I am gathering product info for a new HTPC and would appreciate comments on
the list of components so far. If anyone has experience with these
components - good or bad please feel free to let me know.

This system will be in my living room so noise (lack of) is important as is
future expandibility. I have not included any tuners as I have a HDTIVO and
am willing to wait on that functionality until I can record HD from my
Directtv or maybe Cable Box.

Connection will be through my surround sound system and a Samsung DLP HDTV

SILVERSTONE SST-LC17-B Black
Aluminum front panel, 0.8 mm SECC body
HTPC Case Computer Case

SeaSonic S12-430 ATX12V 430W Power
Supply

Intel Pentium D 820 Smithfield 800MHz FSB
LGA 775 Dual Core EM64T Processor Model
BX80551PG2800FN



ASUS EN6600GT/Silencer/HTD/256M/A
Geforce 6600GT 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express
x16 Video Card


Intel BOXD955XBKLKR Socket T (LGA 775)
Intel 955X ATX Intel Motherboard - can I use the untergrated sound system on
this board - is it any good?

Maxtor DiamondMax 10 6V080E0 80GB 7200
RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - for operating system

4x Maxtor DiamondMax 10 6V300F0 300GB
7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - to be set up as RAID10

PLEXTOR Black IDE DVD Burner Model
PX-740A/SW-BL

ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 7 Pro CPU
Cooler

I have memory available and will use 2GIG.

OS MCE 2005 with IR and remote

Microsoft Media Center ZV1-00004 Black 83 Normal Keys 33 Function Keys IR
Wireless Mini Keyboard

Thanks for your time

Personally I'll never buy another Maxtor...had too many fail in the past few
years. Seagates have a 5-year warranty, I've never had one fail, and they
seem to run about 10 degrees cooler than Maxtors.

I've heard the Wireless Media Center keyboards have a joystick (sort of) in
place of the mouse, and people hate it. Also apparently it loses its
programmed settings for the programmable keys. I got a "MS wireless optical
desktop 1000" keyboard and mouse which seem to work well.

Dana Cline - MCE MVP


"Davids8477" <Davids8477@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:E89BC4F6-9BF0-436E-BE12-3D03C44D1AF1@microsoft.com...

I have 2 Maxtor DiamondMax 10 300GB with 16MB buffer, its good hard drive I
have no problems with it.

"Dana Cline - MVP" wrote:

How long have you had them?

Dana Cline - MCE MVP

"Richard Miller" <RichardMiller@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:70A16B8A-6D4D-4BE6-A926-41871BAFCFE2@microsoft.com...

Dana Cline the hard drive running for about 1 year 24/7

"Dana Cline - MVP" wrote:

I have also used Maxtor for several years - yes one went down - its was 2
years old - the service from Maxtor was superb.

I'd appreciate some comments on the rest of the system

david

"Davids8477" wrote:

Also do I need to use a RAID system for capturing HD TV - in the future - or
will a standard SATA drive work OK. I want to rip my DVDs onto the hard
drives and obviously Raid or not makes a big difference in the storage
requirements.

"Davids8477" wrote:

The rest of the system looks good, I had 1 gig of ram then I removed it and
installed 2gigs for a test, there was on preformance again so I moved it back
to 1 gig.
You just need a TV card.

"Davids8477" wrote:

Thank you for your input Richard.

I have a question on the hard drives - do I need a raid set (thinking of
speed for eventual HD capture) or will strainght SATA be fast enough?

David

"Richard Miller" wrote:

I use Raid on my server (mirrored Seagate 200Gb drives) but wouldn't see
much need for Raid in a Media Center box. It could depend on your needs - if
you want a terabyte of space, get a pair of 500Gb drives and span them. If
you want protection against one drive failing and losing all your stuff, get
a pair and mirror them.

Dana Cline - MCE MVP

"Davids8477" <Davids8477@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:88851869-5E92-499C-8946-51EFD93339CB@microsoft.com...

SATA be fast enough for HD recordings that what I use its the same Hard
Drive you have, I have no problems with recording off air HDTV.

"Davids8477" wrote:

I run a machine with 2 ATSC and 2 NTSC tuners and an MCX. The machine has
512MB of RAM and a PATA/100 hard drive. No problems whatsoever.

