PC Spec - Finishing Touches

Thenotsowyzewun

Okay maybe the title is slightly misleading...

Anyway, here's what I'm buying:

1GB DDR2 Aeneon RAM £55.98 + £2.95 postage Item number: 6886551616
Intel Pentium D 805 Skt775 2.66Ghz 2MB L2 CPU £84.99 Savastore = 3% @ Quidco = £82.45
Acer AL1916WS 19" Widescreen TFT £171.95 https://www.acernotebooks.co.uk
Pioneer DVR-111D £27.46 (approx, has not been hunted for!)
120GB SATA II 7200RPM HDD £48.35 (savastore, approx (not hunted for!))
Accordion Value Beige ATX Case with 400W PSU £20.73
TOTAL: £409.87

So, stuff left on the shopping list:

Power Supply (PSU)
Motherboard
Keyboard & Optical Mouse (wireless)
Wallmount

I'm currently estimating the total to be £550.

Feel free to ask why I chose component X Y Z before you jump in and say I've made a bad choice :P (would explain each piece, but its nearly midnight and it'd take me awhile to explain all my choices in full!).

Anyway, I'd very much like some recommendations with regard to:

PSU - What to buy (if anything; my case comes with a 400W supply (anyone got a wattage calc that shows this is unsufficient, taking into consideration an overrating of say 50 watts, and the possibility of a TV card being added (which no doubt uses some wattage).

Motherboard - Recommendations of chipsets for this system (which is going to be a media center pc eventually, but for now just a work pc)

Keyboard & Mouse - Anyone particuraly like the Microsoft Remote MCE ones (remote control and/or keyboard) albeit they don't come cheap! Any other recommendations (must be wireless)

Wallmount - I need one with tilt and pan to put the screen on (4.5KG approx)

Thanks very much , very much appreciated !!

albertross_2

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=205954

Some tips on PSU brands and mice etc. here (ignore my wind-ups..)

niceguyrichy

well, given you want it to be a media center pc at some point, I'm not sure how to advise you :think:

I wanted to recommend my beloved Hiper TypeR PSU, but I'll probably have to revise that and come up with a media centre sized psu.

mobo wise, Gigabyte do some really quality micro-atx sized for not too much money, well worth checking out

all else I'd say, as it's a media center, is consider an ATi AIW card, they really are the dogs..

Thenotsowyzewun

Cheers for responding, hope you don't mind me thinking aloud

niceguyrichy wrote:

well, given you want it to be a media center pc at some point, I'm not sure how to advise you :think:

Well I'm not worried about the processor power - I can overclock the dual-core processor upto over 3Ghz if/when I want to.

And it's already got very nice quality RAM (as recommended here).

I'm sort of relying on the quality of TomsHardware.com to help me pick out nice parts!

I wanted to recommend my beloved Hiper TypeR PSU, but I'll probably have to revise that and come up with a media centre sized psu.

Media Center sized? I know there might be a Digital TV Tuner card or two, but I doubt they're going to draw more than 50 watts each (probably much less, but I'm basing that purely on guessing!).
I've got a 550W Hiper PSU in another computer, and in yet another a 500W eBuyer PSU. Both perform equally well in very similiarly specced machines (in fact the eBuyer PC is quieter (albeit likely because it has an Athlon instead of a Prescott!).
Nonetheless, I'm happy to buy a cheap PSU.

mobo wise, Gigabyte do some really quality micro-atx sized for not too much money, well worth checking out

Despite this being a Media Center PC eventually, I'm going to use it to Self-Study the various modules of MCSE first (so at one time or another it'll be configured as a DNS server, file server, Active Directory server, etc etc). I'm going to build it as an ATX machine (sounds a bit strange, but I'm not building it for looks or to be especially quiet (just look at the case I picked !!).

all else I'd say, as it's a media center, is consider an ATi AIW card, they really are the dogs..

Haven't bothered to look at these before; I don't play games so I pretty much buy the cheapest graphics card I can find, however this looks like a real find (DivX etc encoding/decoding... does that mean it's alot faster at encoding/decoding movies and stuff?! :D).
Gonna leave it for now though - I can get that once I convert it to a Media Center (I haven't got a PC/TV in my room at the moment so I just want it to be able to play MP3s at first lol). Have had a PC in my room before though, so I know I'm used to the noise.

Thenotsowyzewun

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