Aaron Ledger
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swoon
Do you have anything like Norton that can prevent you from making changes to System Restore?
Definitely a price mistake. Look for the cancellation e-mail!
Moved to Hot Deals.
Similar to HDD, SSDs also have issues. From my experience, they either work without issue or don’t work. I have the 96GB Kingston V+100 in addition to a G. Skill Phoenix Pro 120GB and an OCZ Vertex 2 120GB. I have had no issues whatsoever with the Kingston or the G. Skill. I had to RMA twice the OCZ in order to get one that worked without issue. Even Intel has had issues with their 320 model that you are looking at.
In general, I expect SSD to have a much more reliable and longer lifespan than HDD though there isn’t a whole lot of hard evidence yet since commercial markets have just started using SSDs in increasing numbers. They are just NAND “Flash” memory which has been around for a long time and is in many products both in consumer and commercial markets. There are sometimes issues that have cropped up with SSDs though in practice, it seems no different than HDD issues we have seen and manufacturers do seem to be responsive in correcting issues either by issuing new firmware or replacing the drives. Whether you go for SSD or HDD, backup and be safe. Always expect the next failure.
Also, contrary to much of what you might read or hear about having to “tune” for SSDs, if you’re running Windows 7, there’s not much that really has to be done. If you install Win7 on the SSD from the start (make sure drive has latest firmware), it should recognize the drive as an SSD, enable TRIM, turn off defrag, etc. (run WEI and check if you want to be sure). With any modern SSD and Win7 it’s not necessary to disable page file, move a bunch of OS stuff off the SSD, etc.
Your AVerMedia M780 is a low-profile card according to the linked datasheet. You’ll just need to dig out the bracket that came with it.
Hi Jon,
Your choice of motherboard is excellent (I have four of them myself). Especially since you use networking features to communicate with your WHS and potentially networking your InfiniTV, the importance of having a quality NIC like that in the DH67BL can’t be stressed enough. On the surface, it may appear that AMD is cheaper, but buy an add-in NIC and you’ve negated much of the price advantage not to mention lost an expansion slot and potentially limited your chassis choice.
Do you really need the power of the i5-2500k in your HTPC? If you won’t be doing commercial skipping or other CPU-intense activity, then you don’t need that much CPU. An i3-2100 should be plenty without compromising performance.
The SeaSonic supply is excellent, but you don’t need nearly that much wattage unless you’ll be using multiple higher-end gaming-caliber GPUs. It is also going to waste power for your config. Power supply efficiency drops dramatically when load is less than 20%. I recommend you look for something more in the 300 – 400W range. If you want to stick with SeaSonic, take a look at the S12II 380B. You’ll also save quite a bit.
Intel is a fine choice for SSD. If you want to cut off $50 (or more), check out the 96GB Kingston V+100 SSD. For HTPC use especially, the performance increases of the more expensive SSDs are not going to be all that noticeable. This model often goes on sale (as you can see from our Hot Deals forum). I use this model for my HTPC with the i3-2100 and DH67BL and I am very happy with it. Boot times are MUCH faster than powering on a cable STB from the off state which measure into the minutes. It is true that SSD is a luxury. It helps with system responsiveness. There is a noticeable improvement when opening guide, accessing anything database related like a movie library, recorded TV history, schedule, etc. I won’t build another HTPC or desktop without one.
The HDD should be fine. If you are doing commercial skip analysis, you should consider a 7200 RPM model.
Unless you have some non-low-profile expansion cards, you may want to consider a low-profile chassis and also one that will allow internal IR.
You didn’t mention DRAM. It is so cheap right now, you should buy 8GB and at minimum 4GB since you are using two extenders.
Guess what, I tried out your idea of using internal IR through the fan in the TJ08-E and it works as long as the IR isn’t too far off axis. You can look forward to a full review of this chassis on Missing Remote.
You should install the “Intel Rapid Storage Technology” driver and the “Gigabyte SATA2 Driver” listed on that page. Your board has two controllers. One is the the native Intel controller inside the P55 chipset and the other is a separate add-on Gigabyte chip.
Also, make sure your recording drive is on the Intel controller. It should be clear from your board manual which ports belong to which controller. It is probably also indicated in silk on the board. The reason for this suggestion is that the Intel controller is much more widely used than the Gigabyte one. I have no reason to believe the Gigabyte chip is an underperformer, but for now, it is probably best to eliminate that variable.
You shouldn’t need the F6 driver which is only used during Windows install sequence when you want to use RAID or if MS had no driver that could control your SATA I/O. All you need is the normal Intel RST driver executable to get the appropriate SATA driver.
You should probably update your BIOS to the latest. Depending on what has changed, you may not “need” to, but it shouldn’t hurt.
At least when using Xbox 360 as an extender, there is no issue. Back when I used the 360, it would WOL the PC without issue.
I have a copy that I just got around to installing and I didn’t notice any patches so I guess not.
Have you tried out Andrew’s DVRMSToolbox?
No reason to be sorry. It was that low when I posted the link. E-tailers change pricing all the time and rapidly.
[quote=oliverredfox]
sweat spot
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😀
Thanks for the update. Here is the link to WHS2011 on Newegg.
Thanks for letting me know that! I will definitely be running without teaming to start with and maybe play around with it once I have established a baseline performance.
Folks, let’s stay on topic here. There are no stupid questions and no apologies must be made. The goal of these forums is to share and exchange ideas. We all have different experiences and we all can stand to learn a thing or two no matter who we are. Sometimes we may not see things obvious to some which is understandable given the complex nature of technology.
Public Service Announcement over, carry on.
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