In a word "OUCH"!
I then cut back on some of the silly components and got the price down to only £1,000!
Next I took a few executive decisions around quality and performance and got the price down to a Gnat's Whisker over £800. I now feel that I am working in the correct ball-park! I could go lower but then I would be seriously compromising the lifespan of the project.
The £800 system looks like this:
- Antec Fusion Media Centre Case
- Foxconn G9657MA - 8EKRS2H Motherboard (has very good on-board sound)
- Intel Core2 Duo E6420 Processor
- 2 x 1 GB EBuyer Value DDR2 PC2-6400 RAM (made by Corsair)
- 2 x Samsung Spinpoint T166 HDJ01LJ 500 GB Hard Disks
- 8800GTS 320 MB Graphics (ASUS branded)
- Panasonic DVD-RW
- Netgear Wireless LAN Card
- Windows Vista Home Premium Edition
- Wireless Keyboard and Mouse
Now I just need to save up enough money (as Serena would kill me if I put this on my Mastercard so soon after our holiday)!
6 comments:
This does seem like a great piece of kit - one question (and I know you are connecting to a Sky box), but would it not be worth getting a Freeview card for it?
Means you always have the option of recording more than one programme at once......
I could really do with 1Tb of HDD also, just can't justify it...my music collection so far ripped to iTunes is only 100Gb....
The only problem with the case / mobo combo is that you get 1xPCI-E and 2xPCI and that is your lot.
In the future I think I want to add a decent sound card to hook into an amp, and may be able to do away with the wireless card if I relocate my ADSL so it is next to the TV, however I don't see the need for a freeview card. The TV has freeview integral to it. I have Sky+ and if I want to copy from TV or Sky to the PC I have a USB capture device.
My opinion would change significantly if I lost the option of Sky+ though. Then a Dual Tuner card would become a must.
With the 500 MB SpinPoint Hard Disks being only £90 each (max) I don't see why you can't get a step closer to your 1 TB dream!
At the moment our gaming / media PC has 350 GB of HDD space and is coming close to being full.
Of that Music is only about 30 GB (but we have a lot of CDs left to rip), Audio Books is nearly 80 GB and Films / TV DivX files is about 150 GB.
We also have a fairly large quantity of HQ AVI files from our Sony Video Camera and vast quanties of photos which really need archiving to DVD soon (one of those projects you never quite get round to)!
350 GB will be more than ample for the gaming PC after this system is up and running, so I will run back-ups of the photos to that machine on a regular basis (as we still don't have an external backup device).
Why do I now feel nervous about those nearly irreplacable photos.... Hmm, I think I'll buy some blank DVDs this lunchtime and start backing them up now!!!!!!
Yes, I know 500Gb drives have dropped in price, but I also am very nervous about having to move the data and re-install the PCs. That's what's putting me off - as is scaring you - coupled with the back-ups and potential of losing data.
Scary.
I thought you had a reliable backup solution in place already!
I find reinstalling Windows both a frustrating and cathartic experience (which is probably impossible)!
My biggest paranoia is picking up a virus whilst patching Windows before installing Norton!!!!
It's all the stupid .NET framework version patches with a reboot between each that becomes very frustrating!
What I haven't costed for is Antivirus and Firewall for Vista... Isn't all that meant to be integral now? More research is called for!
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