"Richard Miller" <RichardMiller@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:4059C5EF-7F33-4973-8978-02677673187E@microsoft.com...

Well I took the plunge last night and ordered the components.
I decided to go with 2 500gig Maxtors and to forgoe the Raid option.

I ordered from New Egg at around 6pm EST and got an email this morning that
they were on UPS for delivery next Tuesday - WOW thats good service.

I'll report back on my experiences.

Thanks to all for their advice

"Richard Miller" wrote:

Newegg is famous for their quick delivery. There was a recent article on
anandtech.com where Anand was given a tour of one of their
warehouses...definitely one of the most state-of-the-art warehouses on the
planet. Worth reading about...good pictures too.

Dana Cline - MCE MVP

"Davids8477" <Davids8477@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:2934C8E7-906F-4B42-A4B5-055D5E49DF9A@microsoft.com...

Well the last items arrived this morning - CPU, OS and Keyboard.

I assembled all the components - takes some thought as the CPU cooler and
headsink for the display adapter take up a lot of space. Also there are so
many cables in the PSU that I will not use. Maybe I should have got a modular
PSU.

The case (Lascala LC17) is a bit cramped and I had to remove the drive cages
on several occasions to get the wirin plugged in - no real issue though.

Anyway its all in there - no cable routing as yet want to be sure everything
is working.

Powered it up to see if I could get to the Bios screen. At first it hung on
the Intel splash screen with some odd beeps. Took another look at the ASUS
out connectors and saw that I had connected the display to the VGA out and
not the digital (its a flat panel monitor). Changed that over and rebooted -
still a couple of beeps but got into the bios and the memory and hard drives
were recognized OK.

So thats a good start.

Later today I'll load up the OS and let it run for a few hours to check the
temperatures (without good cable runs as yet) and stability.


"Dana Cline - MVP" wrote:

Not sure if anyone is reading this or not. But here's the latest.

I put in ASUS 660GT Silent and the cooling radiator has to go at an angle to
clear the support brace in the LC17. This means is was towards the ARCTIC
P4|ACFZ7-PRO R CPU cooler. I noticed that the CPU temperature was never below
55C - not happy with that. Reseated the cooler just in case - same issue. Put
in the stock INTEL cooler and the temperature dropped to 40C - ambient here
is around 25C (Florida).
Took a good look at the ARCTIC P4|ACFZ7-PRO and didn't really like the
design - it is rather tall (interferance with Video Card radiator and the
side fan seemed to be pretty ineffective - although quiet.
Bought a Zalman 7000 CU this morning and installed that. Plenty of room to
put the ASUS radiator above the fan - extra airflow for display adapter and
more room overall in case.
Did a 100% CPU burn fro 15 minutes and the CPU temp went to 65C - didn't
think that that was too bad. Internal temperature on case around 41C.

I need to lay out the cables better now.

If anyone has suggestions on better cooling then please let me know.

"Davids8477" wrote:

Cooling has always been a black art - my typical response is to throw more
fans at it. Then again, all of my PCs are tower cases so that's relatively
easy, if noisy.

So how'd the OS install go?

Dana Cline - MCE MVP

"Davids8477" <Davids8477@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:60C97E1C-5B55-4C4D-9FEC-7D3734D07042@microsoft.com...

Hi dana:

The OS system install went without a hitch.

Currently my CPU temps are 48C at idle and 65C after 5 minutes at 100% -
usung a burn-in program with everthing running - CPU, Video, DVD network etc.

What do you think of these?

I am thinking of putting a thin 80mm fan at an inlet next to the CPU to move
more air - quietly (?)

"Dana Cline - MVP" wrote:

Dunno...I don't do centigrade <g>. According to Speedfan, my CPU runs at
about 100 degrees F, my 80Gb Maxtor at 110 degrees, and my Seagate 160Gb at
100 degrees. I'm thinking of relocating my exit fan to blow across the
Maxtor...

Dana Cline - MCE MVP

"Davids8477" <Davids8477@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:7A380853-2B23-472A-82D2-BDD536CFF283@microsoft.com...

100F = 37C
So 49C = 120F

"Dana Cline - MVP" wrote: