New build. Media pc. Complete novice. Please read to point me in the right direction.

dohda

Hi there,

I know there is a dedicated forum on boards for media pc's but as this question relates more to the building of a pc I figured this might be a better place for my questions.

I have wanted to build a pc for under the telly for a long time. Now I'm just going to do it and I'm slightly overwhelmed by the amount of info there is available for building pc's. Some of which seems to contradict itself. Basically, I hope top liist here what I want it to do. Tell you what I have and hope to be able to use. And then get some advice about which websites to read up on or look into.

What I want is one of those lovely loking cases for under the tv. Hopefully with 2 or 3 internal hard drive bays for lots of storage. I want to add in a blue ray player and ther ewould need to be a few usb sockets.

Other than that I want hdmi output for both sound and picture. Want it to be able to play any codec available at a good frame rate and also (if it's possible to) blow up pics from sites like rter player so I can watch them on my telly.

Now here is the first problem. Different sites tell you diff things about what the minimum spec is to achieve these things. I'm not made of money and don't really want more ram or a faster processor than I need. Chances are this pc will never be used for a game.

I also have an old dell pc sittign upstairs that no longer gets used. And I can't work out if any of the parts can be salvaged for the new pc? Soem sites say all dell parts are proprietry and others say thats crap. In mine I have

AMD athlon x2 Dual Core 4200+
2 GB Ram 667Hz (I think the herz is right!)
Samsung SP 2504C SCSI D.Drive (dont plan on using this for very long!)
Tsst Corp DVD +- RW TS-H653A SCSI (would b good if in a second ddrive bay)
NVIDIA nForce 430/410 Seriel ATA

Would I be right that this processor, the motherboard its on, the ram, and the dvd drive from this would all be enough for my needs? If nt I need to get looking.

I'm sorry for the long post and all the questions, but even a helping hand pointing me towards reliable web sites would be a big help. I also have no idea where to find out about compatability of different components. a link, post or whatever about that would also really really help.

If your still with me then thanks for reading my long winded post!

Dohda

cherryghost

yep. those components would be fine. you'd need to invest in a decent graphics card to play some HD stuff. 40-50 euro card online would do grand

dohda

wow thats great news.

Thanks for the info. it does leave me with a few questions though.

The Dell is a slimline Dimension C521. Does this mean I will have compatability issues with the mobo and the new case I hope to buy?

Is the ram enough to handle the HD or should I invest in new ram?

Where oh where do I read up to find out if the parts I do have to buy are compatable with what I have already?

The last one is really wrecking my head!!

cherryghost

you'll need a low profile card for that pc. An ATI 5450 or something like that would suit perfectly.


The motherboard you have has a PCIe slot. There are two main graphic card slots in PC architecture: AGP and PCIe. AGP is outdated and is rarely used now.

dohda

ok so there is something I did not realise. Even though I am changing out the case to use one of the HIfi type cases I still need to buy low profile cards to fit the motherboard.

Thanks for that info.

Would the stock psu unit in the pc be of use or would I need a more powerful one?

Solitaire

Coming from a C521 that motherboard would be mBTX. Therefore if you change the case you'll also have to change the motherboard and PSU as they are proprietary

You can keep the CPU, memory and drives but they (especially the CPU) may be rather outdated at this point

dohda

Ah I see.

Well I suppose it's not all bad. Thsi morning when I got up I thought I would have to throw out everything.

I realise these parts are outdated and would be of no use to many people, especially those that do any form of gaming but that is not me.

All I want is to create a pc myself, be able to watch movies on it, in HD, with HD sound and occasionally programs on rte or skyplayer. If the parts are ok for achieving this then they will do me for now. I have been pricing new parts and if I need to buy everything then I will not be starting this project.

Are the processor and ram good enough for this task? I don't need a very quick dvd drive as I hardly ever burn anything.

cherryghost

IMO if thats all you intend on doing, the low profile graphics card is all you need, if you can bear with the casing :pac:

You could always spray it and modify it