TheShanMan

[TheShanMan]

Yes, it is. I contacted Hauppauge support and we concluded that the device is defective. New one is on the way.

[TheShanMan]

Thanks a bunch guys. Guess it doesn’t make much sense to go with the g620 then. And it looks like my hunch was correct so I’ll definitely go with a bigger ssd. Can’t wait to get this system built since we’ve been sans directv for 1.5 weeks and no dvr is killing us. 😉

[TheShanMan]

Turns out my friend can’t get a discount on [i]all[/i] the intel stuff, so he suggested an i5-2500 in place of the g620 which through him won’t be much more expensive than a g620 from newegg. How would the i5-2500 compare to the g620 in terms of power usage/cooling requirements? For the sake of comparison I should probably assume that I’d underclock the i5 for similar performance. The nice thing would be the ability to ramp up the clock if I find it necessary down the line. But I also don’t want to pay a bit more if I won’t see any benefit in everyday htpc use if it also will consume significantly more power and require more (noisier) cooling.

Also, he can only get a 20gb ssd or a 120gb, and the discounts aren’t that great. I’m thinking I’ll feel confined by the 20gb as an OS drive (win7) even though I’m not planning to load it up with a ton of apps or anything. Agree or disagree?

Once again, the feedback is greatly appreciated!

[TheShanMan]

Awesome. Thanks for the validation!

[TheShanMan]

Yes, I actually was originally thinking 8gb and 1.5tb but when I started adding up all the costs I wanted to cut back somewhere. It didn’t cut [i]that[/i] much off the total but at the same time I don’t want to pay for performance that won’t really benefit me. I haven’t checked out the hot deals forum yet so I will do that! As for the hard drive space, it’s hard for me to predict because we are in such a paradigm shift going from directv (with dvr) and only playing movies via optical drive and streaming, with a very small amount of playing local content. Time will tell how much our usage will change. I’m sure it will quite a bit. But I figure I can always add a bigger hard drive later and donate the 1tb to another system in the house (1 server, 4 workstations), or archive some stuff on the server as we do now. I also forgot to mention that for the moment, I’m not going to add an optical drive because we’ve got a dedicated bluray player that we’re happy with and that’ll help keep the cost down. Ultimately I’m sure we will though, and the dedicated player will be donated to another room.

So are you agreeing only that this system will perform well or also that it will be relatively low power and therefore require minimal cooling (I actually wonder if running both of the fans in the mobo compartment will be necessary)? I’m probably not as much of a stickler for dead silence as some people here, but certainly the quieter the better!

I appreciate the feedback. Thank you!

[TheShanMan]

Thanks Aaron. I really would like a display assuming it actually works well with media that’s playing so I’m not so sure about that case. After researching more, I’m realizing that depth is a big concern too as the shelves under my tv are only 16 to 17 inches deep (rounded front). So every time I start going down another road case-wise, I end up coming back to this Antec case, which fortunately is barely workable depth wise.

That brings me back to the dual drive issue. I’m leaning toward an SSD for OS drive and a hard drive for media. Even though I could probably live with an external drive, I’m wondering if there’s any chance I could custom mount the SSD drive in this case. I’ve never used SSD before. Looking at this picture of the Antec…

[img]http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/akg/cases/MFR350/fini.jpg[/img]

…it seems like I could just set an ssd drive above the hard drive and behind the VFD module. Does this (or some other crevice) seem like a possible way to get 2 drives in it? Maybe worth a dedicated thread to draw the attention of owners of this case?

[TheShanMan]

I should have said 6″ or less.

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