Media Centre Build - Finally

MR DAZ

I've been lurking here for a while ...buying bits and pieces for my media centre, something that would be GF proof that would fit into the whole sitting room and not look to much like a pc.

Well here it is




Btw the Ally mcbeal boxset belongs to her in doors;)

I still need to get a tv card.....but should be getting that shortly

Daz

SouperComputer

well if it passes the GF\Wife test, you know its a good thing!

Looks good, congrats.

Mine is not Wife approved, and TBH probably never will be!

wexfordman

Any chance you could post the details of the components and pricing ?

Looking at building one myself
Very nice by the way!!
Regards,
Wexfordman

MR DAZ

Right Pricing went as follows

I bought the case from komplett for E220 this included a remote

http://www.thermaltake.com/product/Chassis/desktop/mozart/vc4000_index.asp

Bought the motherboard here on boards second hand for 50E

its just a bog standard atx board made by abit.

I then bought the cpu fan and heatsink from quietpc.com

http://www.quietpc.com/ie-en-eur/products/intelcooling/cnps7000b

and the the psu from them aswell

http://www.quietpc.com/ie-en-eur/products/powersupplies/qt-psus


the rest of the parts i had lying around the house ie processor intel s775 2.8ghz , and 512mb ddr2 memory.

GFx - i used an x300 64mb pci express card from an old dell system.

I also had a 400gig seagate hardrive that i used , bought again from boards second hand....was not as good a buy as i thought as it has been through the wars abit and the bearings make abit of noise when searching through the hd...all that said though, you cant hear when watching movies or tv shows.


TBH anyone will tell ya that you can build it very cheap and you dont need a great machine...i only went with the above because i already had the processor...

Where i think the money is best spent is on the psu and the heatsink....make sure they are silent.that way if you are putting it in the sitting room it doesnt sound like an aeroplane.:)

TommyGun

Well done Daz.

I'm looking for approval now,to follow in your footsteps.

karltimber

When building mine - I had very strange looks from the miss' and how the VCR will never be gone -

but now she is using the (my ) media centre to record everything.

and have had 3 lads call to see it in action.

they are impressive machines --a media centre can do so much

need to add in plugins next and enhance everything.
the Auzzie mce forum is very god for plugins.

karl.