Client/general use PC questions

[xjboonie]

As a new years resolution to clean up our digital photos, I’ve got to do something with how we store them:

I’m running SageTV on my HTPC, and using it as a client/server.  It’s got 3 hard drives; 2 for Sage Recordings and DVD rips, and the 3rd is split into two partitions: OS and My Documents.

I had originally thought to put all of our digital photos, ripped music, videos, etc on it, but it’s filling up the partition, and I can’t really deal with the photos and music as much as I’d like to because it’s used for the HTPC duties.

I’ve got a XP machine in our bedroom, but it’s getting a bit out dated, and I want to run Win7 on it.  Also, lately the CPU speed monitor has been reporting crazy numbers: bouncing between 1000MHz (QC turned on) to 9713MHz to 10717MHz, so that’s got me concerned also.  I also use it as a client for SageTV for the bedroom.

built in 2005
Antec SLK-3700BQE case
Seasonic S12 430W power supply
Athlon X2 64 3800+ socket 939 CPU w/ Zalman CPS7000B-CU cooler
MSI Neo2 Platinum motherboard w/ Zalman NB heatsink added
2 GB DDR RAM in Dual Channel config
ATI AIW X800XT AGP video card
Seagate 160GB and 200GB IDE hard drives
A-open DVD reader and NEC 3540A DVD burner (both IDE)
combo floppy drive/card reader
Windows XP Pro SP2

I was thinking of either rebuilding it with a new mb/cpu/ram/video card or buying a dell, and then storing music/digital photos/home videos on it on a second hard drive.  And then share that hard drive across the network so that SageTV can see it and play the music/videos/pictures from the drive through the media area.  Is that possible?  I would then have more access to them to work flow them, print/share, backup, etc, and wouldn’t be a the whim of when the HTPC wasn’t being used…

A couple of builds for the bedroom PC were suggested (I want to get a 23″ish monitor that is 1080P also).

AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Deneb 3.2GHz Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core Processor ASUS M4A79XTD EVO AM3 AMD 790X ATX AMD Motherboard
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory

or Intel, which has better perofrmance:

Gigabyte P55-UD4P LGA 1156 motherboard with Intel P55 Express chipset
Intel Core i5-750 2.66 GHz, 4 Cores, 8.0MB L3 Cache CPU
Memory 2 x A-Data 2.0GB DDR3-1333 Dual-Channel Kit 2 x 2.0GB (4.0GB Total), CAS 8-8-8-24

Common components:
Radeon HD 5770 (CrossFireX)
Corsair CMPSU-750HX 750W ATX12V, EPS12V , 80-Plus Certified Power Supply

Any thoughts on any of this?

Thanks,
Mike

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