Here is my adventure of upgrading our media center from a 720p xp mce system to a 1080p vmc system. First this rig is a tv only box, used for tv and nothing else... I also want to point out that I am no stranger to htpc, media centers, computers connected to tv's and stuff like that - Unfortunately I'm a professional fat guy, geek and couch potato - I might be able to GOLD METAL in fat couch potato sport if I can get it in the olympics! ANYWAYS - We recently upgraded our 62" 720p DLP to a 73" 1080p DLP - Well, our aging media center needed to be upgraded too. That's where the fun began. I wanted 1080p, and the ability to play blu-ray rips, .mkv and other HiDef content in 1080p smoothly - which my older xp-mce system just couldn't handle - It was barely capable of 720p playback. So I took the chance to upgrade my hardware and software accordingly for full 1080p.  Since I already had two existing media centers (one in the living room, and the other in my bedroom), of course I wanted to salvage as much of my current hardware as possible - which made buying a new motherboard a challenge actually. Let me explain. Because I already had a working MCE setup built on an older ATX board - I had 3 PCI cards I wanted to keep and use (2 atsc tuners plus a sound card). Luckily I found my solution on the cheap...

Fry's electronics had a CPU + Motherboard combo on sale for $99, which was an AMD64 X2 5600+ Tray CPU (no heatsink) and an ECS Nforce6M-A motherboard which has 3 PCI slots.



Then I bought a Thermal Take mini-typhoon all copper heatsink on clearance for $14.90. I thought this was a great buy. It has 6 heat pipes... I'm wondering if it can be run without the fan?


Next on the list was RAM. I got 4x 1gb DDR2-800 sticks of Crucial Ballistix ram (2 are actually tracer sticks) for $40 each 2gb kit -$20 rebate each, so $80 total with $40 in rebates (if the rebates actually show up).


Then last, the video card. This was the only piece I didn't buy locally - It was much cheaper from Newegg. I bought an MSI ATI HD3650 512mb DDR2 128bit video card with built in HDMI. From Newegg it was $43 + $9 for shipping so $52 delivered. This was an open-box deal - but came in complete.



I initially wanted to use VMC 64bit, and after the build and install of 64bit Vista, I learned quickly about needing 64bit codecs, drivers, etc... So since this is a tv only box I saw no reason why not to use 32bit VMC, and keep it nice and easy I know 64bit drivers are out there - but I'm lazy... sue me.

Most everything was simple and easy to setup. Drivers for everything were either installed by Vista automatically, or super easy to find and download online.

I installed the K-Lite 4.1.4 Codec pack (latest as of date of build) which plays pretty much everything out there, and it worked first time... I had a HD-DVD drive from my Xbox360 so I hooked it up, Vista found it - installed it, and after an install of ArcSoft Total Media Theater, we were watching HD-DVD's from inside VMC too.

Now let me show you some pics of the inside.

The end result...? A vista media center ultimate x86 32bit os, which plays .MKV 1080p files at around 50-70% cpu power, no serious spikes, and very smooth playback.

My next purchase will be a BluRay reader or writer maybe. I've jumped on the bandwagon so many times early - I'm gonna wait until I find a serious deal on the reader - or wait for the writers to get cheap.

How'd I do? PLEASE COMMENT.

Oops.. I forgot the 3TB part... lol.
I bought a couple of 750gb Samsung SATA HDD's at $99 each, 1 for Recorded TV, and the other for the C: drive, which boots VMC, and will hold various other media... tv tonic streams, pictures, maybe some <1gb divx files..

Plus I've got the original 500gb ATA HDD drive in there, which is FILLED with DVD rips to DiVX (about 400 or so), and a couple of 750gb external USB2.0 HDD's - one for Music, and the other for Blu-Ray .MKV rips.

***** AND I STILL CAN NEVER FIND ANYTHING GOOD TO WATCH! ******

You also forgot to mention the MOST important items for a TV "Couch Potato"...
What TV tuners are you using?

Tuners: (ATSC / HDTV)
AverMedia A180 PCI card
Twinhan PV3250 PCI card, this is actually a CompUSA Norwood Micro ATSC pci tuner card, but its a re-branded Twinhan PV3250. It uses a standard 878 chipset which is common to the AverMedia (I believe), Instand HDTV 380, and this Twinhan PV3250 DVB-T card.

NTSC

HP AVC-3610 dual NTSC tuner, FM Radio tuner and Remote iR receiver. This is an external USB2.0 box that does all 4 functions. I believe it was originally released by Adaptec, but I got it with a MCE laptop a couple of years ago - and has worked great for me.

I just thought I'd add to this thread.... I tried to run the cpu cooler without the fan, and I don't think thats a wise choice.  With the fan ON, and with a cpu load - the temp levels off around 49-50c.  Without the fan, it sky rockets to 65c

I tried making a shroud (?) out of paper.... to funnel the air from the 80mm intake next to the cpu, up through the cpu cooler - but that didn't seem to help much.  If I tried harder - I probably could have gotten it to work without a fan - but honestly the fan on the cpu is so quiet.... when the ceiling fan is on, I pretty much can not hear the media center anyway.... Here in Texas its always hot- so airflow is pretty important.

Overall the box is relatively quiet - I get more distraction from the vfd screen than I do the gentle woosh of air flow.

yeah

I found that it was a lot easier to get very quiet fans moving air around than to try and engineer a passive solution

you still need air flow with all the passive stuff


big part of why I love the Antec cases is for that reason.  they're build with great airflow at low accoustic levels

I agree... My second VMC in my bedroom is build in a Antec NSK2400 case, that I got on the cheap... and its a great case. Its a P4 2.8ghz box, and with smart and silent (or whatever that cpu fan control feature is called in bios) enabled, and the 2 120mm fans on low, its VERY quiet. The majority of the "woosh" I hear is from teh psu fan, which is the stock 380w antec psu.

 

Araltd:

I agree... My second VMC in my bedroom is build in a Antec NSK2400 case

ditto ;)

my main is the 2400's big brother, the fusion

can see pics of my bedroom one in my sig