Computer doods enter

[soloXgt 10+ year member]

aight, i'm building my first media center and need some help. I have a case, mobo and processor. Guess all I need now is memory, HDDs (between 2-3TB), graphics card and power supply. 90% of what I am using this for us music and HD movies. the other 10% is your basic computing, so nothing special. 2 quiestions. 1) What is a good graphics card that will have HDMI output to put to a TV? Question 2, Will a 650w power supply be fine or should I shoot for 800w?? I forget what mobo my buddy is givin me, I know it has at leas a quad core processor if it makes a difference. Thanks guys.

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[altoncustomtech 10+ year member]

Any of the newer vid cards will be good and if they don't have a built in HDMI there's plenty of adapters available to get HDMI from the DVI's..... no matter which one you choose you'll want that 800w..... 650 would be getting pushed awful hard....

 

[whitedragon551 5,000+ posts]

I would go with an 800 watt PS. If anything it gives you head room. As for HD space Id go with a USB home server NAS type setup where you just put the drives in and can hotswap them out. Something with 4-5 slots and you can always just start out with a few 1.5TB HDs and keep adding more as needed.

 

[soloXgt 10+ year member]

don't really want dvi to HDMI conveter

 

[soloXgt 10+ year member]

I would go with an 800 watt PS. If anything it gives you head room. As for HD space Id go with a USB home server NAS type setup where you just put the drives in and can hotswap them out. Something with 4-5 slots and you can always just start out with a few 1.5TB HDs and keep adding more as needed.

what I was planning on doing was using my portable drive to get the initial download since I can DL at school between 3-6Mbps and transfer to the comp. i'm building and don't really need a NAS server. The case I picked up has 5-6 slots for HD, more than enough

 

[whitedragon551 5,000+ posts]

what I was planning on doing was using my portable drive to get the initial download since I can DL at school between 3-6Mbps and transfer to the comp. i'm building.

The portable HD would be fine for transferring files, but you will want a larger server so to speak at home. Maybe an HD for each type of file. Movies on one, music on another and keep them organized.

 

[altoncustomtech 10+ year member]

I can understand that...... haven't looked at them since my Radeon 4700 series was brand new and built in HDMI wasn't as common.... seems alot have them now..... look into this one tho I'm kinda partial to the ATI based cards.....

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814103087

 

[whitedragon551 5,000+ posts]

I can understand that...... haven't looked at them since my Radeon 4700 series was brand new and built in HDMI wasn't as common.... seems alot have them now..... look into this one tho I'm kinda partial to the ATI based cards.....
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814103087

I would never touch an ATI card. They are good hardware, but ATIs Catalyst programming blows. It makes the cards so unreliable. I wouldnt want that in my desktop, HTPC, or even my laptop.

 

[soloXgt 10+ year member]

so looks like i'll me looking for a 800w+ PS. now onto graphics cards. ATI vs. NVIDIA vs. GeFORCE vs.......

 

[altoncustomtech 10+ year member]

Geforce is Nvidia's GPU chipsets.... and they're **** good too..... had alot of luck with ATI in the past, which is why I still use them.... but he's right the Catalyst stuff sucks eggs.... I'll post ya up a link to a decent GeForce card....

 

[whitedragon551 5,000+ posts]

GeForce = NVIDIA

Catalyst = ATI

What hardware do you need? You will need motherboard, RAM, CPU, lots of fans, a case, GPU, and of course all the HD space.

 

[soloXgt 10+ year member]

GeForce = NVIDIACatalyst = ATI

What hardware do you need? You will need motherboard, RAM, CPU, lots of fans, a case, GPU, and of course all the HD space.

that's taken care of.

this be the case..

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1215768&CatId=1521

I'll be using a 42" plasma for a screen if it makes a difference in a graphics card

 

[altoncustomtech 10+ year member]

Here's a fair card :http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121333

and a fair PS :http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139009

There's better and worse than these..... I picked the middle of the road priced stuff since you didn't mention a budget.... never used a Corsair PS but I've used their RAM ALOT and never had an issue so I'd figure they put the same quality into that stuff too.....

 

[soloXgt 10+ year member]

thinking of this power supply

http://cgi.ebay.com/New-OCZ-850w-GameXStream-Power-Supply_W0QQitemZ250532215999QQcmdZViewItemQQptZPCA_UPS?hash=item3a54e23cbf#ht_2977wt_1165

and this G card

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=5344018&Sku=A455-5750

or this one

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3738445&Sku=E145-9802

opinions??

 

[whitedragon551 5,000+ posts]

Asus makes some badass reliable stuff and their warranties are amazing. OCZ also makes some great stuff.