My New HTPC

I finally got my hard drive replacement yesterday and reinstalled Vista and now my living room setup is semi-complete. I’m still missing a few key items which I’ll be getting along the way which include a small coffee table, a better TV stand, a HDTV tuner card, a bluetooth keyboard and mouse set, and a surround sound system.

Anyways, let’s talk about my HTPC. It’s made up of the following components:

Motherboard
Abit IL9 Pro Motherboard – $85
CPU
Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 CPU – $204
Case
Lian Li PC-C30A Case – $130
Graphics Card
Asus EAX1600PRO SILENT Radeon X1600PRO 256MB – $93
Memory
2x Kingston 1GB DDR2 DDR2 667 RAM – $136
Hard Drive
Western Digital 500GB SATA – $140
Optical Drive
NEC ND-3550A 16X DVD Burner – $29*
Power Supply
Ultra V Series 500W – $0
Input Devices
Remote Control and Receiver for Media Center – $25
Remote Keyboard for Media Center – $45
Cables
HDMI DVI Cable – 10ft – $5.74
3.5mm Stereo Plug/2 RCA Plug cable – 6ft – $1.25
UPS
APC BX 1500 Battery Back-UPS – $100

The final total comes up to be $994. Most of these items were purchased out of state (via Newegg), so there wasn’t any sales tax and most of them had free shipping.

I originally had purchased a Seagate 7200.10 500GB SATA hard drive with perpendicular recording, but the drive was rather noisy, especially when writing, so I swapped it out and replaced it with the Western Digital 500GB SATA drive which people have commented on to be quiet, and indeed is.

*I also swapped DVD burners between my main machine which had the NEC ND-3550A (or 3540A) which is very quiet, but no longer carried by Newegg. I had gotten the NEC 7170A-0B 18X DVD Burner, hoping that since it’s still NEC, it’d be nice and quiet like their previous models, but boy was I wrong. Apparently this drive is actually manufactured by Optiarc, a joint company formed by Sony and NEC. I’ve tried tools like CD Bremse and Nero CD-DVD Speed as recommended by those at CDFreaks.com, but neither worked. Someone also suggested AnyDVD, but I have yet to try it. What these tools are suppose to do is set the drive to run at a slower speed, so it can never goes into high speed mode (i.e. 18X), because who really needs 18X when watching a DVD. I’ve tried flashing the drive, but the tools don’t seem to be able to control it. On the contrary, both were able to control my ancient NEC ND-3550A.

Here are some pictures of while I was building the HTPC:
building krunk htpcbuilding krunk htpcbuilding krunk htpcbuilding krunk htpcbuilding krunk htpcbuilding krunk htpcbuilding krunk htpcbuilding krunk htpcbuilding krunk htpcbuilding krunk htpcbuilding krunk htpcbuilding krunk htpcbuilding krunk htpcbuilding krunk htpcbuilding krunk htpcbuilding krunk htpcbuilding krunk htpcbuilding krunk htpcbuilding krunk htpc

Installing Vista was a breeze, a lot easier than I had expected after hearing “horror” stories. Though then again, I was installing it on a clean machine and had been warned what hardware was compatible and what were causing problems (apparently nVidia Vista drivers are still iffy). After updating drivers and running the performance test, I hit 4.3 and the limiting factor was my graphics card. 4.3’s already an really good score, so I wasn’t too worried.

My next problem as I realized was there wasn’t a easy way for me to connect my HTPC to the existing network and internet. Derek and I had spent something walking up and down my stairs trying to figure out the best way. At first I thought I would just get a wireless bridge and use 802.11g to talk wirelessly. However, with all the HD content that I’ll soon be accumulating, having gigabit would be nice. So I ended up pulling a long cable from my switch to my new HTPC. I purchased a bunch of these cable hooks from Lowes and hammered them around my stair frame. I also didn’t have a ladder, so I used my plastic table as a platform to stand on.

network wiringnetwork wiringnetwork wiringnetwork wiringnetwork wiringnetwork wiringnetwork wiringnetwork wiringnetwork wiringnetwork wiringnetwork wiringnetwork wiringnetwork wiringnetwork wiringnetwork wiringnetwork wiringnetwork wiring

I’ve also rearranged the couches so that I have more living room space to actually put something in between the couch and the TV. The main reason being that I was setting up StepMania with my USB dance pads and they didn’t really fit in the old configuration. Now that I pushed the sofas back, I have a lot more space and can actually fit a coffee table or maybe even an exercise bike. What’s neat is also there’s 2 front USB ports on my Lian Li case and that’s perfect for 2 DDR dance mats.

Our company store today just announced that the Wireless Entertainment Desktop 7000 was available. Derek and I have been looking at the Logitech diNovo Edge. However, I wonder when the Wireless Entertainment Desktop 8000 will be released.

Here’s some pictures of my semi-final TV setup with my so pretty Vizio 47″ 1080p LCD HDTV:
final tv setupfinal tv setupfinal tv setupfinal tv setup

Remember, each picture also has a FULL SIZE.

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