Last time I built one was back in 04. Clearly the single core chipsets are headed the way of the dodo and I decided to slowly start buying pieces to build another beast but ironically, not to game in, but for my media center / media server. So far I've pieced it up close to $1200 (still contemplating on what kind of burner to stick into it)

• Core i7 2.66 Ghz Processor
• Kingston HyperX 6 GB DDR3 Triple Channel Ram
• Asus 9600 GT Fanless Video card
• Corsair 620 Watt modular PSU
• Asus P6T Deluxe V2 Mobo
• Antec 300 Case

I know I could've gotten a much better Lian Li case but decided to under cut the budget a bit considering I've gone past the $1000 limit and I dont even have a monitor / keyboard / optical drive yet.

This is going to be game on.

Re: Dream PC

not the dream pc i have in mind but its good enough to last for the next couple of years i think

Re: Dream PC

[quote=Corven;726433]not the dream pc i have in mind but its good enough to last for the next couple of years i think[/quote]

really? wow I thought that was a pretty nutty system. the next core i7 processor is twice the price and the next one above (there are only 3 released so far) is nearly 7 times the price. with the ram and considering the 6 TB of media space that I was planning to dump into this, I thought it was dreamy enough. (At least a dream PC that I can afford).

Re: Dream PC

Nice setup, but seems a bit of overkill for a media center / media server? I'd be going for high efficiency and low power and noise with a nice chunnk of storage in a good raid setup.

Re: Dream PC

well I wanted to get something that will last me in the years ahead. I have a dual core AMD with 3 gig ram and its suffering under pressure of rendering 1080p. The fans go bananas in the box. Thats why I wanted to get a powerful CPU that will be a good option in the years ahead.

Re: Dream PC

hum mine is a q6600@2.4ghz, 8800gt, 4gb, with a monitor of 19" so far so good, it cost me around 650USD so so......

Re: Dream PC

the i7 processor is pretty sweet .. from what i read with a little overclocking the lowest speed i7 processor could easily match the speed of the fastest i7 processor

in terms of dream pc i was thinking more of doing a triple-SLI with three XFX GTX 295 1792MB DDR3 cards and adding another 2more gb of memory ... sounds crazy but it would be sweet

Re: Dream PC

yea that would be a great gaming rig but this one will only be for media purposes.

Re: Dream PC

Why don't you go for some small form factor stuff? you can get premade shuttle XPC stuff for maybe a bit cheaper than that, plus they are made for 1080p viewing etc. i want to get/build one of these tiny guys with a bunch of HD space in them and put it under my tv and replace my dvd player w/ it. that way i can watch full 1080p HD movies right off my pc.

here is some prebuilt stuff: [URL]http://us.shuttle.com/Dvo.aspx[/URL]

Re: Dream PC

HD space is a commodity that evaporates quickly when you delve in hidef world of mkvs and the likes of. hard to stick 5 or 6 HDs into the XPC

Re: Dream PC

yeah for sure. i was wanting to look into some type of external raid enclosure or just a tray that i could stick behind the small htpc and just use sata connections to it, and just software raid it together. havent looked into it much b/c i dont want to spend the $ on it right now but has been something ive wanted to do for a good while now.

Re: Dream PC

[QUOTE=res0nat0r;726577]

here is some prebuilt stuff: [URL]http://us.shuttle.com/Dvo.aspx[/URL][/QUOTE]

wow, good stuff, will probably buy one of these....which one are you considering?

Re: Dream PC

Sorry to jump on so late... what did you decide on then Kamal?

I'm very interested in rigs that people put together and how it all pans out. I would love to build a media center pc myself for streaming high def stuff.

Re: Dream PC

[quote=dusk;738100]Sorry to jump on so late... what did you decide on then Kamal?

I'm very interested in rigs that people put together and how it all pans out. I would love to build a media center pc myself for streaming high def stuff.[/quote]

my purchase has been temporized because I was able to secure a cheaper option (for the time being). I ended up buying the Linksys DMA2200 Media Center extender. It doesn't stream .mkv content but it does pretty much anything else that my Media Center PC will do. And at $94 (with free shipping), it was a logical option.

Re: Dream PC

Definitely the logical option... I may have to take a look at it as well, considering that I have no time on my hands for a proper build.

Re: Dream PC

sweet rig i am really curious to see what an i7 can do...however, i have an MSI 9600 gt which is pretty overclocked and it seems to have a little bit of trouble with hd movies. especially when i try to skip to sections or is pretty slow when i try to render hd video files. no complaints with it and it is probably the best card you can get for the price but you might just want to get a 9800.

Re: Dream PC

[quote=Digger;726463]hum mine is a q6600@2.4ghz, 8800gt, 4gb, with a monitor of 19" so far so good, it cost me around 650USD so so......[/quote]

Sounds pretty much like my setup except IIRC my video card is a 7600 and my monitor is a 25". I really like the performance of the q6600. I built mine a while ago and at the time the processor was 300 alone so I was far over that but I also built it using components identified by the osx86 forums. I have a TB drive and 2 500 gigers. One of the 500's has the OSX leopard on it which runs perfectly well.

Kamal, you might want to read up on comparisons with the quad core processors vs the other options. Even though the quad cores are only operating at 2.4ghz, unless your doing gaming, your likely going to outperform the more expensive processors (from what I've read gaming applications don't typically take advantage of multiple cores whereas most everything else does).