HTPC : The Purchase

I’ve been without a home PC for a few months now and the time has come to make a purchase.  First off, I have to say that I’m not a computer technician, nor do I do not fix computers in any aspect of my career.   Last time I have put a computer together, it was the era when you had to manually assign all your IRQ setting manually and decide when you boot what kind of activity you were going to do (game, modem stuff, word processing).  Since then, everything’s gone plug and play and more or less magically works together as long as you follow a few rules of thumb when ordering.  Unfortunately, I do not know what those rules are and had to rely on random internet posts and help of a few friends.

The goal of my PC build, was to give myself a home server that interfaces with my TV, mostly for home entertainment purposes.  TV, Movies, Serving Media, and downloading are the main things I wanted to accomplish.   I decided that I could put a blue-ray player in it and run PS3 Media Server (which is an amazing DLNA server), and I would be able to watch my BlueRay’s on it and serve up any digital content to my PS3.  This will allow me to have the HTPC connected to my large TV and allow me to put my PS3 in my bedroom, using that as a client to the media server for watching stuff in bed, and will allow me to get a nice gaming monitor with no digital processing lag (well minimal as there will always be some).  I’m even going to run something like TED, which will give me DVR like functionality for television shows, but downloads the file instead of recording it from broadcast.  I’ve been without cable TV for a while, but there are a few shows that I’m just not going to give up.

I’ve purchased this from NewEgg, which seems to be like the Amazon of computer components.  At this point my purchase has been made and warehouse staff (robots?) are pulling components and throwing things into boxes.  I’m sure I’ll receive components in about 3 days allowing me to have this thing built for the weekend.

Purchased Components

1. nMEDIAPC Black Aluminum / Acrylic / Steel HTPC 5000B Micro ATX Media Center / HTPC Case
   This case looks like an AV Stereo Component more than a PC.
2. nMEDIAPC PRO-LCD Media Center Programmable LCD
   Small screen to give info on PC internals and what is currently playing.
3. GIGABYTE GA-Z68MA-D2H-B3 LGA 1155 Intel Z68 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard
   Motherboard I picked based of some HTPC guide and reviews.  Slightly better than shot in the dark.
4. SeaSonic S12II 520 Bronze 520W ATX12V V2.3 / EPS 12V V2.91 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC Power Supply
   This power supply so when I “need more power”, I never get into the situation of “I’m giving her all she’s got”
5. Crucial M4 CT128M4SSD2CCA 2.5″ 128GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) with Transfer Kit
   Solid State OS Drive for fast booting and geek status
6. 2TB Western Digital Caviar Green Hard Drive
   An existing data drive I have, already loaded with goodies.
7. Intel Core i5-2300 Sandy Bridge 2.8GHz (3.1GHz Turbo Boost) LGA 1155 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 2000
   Processor that is good  graphics and 3D graphics.  With this and the MoBo, I can use the integrated graphics as I’m not gaming on it.
8. Kingston HyperX Blu 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model KHX1600C9D3B1K2/8GX
   Gives me 16GB of RAM with option to double/increase it.
9. LITE-ON Black Internal 12X Blu-ray Combo SATA Model ihes112-04 – OEM
   This way I can watch BlueRay movies on here or my PS3.
10. Win 7 Enterprise 64-bit
    While I work at the U, I can leverage the Enterprise License.  It authenticates to a license server that I need credentials to connect to.  So if I ever leave, I no longer will be able to use this license key.  At that point I just purchase Win 7 Ultimate 64bit and use that key.  Till then, I can save $200.

Next up:  The Build