new PC

custardy

okay through scavenging parts and dead parts Ive ended up needing another PC

I have an old case and a fairly new PSU.I'll upgrade these later anyway
Ive got a modest PCI gfx card
I dont really play games on the PC but it will be a hub for transcoding/streaming media around the network.
this PC has a core 2 duo @ 2.1ghz,2 gig ram and an nvidia 8400m GT
managers most stuff but is a bit stretched on the large HD files

what about this intel set up?

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/222853

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/238925

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/178943

or AMD

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/gigabyte-ga-ma74gmt-s2-amd-740g-am3-pci-e-(x16)-ddr3-1333mhz-sata-3gbps-sata-raid-micro-atx

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/amd-phenom-ii-x2-550-black-edition-callisto-s-am3-31ghz-7mb-total-cache-ht-4000mhz-85w-retail

plus 4Gb DDR3

or any better choices?

ta

A.Penny.Saved

If the PC works then why do you need to replace parts?

Is the Core 2 Duo working and if so why do you want to replace it? To speed up transcoding? If so then a dual core with a speed bump isn't going to speed things up all that much. A Quad core would.

The graphics card might be able to help with HD video decoding but the PCI bus will hold it back. It could help with H.264 transcoding by assisting with the video decoding which would free up CPU cycles to encode. But again the PCI bus might slow it down and make that difficult. Is it really a PCI card or PCI-e?

If you have the CPU working why do you need a new Mobo? For the memory?

Your scan links don't work so I cannot look at them.
Memory is cheaper at Scan

A Q8300 would be better for encoding @ £80

If your trancoding H.264 using DGDecodeNV would speed things up by quite a bit but that GPU might hinder things. Recent cores such as the GT210, GT220 & GT240 are as fast as the latest higher end GPU's when it comes to HD video decoding but if transcoding HD video the decoding isn't usually the bottleneck anyway so almost any GPU should decode fast enough except for HD to SD transcoding where none are fast enough for a decent CPU as they hold things back as they top out at around 105fps for BBC HD video and less with FullHD.

custardy

sorry,should have said.. This PC is going for warranty work and I want to build another to replace it
when this one comes back I'll shunt the repaired PC upstairs
so Im building a full PC with spare parts I have

edited the links

A.Penny.Saved

How important is the video encoding? Will it be something you do a fair bit of? Is it SD or HD encoding?
If it's HD then the more Cores the better and it would really help speed things up more than anything else. For SD it makes a smaller difference. So a Quad core would be of benefit if encoding was important.

Otherwise I would say the Phenom II is a faster CPU than the Core2 at similar clock speeds. I have a Core 2 Quad myself.

So it depends upon how important that is and whether it is worth spending a little extra.

When ordering from Scan as an one week/20 post member of avforums they offer free delivery if you follow the link on the avforums website. But some have had problems with items not in stock and it has held up the order. Ordering items above the minimum limit separately might help.

custardy

Hi there.Its HD video we stream in the main. outside of general office work and net use its the main use of the PC
we stream via PS3 media server and a 360/PS3
though I may build the new PC with HDMI and feed directly to the main TV downstairs and via media server for the TV's upstairs
what about these new I3 processers?

(can you tell I havent upgraded in a while? )

oh,I already have he AV forms discount but Im not tied to anyone.
its a case of picking the spec and getting the best deal

A.Penny.Saved

If it's for streaming via PS3 then I don't think it has to be too fast as it doesn't usually need to do full encoding. It's often only the audio format and video container that need changing for PS3 playback which are fairly fast to do.

The newer WestmereCore i's, offer accelerated AES encryption using new CPU instructions to speed things up. They also have more advanced SSE instructions. The Core 2's have SSE 4.1 whereas the Core i's have SSE 4.2. But SSE 4.2 is probably not really a great improvement and nothing worth upgrading for. SSE 4.1 can be used by x264, it certainly gets detected on mine.

Moving to a Core i will most likely push up the price by quite a bit. Do you need it?

custardy

a quick look makes the core I3 and motherboard with DDR3 ram about £40 more,over the core 2 with mobo and DDR3