HDTV News Poster
02-15-2006, 08:32 PM
<p>Filed under: <a href="http://features.engadget.com" rel="tag">Features</a>, <a href="http://hdtv.engadget.com" rel="tag">HDTV</a>, <a href="http://homeentertainment.engadget.com" rel="tag">Home Entertainment</a>, <a href="http://mediapcs.engadget.com" rel="tag">Media PCs</a></p><div id="pc584190"><div align="center"><img width="425" vspace="16" hspace="4" height="245" border="1"
src="http://www.engadget.com/media/2006/01/howtohtpc1.jpg" alt="" /></div>
We've seen a lot of home theater PCs lately
and being in need of a new workstation, we decide to build one of our own. We started planning by looking around to see
what others had done. It would be fun to own a <a
href="http://www.engadget.com/2006/01/23/epc-fidelity-t-pc-hd-2tb-3ghz-7-400/">HD capable 2TB box</a> , but we're not
going to drop $7,400. SnapStream's <a
href="http://mediapcs.engadget.com/2006/01/19/snapstreams-godzilla-dvr-11-tuners-1tb-storage-4-000/">11-tuner
performance art piece</a> looked fun too, but not practical. Even <a
href="http://arstechnica.com/guides/buyer/system-guide-200512.ars">Ars Technica</a> and <a
href="http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1893732,00.asp">ExtremeTech</a> had decent looking guides, but both
systems broke $2K. <br /><br />We wanted to build a machine that had:<br />
<ul>
<li>Good desktop performance</li>
<li>Long life through upgradability</li>
<li>Cost close to $1,000</li>
</ul>
So here's how we did it, click on to
check it out!</div>Even though we are building what could be considered a budget system we didn't want to make sacrifices just to hit a
target cost. This is apparent in our first component selection: the case. We didn't want to use some cheap tower and
power supply package. That went against our plan to keep this system around for a long time and eventually place it in
our AV rack as a dedicated PVR and file server. We chose the <a
href="http://www.silverstonetek.com/products-lc17.htm">SilverStone LC17</a> for our case. SilverStone makes many
different HTPC style cases, but we chose this one because of its two large cooling fans, six internal hard drive bays,
plain black front (no VFDs or exposed ports), solid construction, and it is rackmountable. We ordered all of our parts
from <a href="http://newegg.com/">Newegg.com</a>. Here's a picture of the inside of the case with the optical drive
cage removed. Cost $140<br />
<div align="center"><img width="425" vspace="16" hspace="4" height="294" border="1"
src="http://www.engadget.com/media/2006/01/howtohtpc2.jpg" alt="" /></div>
<br />The LC17 comes with a
USB/Firewire/audio panel mounted in the front 3.5 inch drive bay. We pulled out the cage and replace the panel with a
multi-card reader and USB port. Cost $9<br />
<div align="center"><img width="425" vspace="16" hspace="4" height="319"
border="1" alt="" src="http://www.engadget.com/media/2006/01/howtohtpc4.jpg" /></div>
The next step was to install the
power supply. We chose <a href="http://www.antec.com/us/productDetails.php?ProdID=28430">Antec's NeoHE 430</a>. It's a
430W high efficiency power supply . The large cooling fan, quiet operation and modular cables to reduce clutter made it
desirable. It should provide enough power to handle additional hard drives we'll be adding in the future. Cost $86<br
/>
<div align="center"><img width="425" vspace="16" hspace="4" height="256" border="1" alt=""
src="http://www.engadget.com/media/2006/01/howtohtpc5.jpg" /></div>
This brings us to the centerpiece of our build, the
<a href="http://www.foxconnchannel.com/products_motherboard_2.cfm?pName=955X7AA-8EKRS2">Foxconn 955X7AA-8EKRS2
