Specs for new HTPC (1 Viewer)

[Ken.Nischan]

I'm going to build my HTPC. These are the specs that I've come up with awhile:
Athlon XP 2700 CPU
Asus A7N8X motherboard
Corsair TWINX1024-2700LL 1GB PC2700 DDR
Antec SX1030 /w 420W dual fan PS
ATI Radeon 9700 Pro
Creative Labs SB Audigy2 Platinum EX
WD 1200JB 120GB 7200rpm 8mb cache
Generic 1.44MB
Lite-On 52x24x52
Lite-On 16x DVD, 48x CD
Logitech Cordless Freedom keyboard
Optical freedom mouse bunded with keyboard
Total price $1562. Any comments? Any recommended changes in configuration? Thanks

 

[Tekara]

everything looks pretty good, I only have a couple reccomendations.

1 - don't bother with the audigy, if you get the deluxe version of the a7n8x you'll have just as good onboard sound without any of the hassle. Nvidia's soundstorm is an excellent audio controller. But if you must buy a seperate sound card then get the m-audio revolution 7.1

2 - you should consider gett pc3200 ram instead of the 2700 ram. now depending on how much your willing to tweak your computer you can re adjust your cpu so that it will run a higher fsb and a lower multiplier resulting in the same speed but faster communication between the cpu and everything else. or if what I just said was over your head you can simply run the ram at pc2700 speeds with better timings resulting in higher performance. then worse come to worse, amd is releasing cpu's in the next year that will run at a higher fsb (equivelent to the pc3200, 400fsb) so when that happens you could just upgrade the cpu without any worries.

3 - since it's a htpc, you might want to consider getting the all-in-wonder version of the radeon 9700pro, I love the integrated TV tuner and video-in/video-out features.

well, hope that helps some.

 

[Scott L]

It seems people are getting better benchmarks with PC2700 rather than 3200. DDR400 especially has problems when running in more than 1 DIMM slot.Tom's hardware also recommends this.
Nice specs and I'll echo the advice on the Audigy. You don't really need it (unless you must have front audio RCAs) and my HTPC doesn't have a seperate sound card either. The AIW 9700 is your call, if you have an HDTV you definitely would want an appropriate tuner.
And just curious, what case will this go in?

 

[Tekara]

okay here's the deal on ram. . .
it's a bit odd and technical (which is a language I'm bad at) so please bear with me. ram running at a 33fsb has been scoring better because the cpu it's matched with is running at a 333 fsb, thus the two are in sync with eachother. now when you take pc 3200 ram which is designed to run at 400fsb and you match it with a cpu running at 333fsb your computer has an overhead to take care of to allow the mem and the cpu to communicate (basically it's just one waiting for the other) this is what causes the slowdown.
Now, if you take the cpu which is designed to run at 333fsb and run it at 400fsb and run your pc3200 ram at 400fsb then you will achieve higher scores than if you ran them both at 333. now mind you, you don't neccesarily have to overclock your cpu to achieve this you can lower your multiplier on the mem to have the same end mhz speed.
As I said before, if what I just talked about is greek to you than it's best if you don't mess with that stuff, but the pc3200 mem will future-proof you to a degree when AMD will release it's barton cpu which will have a revision that runs at 400fsb (which your pc2700 ram is surely not going to be able to do).
anyway, some food for thought