seems to work well and has an included breakout cable to use w/ set-top boxes that are needed for digital cable and satellite and to also capture from a camera or VCR. It is also a true dual tuner card, meaning you can record a tv show at the same time you're watching it. The dual tuner card from ATI we looked at was the ATI TV Wonder™ 650 PCIe combo card. However, it's not a true dual tuner card where you can watch a show and record another one at the same time. The Hauppauge does have this capability.

Hard Drives and Media Drives

Oddly, it was cheaper to buy 2 separate media drives. A Blu-ray reader and a reuglar DVD writer. We went with 2 different LG drives. The board that we're using only has 3 SATA connectors. So we'll be maxed out with the 2 media drives and the following hard drives.

We decided to go with the Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB drive. This drive has 32MB cache and 3GB/s transfer rate.

Power Supply

A stock nameless white label power supply comes with the case, but that's not good enough. It's fine for initial building, but if we're going to load this machine with a new 6 Core CPU and 2 extra video cards, and 4 GB of RAM then we need to up the quality of the power supply. We'll just throw the old PSU up on Ebay for $10.

So we're going to upgrade to a Cooler Master 550W power supply. The stats:

• Features:
• Compliance with the newest Intel standard ATX 12V V2.3
• Support dual +12V1 and +12V2 outputs for higher power usage
• 6x SATA Connector
• High reliability (MTBF > 100,000 hours)
• Protection design (OVP/OCP/OPP/SCP)
• More than 70% better efficiency at typical load operation
• 2x 6+2Pin PCI-Express Connector
• Total Outpur: 550 W
• Input Voltage (Regular): 110~115 V / 220~230 V
• Input Current: 6.3A @230Vac / 8A @115Vac
• Input Frequency Range: 47~63 Hz
• Output: +3.3V Max 25A; +5V Max 25A; +12V1 Max 16A; +12V2 Max 16A; -5V Max 0.8A; -12V Max 0.8A; +5Vsb Max 2.5A
• Fan: Sleeve bearing 120mm fan
• Power Good Signal: 100~500 ms
• Hold Up Time: >17 ms
• MTBF: >100,000 hours
• Protection: OVP/ OPP/ Short Circuit Protection
• Connectors: 1x 20+4 pin Motherboard Connector; 1x 4+4pin 12V CPU Connector; 2x 6+2pin PCI-Express Connectors; 6x SATA Connectors; 3x 4pin Peripheral Connectors; 1x 4pin Floppy Connectors