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I will be attending CPL Winter from December 17th-20th and I need to build a Shuttle LAN/HTPC box. I would like to keep the price as low as possible, but if I need to pay more for better performance, I'll gladly accept that.
For LAN it needs to be able to play most games well if even at medium to low settings. I also want this to be the ultra portable computer as lugging my 50LBS beast of a computer in my sig did not help much during CPL Summer 2004. For HTPC needs, I want a FM tuner, TiVo like capabilities, able to stream movies/music from my other computers to it wirelessly, and able to play music/DVDs of course.
I did a bit of searching and came up with this system.
Shuttle SN41G2V2 Barebones System Black
It has support for AMD socket A CPUs up to 333FSB and can take up to 2GB of DDR400 RAM. It's based on the nForce2, which hasn't given me any problems yet and has 1 AGP 8x slot and 1 PCI slot. It has onboard everything, although I will of course not use onboard video.
It also comes with a 250W Shuttle PSU.
$254
AMD Athlon XP Mobile 2500+
I was glad to see the egg still carried these and they were only $1 more than the regular 2500+. Since this computer needs to be as quiet as it can and needs to draw the least amount of energy, this seems like a good choice to me. It should be able to power most games at lower to medium settings and even higher settings depending on the game. I might overclock it if I get cool enough temperatures.
$83
2x512MB Corsair XMS PC3200 DDR RAM
Chose this because I have some corsair in my main system and it works great. These have default timings of 2-2-2-5 and come with a heatspreader. 1GB seems to be the norm now a days, so I decided to get a gig even though this PC is not meant to be the best of the best.
$251
XFX Geforce 6600GT
The video card is the hardest part for me to decide on. I really like the looks of Nvidia cards now and I wanted to not spend over $300 on this. The 6600GT seemed to fit perfectly. It should be able to run the games I want it to and may even be able to pull some nice settings in some of them. It should of course be fine for the HTPC part since it will only need to play media files then.
$240 - Ack, spending more on my RAM...
MSI Black DVDROM
Let's see, it's black so it fits with my case, it's cheap and has 16x DVD speeds. I'll take it!
$26
Hitachi 250GB 7200RPM HD
This part was a bit of a harder decision. I decided to go with a Hitachi since I haven't heard anything bad about them and it was the cheapest one. I wanted to get a fair amount of space for the HTPC.
$132
Shuttle XP17 17" LCD Monitor Black
This is the PERFECT monitor to go with my case. It's made to match the black version of the case that I am getting, has a 16ms response time, built in carrying handle, very nice design, and great reviews. It's pricey, but I did not want to skimp on this part.
$612
Microsoft Windows XP Media Center 2005
This seemed to fit my needs since it's made for HTPCs mainly and it still should have the performance of regular XP.
$125
Total w/ S&H: $1,756.62
For the TV capture abilities and wireless networking, I will later be buying a wireless PCI NIC card and a USB TV capture card built just for MC 2005 which I already have picked out.
Now onto the questions:
Will the 250W PSU be able to handle all of this?
How quiet will this system be?
Will there be any space problems?
Is there any component that I should swap to get more bang for my buck?
Will the MC version of XP still work fine when I am using this computer at LANS?
Any other comments are welcome.
For LAN it needs to be able to play most games well if even at medium to low settings. I also want this to be the ultra portable computer as lugging my 50LBS beast of a computer in my sig did not help much during CPL Summer 2004. For HTPC needs, I want a FM tuner, TiVo like capabilities, able to stream movies/music from my other computers to it wirelessly, and able to play music/DVDs of course.
I did a bit of searching and came up with this system.
Shuttle SN41G2V2 Barebones System Black
It has support for AMD socket A CPUs up to 333FSB and can take up to 2GB of DDR400 RAM. It's based on the nForce2, which hasn't given me any problems yet and has 1 AGP 8x slot and 1 PCI slot. It has onboard everything, although I will of course not use onboard video.
It also comes with a 250W Shuttle PSU.$254
AMD Athlon XP Mobile 2500+
I was glad to see the egg still carried these and they were only $1 more than the regular 2500+. Since this computer needs to be as quiet as it can and needs to draw the least amount of energy, this seems like a good choice to me. It should be able to power most games at lower to medium settings and even higher settings depending on the game. I might overclock it if I get cool enough temperatures.
$83
2x512MB Corsair XMS PC3200 DDR RAM
Chose this because I have some corsair in my main system and it works great. These have default timings of 2-2-2-5 and come with a heatspreader. 1GB seems to be the norm now a days, so I decided to get a gig even though this PC is not meant to be the best of the best.
$251
XFX Geforce 6600GT
The video card is the hardest part for me to decide on. I really like the looks of Nvidia cards now and I wanted to not spend over $300 on this. The 6600GT seemed to fit perfectly. It should be able to run the games I want it to and may even be able to pull some nice settings in some of them. It should of course be fine for the HTPC part since it will only need to play media files then.
$240 - Ack, spending more on my RAM...
MSI Black DVDROM
Let's see, it's black so it fits with my case, it's cheap and has 16x DVD speeds. I'll take it!
$26
Hitachi 250GB 7200RPM HD
This part was a bit of a harder decision. I decided to go with a Hitachi since I haven't heard anything bad about them and it was the cheapest one. I wanted to get a fair amount of space for the HTPC.
$132
Shuttle XP17 17" LCD Monitor Black
This is the PERFECT monitor to go with my case. It's made to match the black version of the case that I am getting, has a 16ms response time, built in carrying handle, very nice design, and great reviews. It's pricey, but I did not want to skimp on this part.
$612
Microsoft Windows XP Media Center 2005
This seemed to fit my needs since it's made for HTPCs mainly and it still should have the performance of regular XP.
$125
Total w/ S&H: $1,756.62
For the TV capture abilities and wireless networking, I will later be buying a wireless PCI NIC card and a USB TV capture card built just for MC 2005 which I already have picked out.
Now onto the questions:
Will the 250W PSU be able to handle all of this?
How quiet will this system be?
Will there be any space problems?
Is there any component that I should swap to get more bang for my buck?
Will the MC version of XP still work fine when I am using this computer at LANS?
Any other comments are welcome.
