posted on Wednesday, April 26, 2006 10:10 AM by mlorengo

My Media Center Specs

I just recently built my own media center from scratch. The goal was to have a Media Center server in my house, on which I would store all of my DVD's, CD's, Photo's and Recorded TV programs. All of this information would be accessible from any room in the house, and on the road via the Internet. A few people have asked me about the specs for my machine, so I thought I would just post them here.

The goal of this computer was to be my Home Media Server, and therefore the specs are a little more than what is needed. I currently have Media Center 2005, Rollup 2 loaded, but my hope is to have Vista running on it soon.

The Media Center server is just the first step in "The Big Plan". I'll be making posts off and on again, as I add to it.

Component Model
Motherboard ASUS A8N-SLI Premium Socket 939 NVidia nForce4 SLI ATX AMD
I chose this motherboard, because it has a heatpipe cooling system on the Northbridge chipset, is SLI capable, accepted the Dual Core AMD processor, and support for overclocking.
CPU AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Manchester 1GHz HT 2x512KB L2 Cache Socket 939 Dual Core
I chose this processor because it offered the best price per performance at the time.
Video Card eVGA 256-P2-N553-AX GeForce 7600GT CO 256 MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16
I chose this video card because it is SLI capable, and wanted some ability to handle Vista when it comes out.
Hard Drive Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD50000KS 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s
I chose this hard drive because I wanted to max out storage on my server. I paid a premium for the 500GB capacity, but it's quiet. I just recently added a second one bringing my capacity up to 1TB. I still have room in my case for 2 more drives.
Memory Corsair XMS 1GB (2x512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM Unbuffered DDR 400 (PC 3200) DUal Channel Kit System
I like Corsair memory, it has heat spreaders, and the price was right.
CPU Fan Zalman CNPS9500 LED 92mm 2 Ball Blue LED Light Cooling Fan with Heatsink
I chose this fan, because Zalman makes great cooling products, in addition I was intalling this in a Zalman case with a Zalman power supply.
Case Zalman HD160-B Home Theatre Aluminum PC Enclosure w/Remote (Black)
I chose this processor case because it was all aluminum, looked like a media center component, and got good reviews. I also seriously considered getting a Origen AE Case

I already had a Hauppauge PVR 350, TV Tuner card so I recylced that into the system for watching and recording live tv.

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