Build Advice for PC

fathersymes

1. What is your budget? €300 - 400

2. What will be the main purpose of the computer? HTPC & some video editing

3. Do you need a copy of Windows? No

4. Can you use any parts from an old computer? No

5. Do you need a monitor? No

5b. If no, what resolution is your current monitor and do you plan to upgrade in the near future? LCD TV

6. Do you need any of these peripherals? No

7. Are you willing to try overclocking? No

8. How can you pay? Credit Card

9. When are you purchasing? ASAP

10. If you need help building it, where are you based? Should be OK

I will also require a tuner card/s for satellite and Saorview, I reckon the HDD should be SSD.

Monotype

fathersymes wrote: »

I reckon the HDD should be SSD.

SSDs are good for fast bootups in a HTPC. Will you need storage space on top of that?

fathersymes

Monotype wrote: »

fathersymes wrote: »

I reckon the HDD should be SSD.

SSDs are good for fast bootups in a HTPC. Will you need storage space on top of that?

No I'm ok with storage will be using an external HD, I really just need sufficient power for HD video and PVR without overkill.

Can you recommend a MOBO, processor, case and Tv card (satellite and saorview).

Thanks in advance

ScumLord

fathersymes wrote: »

1. What is your budget? €300 - 400

2. What will be the main purpose of the computer? HTPC & some video editing

I will also require a tuner card/s for satellite and Saorview, I reckon the HDD should be SSD.

The video editing could be a bit of a problem, that often requires higher budgets and external hard drives aren't going to be fast enough to deal with the data.

Monotype

Something like this?

Item|Price
Intel Celeron G540 Box, LGA1155|€39.38
Samsung SSD 830 128GB SATA 6GB's Paper Box|€100.53
ASUS DRW-24B5ST bare|€17.73
4GB Corsair Vengeance Low Profile schwarz PC3-12800U CL9-9-9-24|€22.25
ASRock H61M-ITX, Sockel 1155, ITX|€64.83
be quiet! SFX Power BQT SFX 350W|€48.77
Chieftec BT-02B, 180W SFX, Mini-ITX|€45.66
Shipping|€18.99
Total|€358.14

I'm assuming here that video editing is just a small bit of chopping and changing and you're not talking about a whole lot of encoding. I added a 128GB SSD - if you're not using this as a desktop at all, 64GB would be fine. The 830 or Crucial M4 are the ones to go for.
http://www1.hardwareversand.de/Solid-State-Disk/46113/Crucial+M4+64GB+SSD+6%2C4cm+(2%2C5).article

I added in a different PSU than the one you get in the case as that's probably not good quality.

Parts are picked from hardwareversand. Their main payment is bank transfer as credit cards aren't as popular although they said they'd start accepting credit cards soon. If they don't have them yet and it's a problem, I'll see what's for sale at scan.co.uk or somewhere else.

IamSatai

Here's a suggestion, this is what I will be doing for my build. If you would prefer to get faster speeds out of the external hard drive, open up the casing and just take out the internal hard drive from it. You will lose the portability, but it will run faster. That way you can use your SSD for booting, and the hard drive for storage with good speeds. Look up the external hard drive model you have to see if anyone else has done this with it. Here is a video demonstrating how to open up the hard drive that I have, as an example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73jHstTFGFo. From what I have read, it is not a good idea to use SSDs for storage as constantly writing to them will shorten their life span. As always, do research of your own though.

Monotype

There's an eSATA port on that board that I suggested. If your external drive supports that, then you'll get full speed from the hard drive.
I'm not sure what ScumLord means by not fast enough - using USB 2 should still give you 40MB/s which is more than enough for HD video. Even a raw blu ray only uses 1/10th of that.

fathersymes

Thanks for the feedback, I'm going to go ahead with that spec, just want to confirm that a PCIe TV card will fit?

ScumLord

Monotype wrote: »

There's an eSATA port on that board that I suggested. If your external drive supports that, then you'll get full speed from the hard drive.
I'm not sure what ScumLord means by not fast enough - using USB 2 should still give you 40MB/s which is more than enough for HD video. Even a raw blu ray only uses 1/10th of that.

Editing video isn't the same as just playing a video, your chopping it up and reusing the same bit of video multiple times and combining it it other video, your also running a resource hungry program. I edit video and see the resources it eats up and I have a big PC. You need lots of ram and fast hard drives unless you want to spend a lot of time waiting around for stuff to happen.

It can be done on lower end PCs it's just going to be a pain doing it that way.