[mythtv-users] Newbie with a shopping list for review please
Justin The Cynical
cynical at penguinness.org
Wed Nov 21 11:33:41 UTC 2007
bryan wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Below is my shopping list for my MythTV system or LinuxMCE sytem not sure
> yet.
*snip*
> Shopping list
> 1-ASUS M2NPV-VM Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
> 1-AMD Athlon X2 BE-2400 2.3GHz Socket AM2 Processor
> 1-Patriot 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Memory
> 1-CORSAIR CMPSU-450VX ATX12V V2.2 450W Power Supply
> 3-Western Digital Caviar SE16 500GB 3.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
> 1-Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-500 MCE Dual TV Recorder Tuner Card w/MCE Remote 253
> PCI Interface
> 1-LITE-ON 20X DVD±R DVD Burner Black IDE Model DH-20A4P-04
> 1-SILVERSTONE SST-LC17-B Black Computer Case
CPU:
The CPU with the listed tuner card is overkill. You really wouldn't
need that much power unless you:
Want the commercial flagging/transcoding to be finished really quickly
You are future-proofing for ATSC/HD watching.
The Hauppauge card you listed is SD only. A P4-based Celeron can deal
with that quite easily.
Memory:
2 gigs is 1 gig too much. While memory is cheap right now, I would be
surprised if that second stick is really used for anything beyond system
caching. The money spent on the RAM /might/ be better used elsewhere,
depending on how much you are paying per stick.
This is what my system looks like after 22 days of uptime (I have a dual
ATSC tuner FE/BE, no analog tuners, sending audio to an external 5.1
receiver)
Mem: 1035240k total, 960100k used, 75140k free, 13052k buffers
Swap: 257032k total, 584k used, 256448k free, 689660k cached
The top four memory hogs:
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
24936 mythtv 15 0 220m 116m 23m S 0.0 11.5 147:12.06 mythfrontend
3078 root 26 10 632m 56m 15m S 0.0 5.6 24:06.52 mythbackend
24902 root 15 0 44584 37m 3784 S 0.0 3.7 12:51.65 X
5644 apache 16 0 18428 11m 3172 S 0.0 1.1 0:00.67 httpd
Power supply:
Personally, I'd go for a 500 watt Seasonic, but that's me. :-)
Case:
I have that exact case. If I was to do it again, I probably wouldn't
have gotten it.
Problems-
With a full size ATX board, it's a bit cramped towards the front of the
case near the drive bays.
The top cover is a bit flimsy IMO.
The drive bays are a pain to install/remove due to bad screw placement
(check the quick install page here
http://www.silverstonetek.com/download/d_contents.php?pno=lc17&area=usa).
(This is my biggest complaint) The optical drive 'covers' are actually
attached to the optical drive via double stick tape.
(See http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews/sslc17/4.html
for a picture. The quick install page also shows the procedure for
removing the covers)
Not only is this cheesy IMO, but optical drives with a curved tray
faceplate (which that Lite-On has) may have a hard time with this method
of attachment. IIRC, my printed book manual for the case said not to
use drives with a curved tray faceplate.
Aside from that, the loudest parts of the system (Northwood P4, parallel
IDE drives) are the hard drives. The cooling vents for the system do
not generate a lot of air turbulence, helping make a quieter system.
Tuner card:
Unless you are planning on capturing from your local cable co, or
firewire from a satellite feed, I'd get an ATSC tuner card for the local
digital broadcasts.
And as always, YMMV. :-)
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