Aaron Ledger
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Aaron Ledger
Like Michael said, 20GB is way too small. 60GB should be your minimum size especially considering that they often are going on sale now for $1 per GB or less.
As far as power, I recently measured the DH67BL w/ Core i5-2500k, NVIDIA GTX 560 Ti, 1 SSD, 1 7200RPM drive using a 750W PSU at 59W idle. You should be able to trounce that with a more appropriately sized PSU and just using the integrated Core i5 IPG.
Yes, I think you will have a fine system for what you want to do. It will be low power and cool. I’ve got 4 systems running off DH67BL boards and I am extremely satisfied with their stability, quality and power usage.
I am really not sure what the minimum requirements for passing DCA are, but if it failed it would it should tell you that your machine was not up to snuff instead of crashing. See Pete Brown’s blog entry with screenshots for what a failure looks like.
FWIW, SiliconDust requirements are
- Dual Core PC
- Windows 7
- 2GB RAM
- 4-8GB disk space per hour of HD recording, 1-2GB per hour of SD recording
- 100 or 1000Mbit Ethernet network
- Subscription to digital cable service CableCARD (M-Card) from your cable provider
That should be a system capable of what you are planning. Considering the recent price of memory, you might want to go for 2x4GB of RAM. We’re seeing prices for 8GB kits at $40 or less w/o rebates now. If you go check our hot deals forum, you will see what some of the deals have been for past few weeks.
You may also want to consider a larger size storage drive considering you will not have much room to add new storage internally. Of course, your use case will be the deciding factor here. If you don’t archive much, it won’t be required.
That is plenty of room for an SSD. I have mounted to the side of a case using velcro without issue. The 2.5″ SSD are slim and light so mounting options can usually be found in many non-traditional places when required.
As far as the DCA goes, perhaps uninstalling and reinstalling might be something to try. If you are bypassing it, then it shouldn’t be an issue.
You could try completely wiping out your WMC database and starting from scratch. Start>type cmd and right-click to open as administrator, then use “mcupdate -MediaCenterRecoveryTask”.
Checl out our review of the Wesena HTPC-e5 chassis. It sounds like it may be just what you are looking for. There are a ton of other options out there other than Antec. Wesena also has larger chassis in the e6 and e7.
SSD for OS is recommended if there is money in your budget as it will bring more of a CE experience.
As far as external vs. internal storage, people will use both depending on what the goal is. I’ve gone from having an SSD and 4 HDD to an SSD and 1 HDD for recording with all of my archived storage on a WHS 2011 box.
Have you run the Digital Cable Advisor (DCA)? This tool verifies your system meets the minimum system specifications for using CableCARD in Windows 7. It is also a requirement to use CableCARD. It is available in the Extras gallery in Windows 7 Media Center.
How about “HDMI Detective or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love HDMI”
Yep. Very fast indeed.
Great sleuthing! I am glad you got it working.
This is a decent price. Performance on it is quite a bit lower than its bigger brother.
Where are you seeing better performance from Vertex Plus? According to OCZ, it is close in read performance, but suffers with write performance in comparison to Vertex 2.
Well, that was quick. It looks like people are reporting that the code is no longer working.
Can you not pass your A/V through the AVR to your display? It would likely resolve this issue for you. Or is there a specific reason for your config?
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