motherboard</a>.* This board is the key to our future upgrade path. It features Intel's 955X north bridge sporting
an 800 or 1066 MHz front side bus. We're going to be dropping in a commodity Pentium 4 chip, but the LGA 775 socket
means that we can upgrade to a dual-core Extreme Edition CPU once their price enters the troposphere. The south bridge
is Intel's ICH7R which provides 8-channel sound through the board's analog connectors and also through the digital coax
and optical connectors. Up to 8GB of DDR2 memory can be used in the board's 667MHz dual-channel slots. We'll only be
using two of them to leave openings for the future. The board features 2 PATA, 4 SATA, and 4 SATAII connectors. There
are built in RAID controllers on each of those banks. If that wasn't enough to make the <a
href="http://dvguru.com/">DVguru</a> guys drool, the board also has headers for 2 1394a and 1 1394b port. 8 USB ports
are available as well. Cost $183<br />
<div align="center"><img width="425" vspace="16" hspace="4" height="319"
border="1" alt="" src="http://www.engadget.com/media/2006/01/howtohtpc6.jpg" /></div>
Our processor is an <a
href="http://processorfinder.intel.com/scripts/details.asp?sSpec=SL7Z9">Intel Pentium 4 630</a>. It's a 3.0GHz chip
with Hyper-Threading and support for 64 bit instructions. A nice feature set for the price. We are using the stock fan
and heatsink since we aren't planning on overclocking and the computer isn't going in our AV rack yet, so we are not as
concerned with noise. We went with Intel instead of AMD because we wanted to get the more valuable QMD units while <a
href="http://www.engadget.com/2005/10/26/join-the-engadget-folding-home-team/">folding</a>. The chip latched into place
easily and the heatsink is installed by pressing on the four posts around the perimeter. Cost $171<br />
<div
align="center"><img width="425" vspace="16" hspace="4" height="319" border="1" alt=""
src="http://www.engadget.com/media/2006/01/howtohtpc7.jpg" /></div>
Nothing too particularly interesting about our RAM
choice. We knew we wanted 2 x 1GB DDR2 and didn't want to spend more than $200. We looked through user comments and
chose a <a href="http://www.mushkin.com/doc/products/memory_detail.asp?ID=31">Mushkin 2GB dual channel kit</a> which
came with heat spreaders. Cost $200<br />
<div align="center"><img width="425" vspace="16" hspace="4" height="319"
border="1" alt="" src="http://www.engadget.com/media/2006/01/howtohtpc8.jpg" /></div>
For an optical drive we went with
a cheap OEM Sony DVD burner since we didn't want to pay a premium for a dual layer drive. In retrospect, we could have
spent a little more to get a drive that isn't as loud as this one. We only expect to use this drive to rip DVDs, not
actually watch them, so it shouldn't interfere with our movie enjoyment. Cost $40<br />
<div align="center"><img
width="425" vspace="16" hspace="4" height="319" border="1" alt=""
src="http://www.engadget.com/media/2006/01/howtohtpc9.jpg" /></div>
The hard drive is a <a
href="http://westerndigital.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=135">Western Digital Caviar SE 250GB SATAII</a>. Cost
$100<br />
<div align="center"><img width="425" vspace="16" hspace="4" height="378" border="1" alt=""
src="http://www.engadget.com/media/2006/01/howtohtpc10.jpg" /></div>
This is just a starting point for use as a desktop
system. In a couple years when we decide to retire this system to PVR/file server only use we will be able to upgrade
the box to 4TB of storage for $800. That's why we picked a case with so many drive bays and a board with built in
RAID.
