[mythtv-users] Seeking Advice

[Robert Bradbury]

A couple of related comments.  I'd tend to avoid motherboards with
"on-board" critical components.  I've got one sitting right beside me with
an ethernet card taking up one PCI slot because a nearby lightning strike
took out the on-motherboard ethernet chip (and the garage door opener and
the central heating controller card).  I'd be very careful of motherboards
that are connected to long external cables.  Monitor cables aren't as long
as ethernet cables but most of these low voltage chips aren't designed to
handle surges.  (And yes the computer itself which was on a surge suppressor
survived without any problem).  You can't "swap" critical components on the
motherboard to diagnose a problem.

I'd also suggest going with AMD rather than Intel.  They have their dual
core chips at extremely low prices now and have historically been somewhat
better than Intel at minimal power consumption when the chip is idle.  It
can also be argued that their instruction set extensions should be better
for certain transcoding applications (though I don't know if the tools
available are tuned at that level).

Robert
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