My new HTPC build

[alexcd]

Thank you so much for the help.

Case w/remote
Antec Black Aluminum / Steel Fusion Remote Max ATX Media Center / HTPC Case

Power Supply
OCZ OCZ500MXSP 500W SLI/CrossFire Active Power Supply

Motherboard
GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3P LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard

Memory
CORSAIR 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory

CPU
Intel Core 2 Quad Processor Q6700 2.66GHz 1066MHz 8MB LGA775 EM64T

CPU Cooler
Scythe SCNJ-2000 120mm Sleeve CPU Cooler

Video
SAPPHIRE 100245HDMI Radeon HD 4850 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card

Video Cooler
ARCTIC COOLING ACCELS1 Rev 2 VGA Cooler

Hard Drive
HITACHI Deskstar 7K1000.B 0A38016 1TB SATA II 7200 RPM 16MB

OS will be Windows 7 x64bit

[1oldguy]

Sweet ........

I will be building a pc towards the end of the year for Extreme gaming performance.
Crysis anyone?

[alexcd]

Well that wasn't my intention but this ended up being a pretty darn good gaming rig. The main difference is that it's tweaked to be as quiet as possible. I would need fans to overclock. I may underclock if that makes sense. Does that offend anyone? =)

[Kevin P]

Nice!

Any particular reason you went Intel instead of AMD? The Phenom II CPUs are impressive and run cool too. Of course, Core2s are no slouches either. I have a Core2 Duo in my HTPC.

What OS are you going with? Mine runs Mythbuntu 8.04 (this is an Ubuntu distro with MythTV included). You'll need a 64-bit OS to take advantage of your 4GB of RAM...

[alexcd]

I will need a 64-bit OS, eh?? I was going to try running Windows 7. I downloaded the 32 bit edition. I'll go and download the 64-bit version tonight. I don't know how well I could deal with limited driver support or anything that comes up with Linux. How do you feel about that? Any limitations?

[Kevin P]

Linux/MythTV works great, but you have to be a bit of a geek to fine tune everything. Most new distros come with drivers for just about any hardware you can dream up (often things that Windows lacks drivers for).

BTW, how are you going to get video into the HTPC? I don't see a tuner or QAM card in your parts list.

You can use a 32-bit OS, but you'll be limited to 3.5 or so GB of RAM. You've got the goods, might as well take advantage of them with a 64-bit OS.

[impala454]

the Windows 7 media center is pretty awesome, and not to mention free at the moment

[alexcd]

Linux/MythTV works great, but you have to be a bit of a geek to fine tune everything. Most new distros come with drivers for just about any hardware you can dream up (often things that Windows lacks drivers for).

BTW, how are you going to get video into the HTPC? I don't see a tuner or QAM card in your parts list.

You can use a 32-bit OS, but you'll be limited to 3.5 or so GB of RAM. You've got the goods, might as well take advantage of them with a 64-bit OS.

I want to continue to use my Comcast set top box or at least NOT lose the OnDemand programming. I'm not sure how to go about this... PVR would be nice.

[Hdale85]

I've been a bit bored with windows lately on the HTPC and have been wanting to give Myth a try. I may end up doing this who knows. I haven't had much time lately for tinkering though.

One thing if you're going to try out MythTV, ATI drivers are sort of sparatic on linux. They are there but sometimes they are difficult to get working, somtimes they aren't just depends. Nvidia has the same issues with new cards and what not but generally I believe they get worked out much quicker. MythTV is amazingly nice and more flexible then probably anything out there. Definitely look into it if you are serious about the HTPC stuff. It's not for everyone though and Media Center has become quite hackable.

[Alloroc]

the Windows 7 media center is pretty awesome, and not to mention free at the moment

Yeah, it's nice. It's also a decent OS too. Pretty quick and the new RC is stable. I installed the 64bit OS on my PC this week for the hell of it. It'll work as-is till sometime next year. Worth a punt to play around with for sure!
ATI have also released a driver for it so my cards work fine in crossfire mode.

[alexcd]

Well, bad news. I powered everything up and only the front LCD glows a bit. There are no sounds from the motherboard or anything to help me out. Any advice would be great.

[1oldguy]

Hi

That is terrible.I'm not much of a guru at these things.I would hope that there ESD issues.Problems can arise if it got shorted maybe even before you built it by touching it.
There are several things one can do to prevent it.But what ever the problem is ,it has already occurred.
I am at a loss really since you specked out decent parts.
I wish I could help you.

[H.T.C]

Sweet ........

I will be building a pc towards the end of the year for Extreme gaming performance.
Crysis anyone?

You might not need a pc or atleast the gpu or cpu to play crysis with this setup onlive.com

It does have the tech to obsolete the pc for gaming purposes with no upgrade expenses and does include multiplayer.

[Hdale85]

The motherboard may need to be flashed to the latest bios to support that CPU since it's a newer one.

[alexcd]

Hopefully it will just run enough to get me started. I can flash when I get up and running a bit more.

[Hdale85]

Well if the current bios doesn't support the CPU you have to put in an older CPU just so you can flash the bios. It's kind of a pain but this is what you have to do. Either that or get a bios flasher and remove the bios from the motherboard. Not always the most fun thing to do though