<div align="center"><img width="425" vspace="16" hspace="4" height="319" border="1" alt=""
src="http://www.engadget.com/media/2006/01/howtohtpc11.jpg" /></div>
We chose the <a
href="http://www.leadtek.com/3d_graphic/winfast_px6200_tctdh256ob128_1.html">Leadtek WinFast PX6200 TC</a> for our
graphics card. We don't use our desktops for gaming so we went really cheap. We only needed a DVI card that could drive
our <a
href="http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19&sku=24053YR&category_id=4009">Dell
2405FP</a> at 1920x1200. The card is fanless so we don't have to worry about it contributing to the system noise. It
features component outputs so we can get a high quality picture on a TV since most don't have VGA or DVI. Cost $59<br
/>
<div align="center"><img width="425" vspace="16" hspace="4" height="319" border="1" alt=""
src="http://www.engadget.com/media/2006/01/howtohtpc12.jpg" /></div>
The final component we added was a <a
href="http://hauppauge.com/pages/products/data_pvr500mce.html">Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-500 MCE</a> dual-tuner card. The
card has MPEG2 hardware encoders built-in so there will be almost no load on the CPU when recording. Hauppauge cards
also have good support under Linux. The majority of TV tuner cards being produced right now are based on ATI chipsets
and should be avoided like the plague if you plan on running a Linux based PVR. This is the same reason we went with an
nVidia chipset on the graphics card. Cost $138<br /><br />The total for the base system is $988. The addition of the TV
tuners brings the grand total to $1126. We've talked about the upgrades we plan on making in the far future, but the
only thing we have planned in the near-term is adding an<a
href="http://www.cyberestore.com/product_info.php?cPath=28&products_id=103">HDTV tuner that can do OTA and QAM</a>
for $169. Since building the system a month ago it has been happily running <a href="http://mythtv.org/">MythTV</a> on
top of a <a href="http://www.gentoo.org/">Gentoo Linux</a>. We followed the <a
href="http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Setup_MythTV">MythTV install instructions</a> on the wiki. We've got partitions set
aside to try Windows XP MCE and OSx86, but haven't had a chance to try them yet.<h6 style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"></h6><a href="http://hdtv.engadget.com/2006/01/24/how-to-build-a-practical-htpc/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry">Permalink</a>*|*<a href="http://hdtv.engadget.com/forward/584190/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email">Email this</a>*|*<a href="http://www.technorati.com/cosmos/search.html?rank=&fc=1&url=http://hdtv.engadget.com/2006/01/24/how-to-build-a-practical-htpc/" title="Linking Blogs">Linking*Blogs</a>*|*<a href="http://hdtv.engadget.com/2006/01/24/how-to-build-a-practical-htpc/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry">Comments</a><br /><br /><p><map name="google_ad_map_21-584190"><area shape="rect" href="http://imageads.googleadservices.com/pagead/imgclick/21-584190?pos=0" coords="1,2,367,28" /><area shape="rect" href="http://services.google.com/feedback/abg" coords="384,10,453,23" /></map><img usemap="#google_ad_map_21-584190" border="0" src="http://imageads.googleadservices.com/pagead/ads?format=468x30_aff_img&client=ca-pub-3546992251556849&channel=22&output=png&cuid=21-584190&url=http://hdtv.engadget.com/2006/01/24/how-to-build-a-practical-htpc/" /></p>
Link To Original Article (http://hdtv.engadget.com/2006/01/24/how-to-build-a-practical-htpc/)
src="http://www.engadget.com/media/2006/01/howtohtpc1.jpg" alt="" /></div>
We've seen a lot of home theater PCs lately
and being in need of a new workstation, we decide to build one of our own. We started planning by looking around to see
what others had done. It would be fun to own a <a
href="http://www.engadget.com/2006/01/23/epc-fidelity-t-pc-hd-2tb-3ghz-7-400/">HD capable 2TB box</a> , but we're not
going to drop $7,400. SnapStream's <a
href="http://mediapcs.engadget.com/2006/01/19/snapstreams-godzilla-dvr-11-tuners-1tb-storage-4-000/">11-tuner
performance art piece</a> looked fun too, but not practical. Even <a
href="http://arstechnica.com/guides/buyer/system-guide-200512.ars">Ars Technica</a> and <a
href="http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1893732,00.asp">ExtremeTech</a> had decent looking guides, but both
systems broke $2K. <br /><br />We wanted to build a machine that had:<br />
<ul>
<li>Good desktop performance</li>
<li>Long life through upgradability</li>
<li>Cost close to $1,000</li>
</ul>
So here's how we did it, click on to
check it out!</div>Even though we are building what could be considered a budget system we didn't want to make sacrifices just to hit a
target cost. This is apparent in our first component selection: the case. We didn't want to use some cheap tower and
power supply package. That went against our plan to keep this system around for a long time and eventually place it in
our AV rack as a dedicated PVR and file server. We chose the <a
href="http://www.silverstonetek.com/products-lc17.htm">SilverStone LC17</a> for our case. SilverStone makes many
