[mythtv-users] Some advice on new hardware

[Mark Garland]

Hi Jan,

I'm still pretty new to myth etc, but here's my thoughts...

1. Having been a die-hard Intel fan, I've recent gone for some AMDs.
Personally, I've found the 5050e (dual 2.6) chip to be outstanding - cheap,
very low power, very quiet thanks to cool 'n' quiet, and does the job well.
Most of the time it sits there at 1Ghz.
Of course, I'm comparing it against old Intels, so a little unfair.  I
suspect they've come a long way too - but they always seem so much more
expensive and I like supporting the little guy.  ;-)

2. Could be determined by a desire for onboard video.

3. I got burned here.  I went down the route of buying a board with the 780g
chip on it (which contains an ATI Radeon HD 3200).  It's an excellent chip,
but the drivers led to my myth setup being really unstable.  I've recently
had to purchase an Nvidia based card which seems to be working much better,
so I 2nd John's comments there.

4. No real opinion here.  I bought Gigabyte as I think they make very good
boards at reasonable prices.  I guess you should work out what you want on a
board, then check who makes it how you need it, then check their reputation.

5. With RAM, more the merrier.  Perhaps myth doesn't need it now, but with
prices for RAM being so low I'd probably chuck in 4gb.  I bought a matched
pair of 2gbs to get them working together rather than one 4gb stick.

6. I also went for the WD Green (1Tb).  There's currently discussion around
a headparking feature that saves power.  Some camps say it shortens the life
of the drive, others say it's all FUD.  I disabled it at the cost of higher
power usage, but worth reading up about to form your own judgement.  Aside
from that, the drive is running cool/quiet and was good value for money IMO.


If I'm allowed to recommend other forums, I'd certainly check out
http://www.silentpcreview.com/ - they have forums of people all asking
similar questions to yourself so the archives would be well worth a look.

Hope that helps,

MG
-----
"The most overlooked advantage of owning a computer is that if they foul up
there's no law against whacking them around a bit."
 
-----Original Message-----
From: mythtv-users-bounces at mythtv.org
[mailto:mythtv-users-bounces at mythtv.org] On Behalf Of Fedor Pikus
Sent: 28 July 2009 19:13
To: Discussion about mythtv
Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] Some advice on new hardware

On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 11:01 AM, John Drescher<drescherjm at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 1. Should I go for AMD or Intel as the processor?
>
> Either are fine at the required level of performance.

At the moment, Phenom seems to be a better value at the low end (both
CPUs and motherboards cost a bit less than comparable Core2 kit).

>
>> I do not need a Quad Core
>> Hyper Extreme Whatever Edition, a decent dual core should do it for now
and
>> probably have some reserves for future possible HD playback. I want
>> something with low energy consumption and little heat production. An Atom
>> won't do it though, will it?

No atom. But you may be able to get away with Core2Duo or pre-Phenom
Athlon CPU, where you can get both the CPU and the motherboard for
about $100.

>>
>> 2. Now that we have decided for a CPU, which chipset is the preferrable?
As
>> mentioned above, I need a µATX board.
>>
> Intel chipset for an Intel processor. ATI/AMD chipeset for an AMD
processor.

NVidia chipset if you want on-board NVidia video card.

>
>>
>> 3. As you have probably noticed by the lack of a video card in the
shopping
>> list, ideally I would like to have a board with integrated video. Those
seem
>> to be frequent in µATX form factor, so that should not be a problem.
GeForce
>> or is Intel GMA good enough? I have not found any ATI integrated video
>> solutions while looking at mainboards.
>>
>
> nVidia will be the best and the least effort under linux. nVidia has
> by far the best driver and also with vdpau it is the only one with GPU
> accelerated mpeg output.
>
>>
>> 4. Generally, any mainboard brands to avoid? Most frequently I have seen
>> Biostar, Asrock or MSI...
>>
> I would avoid all of these.

Why? MSI is as solid as the best brands, and ASRock is basically
ASUS's way of selling their motherboards cheaper without discounting
the main brand name.

>
>>
>> 5. Are 2 GB RAM sufficient? Is dual channel helpful?
>>
> Most current boards are dual channel or better.

The only "better" one is i7, which is huge overkill for this (I have
an i7 desktop, and the only way I can get the CPU to work hard is to
encode 1080p HD video from disk to disk; ripping DVD to H.264 can't
even get all 4 cores to bump their clocks to max frequency).

>
>>
>> 6. HDD: As I also try to keep it cheap, 750 GB will be more than enough,
>> almost 10 times of what I have now will enable about 250 recording to be
>> kept... I have good experiences with Samsung drives, if anyone can
recommend
>> any other silent and reliable drives though, please go ahead.
>>
>
Western Digital Green.

>
>
> BTW, these questions are asked at least 1 time a month. Search the
archives.

But the answers change often. The kit from the archives you now find
at recycler place :)

> John
> _______________________________________________
> mythtv-users mailing list
> mythtv-users at mythtv.org
> http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
>



-- 
Fedor G Pikus (fpikus at gmail.com)
http://www.pikus.net
http://wild-light.com
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