different HTPC style cases, but we chose this one because of its two large cooling fans, six internal hard drive bays,
plain black front (no VFDs or exposed ports), solid construction, and it is rackmountable. We ordered all of our parts
from <a href="http://newegg.com/">Newegg.com</a>. Here's a picture of the inside of the case with the optical drive
cage removed. Cost $140<br />
<div align="center"><img width="425" vspace="16" hspace="4" height="294" border="1"
src="http://www.engadget.com/media/2006/01/howtohtpc2.jpg" alt="" /></div>
<br />The LC17 comes with a
USB/Firewire/audio panel mounted in the front 3.5 inch drive bay. We pulled out the cage and replace the panel with a
multi-card reader and USB port. Cost $9<br />
<div align="center"><img width="425" vspace="16" hspace="4" height="319"
border="1" alt="" src="http://www.engadget.com/media/2006/01/howtohtpc4.jpg" /></div>
The next step was to install the
power supply. We chose <a href="http://www.antec.com/us/productDetails.php?ProdID=28430">Antec's NeoHE 430</a>. It's a
430W high efficiency power supply . The large cooling fan, quiet operation and modular cables to reduce clutter made it
desirable. It should provide enough power to handle additional hard drives we'll be adding in the future. Cost $86<br
/>
<div align="center"><img width="425" vspace="16" hspace="4" height="256" border="1" alt=""
src="http://www.engadget.com/media/2006/01/howtohtpc5.jpg" /></div>
This brings us to the centerpiece of our build, the
<a href="http://www.foxconnchannel.com/products_motherboard_2.cfm?pName=955X7AA-8EKRS2">Foxconn 955X7AA-8EKRS2
motherboard</a>.* This board is the key to our future upgrade path. It features Intel's 955X north bridge sporting
an 800 or 1066 MHz front side bus. We're going to be dropping in a commodity Pentium 4 chip, but the LGA 775 socket
means that we can upgrade to a dual-core Extreme Edition CPU once their price enters the troposphere. The south bridge
is Intel's ICH7R which provides 8-channel sound through the board's analog connectors and also through the digital coax
and optical connectors. Up to 8GB of DDR2 memory can be used in the board's 667MHz dual-channel slots. We'll only be
using two of them to leave openings for the future. The board features 2 PATA, 4 SATA, and 4 SATAII connectors. There
are built in RAID controllers on each of those banks. If that wasn't enough to make the <a
href="http://dvguru.com/">DVguru</a> guys drool, the board also has headers for 2 1394a and 1 1394b port. 8 USB ports
are available as well. Cost $183<br />
<div align="center"><img width="425" vspace="16" hspace="4" height="319"
border="1" alt="" src="http://www.engadget.com/media/2006/01/howtohtpc6.jpg" /></div>
Our processor is an <a
href="http://processorfinder.intel.com/scripts/details.asp?sSpec=SL7Z9">Intel Pentium 4 630</a>. It's a 3.0GHz chip
with Hyper-Threading and support for 64 bit instructions. A nice feature set for the price. We are using the stock fan
and heatsink since we aren't planning on overclocking and the computer isn't going in our AV rack yet, so we are not as
concerned with noise. We went with Intel instead of AMD because we wanted to get the more valuable QMD units while <a
href="http://www.engadget.com/2005/10/26/join-the-engadget-folding-home-team/">folding</a>. The chip latched into place
easily and the heatsink is installed by pressing on the four posts around the perimeter. Cost $171<br />
<div
align="center"><img width="425" vspace="16" hspace="4" height="319" border="1" alt=""
src="http://www.engadget.com/media/2006/01/howtohtpc7.jpg" /></div>
Nothing too particularly interesting about our RAM
choice. We knew we wanted 2 x 1GB DDR2 and didn't want to spend more than $200. We looked through user comments and
chose a <a href="http://www.mushkin.com/doc/products/memory_detail.asp?ID=31">Mushkin 2GB dual channel kit</a> which
came with heat spreaders. Cost $200<br />
<div align="center"><img width="425" vspace="16" hspace="4" height="319"
border="1" alt="" src="http://www.engadget.com/media/2006/01/howtohtpc8.jpg" /></div>
For an optical drive we went with
a cheap OEM Sony DVD burner since we didn't want to pay a premium for a dual layer drive. In retrospect, we could have
spent a little more to get a drive that isn't as loud as this one. We only expect to use this drive to rip DVDs, not
actually watch them, so it shouldn't interfere with our movie enjoyment. Cost $40<br />
<div align="center"><img
width="425" vspace="16" hspace="4" height="319" border="1" alt=""
src="http://www.engadget.com/media/2006/01/howtohtpc9.jpg" /></div>
The hard drive is a <a
href="http://westerndigital.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=135">Western Digital Caviar SE 250GB SATAII</a>. Cost
$100<br />
<div align="center"><img width="425" vspace="16" hspace="4" height="378" border="1" alt=""
src="http://www.engadget.com/media/2006/01/howtohtpc10.jpg" /></div>
This is just a starting point for use as a desktop
system. In a couple years when we decide to retire this system to PVR/file server only use we will be able to upgrade
the box to 4TB of storage for $800. That's why we picked a case with so many drive bays and a board with built in
RAID.
<div align="center"><img width="425" vspace="16" hspace="4" height="319" border="1" alt=""
src="http://www.engadget.com/media/2006/01/howtohtpc11.jpg" /></div>
We chose the <a
href="http://www.leadtek.com/3d_graphic/winfast_px6200_tctdh256ob128_1.html">Leadtek WinFast PX6200 TC</a> for our
graphics card. We don't use our desktops for gaming so we went really cheap. We only needed a DVI card that could drive
our <a
href="http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19&sku=24053YR&category_id=4009">Dell
2405FP</a> at 1920x1200. The card is fanless so we don't have to worry about it contributing to the system noise. It
features component outputs so we can get a high quality picture on a TV since most don't have VGA or DVI. Cost $59<br
/>
<div align="center"><img width="425" vspace="16" hspace="4" height="319" border="1" alt=""
src="http://www.engadget.com/media/2006/01/howtohtpc12.jpg" /></div>
The final component we added was a <a
href="http://hauppauge.com/pages/products/data_pvr500mce.html">Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-500 MCE</a> dual-tuner card. The
card has MPEG2 hardware encoders built-in so there will be almost no load on the CPU when recording. Hauppauge cards
also have good support under Linux. The majority of TV tuner cards being produced right now are based on ATI chipsets
and should be avoided like the plague if you plan on running a Linux based PVR. This is the same reason we went with an
nVidia chipset on the graphics card. Cost $138<br /><br />The total for the base system is $988. The addition of the TV
tuners brings the grand total to $1126. We've talked about the upgrades we plan on making in the far future, but the
only thing we have planned in the near-term is adding an<a
href="http://www.cyberestore.com/product_info.php?cPath=28&products_id=103">HDTV tuner that can do OTA and QAM</a>
for $169. Since building the system a month ago it has been happily running <a href="http://mythtv.org/">MythTV</a> on
top of a <a href="http://www.gentoo.org/">Gentoo Linux</a>. We followed the <a
href="http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Setup_MythTV">MythTV install instructions</a> on the wiki. We've got partitions set
aside to try Windows XP MCE and OSx86, but haven't had a chance to try them yet.<h6 style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"></h6><a href="http://hdtv.engadget.com/2006/01/24/how-to-build-a-practical-htpc/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry">Permalink</a>*|*<a href="http://hdtv.engadget.com/forward/584190/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email">Email this</a>*|*<a href="http://www.technorati.com/cosmos/search.html?rank=&fc=1&url=http://hdtv.engadget.com/2006/01/24/how-to-build-a-practical-htpc/" title="Linking Blogs">Linking*Blogs</a>*|*<a href="http://hdtv.engadget.com/2006/01/24/how-to-build-a-practical-htpc/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry">Comments</a><br /><br /><p><map name="google_ad_map_21-584190"><area shape="rect" href="http://imageads.googleadservices.com/pagead/imgclick/21-584190?pos=0" coords="1,2,367,28" /><area shape="rect" href="http://services.google.com/feedback/abg" coords="384,10,453,23" /></map><img usemap="#google_ad_map_21-584190" border="0" src="http://imageads.googleadservices.com/pagead/ads?format=468x30_aff_img&client=ca-pub-3546992251556849&channel=22&output=png&cuid=21-584190&url=http://hdtv.engadget.com/2006/01/24/how-to-build-a-practical-htpc/" /></p>
Link To Original Article (http://hdtv.engadget.com/2006/01/24/how-to-build-a-practical-htpc/)