TV Your PC
Guest columnist Justice Lai throws in his geek sense with the final part in our guide to building the ultimate home theater. This week: The PC
Although you can find a ready-made PC anywhere from Wan Chai to Sham Shui Po priced considerably lower than this, when it comes to building a Home Theater PC, quality components are a necessary consideration. All of the systems in this guide have the ability to play both High-Definition formats available (Blu-Ray and HD-DVD) and have enough processing power to be able to copy, decode and play back compressed video files (DivX / XVID / x264). The parts we’ve selected are some of the highest quality available and have all been chosen for the specific task of high-definition movie playback. Quality components and near silent operation are.
Top-end
And now for the top-end, where money really doesn’t matter and even though there really isn’t much more we can add to the PC to justify the price, for the top dollar, this is where it’s at. At this price we have one of the most beautiful computer cases ever constructed, and one that may just give your brand new 70” HDTV a run for its money when it comes to living room talking points. We’ve included a quad-core Intel processor, along with doubling the memory, and for those that absolutely must put video game consoles to shame, two NVIDIA Geforce 8800GT video cards in SLI. The power supply I’ve chosen is not only is it practically indestructible, its also extremely quiet and efficient. At this level, silence and performance are key requirements, alongside style and form. This HTPC configuration will not play back all of your Blu-ray or HD-DVD collections, but will allow you to burn a Blu-ray disc with a capacity of up to 50Gb.
Processor Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 (2.4Ghz 65W Kentsfield 2Mb L2) $2,150
CPU Cooler Thermalright SI-128SE w/ Nexus Real Silent Case Fan $550
Motherboard XFX NF780I SLI ATX $2,780
Memory Mushkin 4Gb (2x2Gb) DDR2-1066 $2,200
Video Card EVGA GeForce 8800GT 512Mb 256-bit GDDR3 PCIe 2.0 $2,800
Video Card 2 EVGA GeForce 8800GT 512Mb 256-bit GDDR3 PCIe 2.0 $2,800
Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 Video Card Coolers x2 $500
Hard Drive Samsung Spinpoint T166 500Gb HD501LJ $870
Hard Drive 2 Western Digital Caviar GP WD10EACS 1TB $2,350
Hard Drive 3 Western Digital Caviar GP WD10EACS 1TB $2,350
Optical Drive Sony Blu-ray Rewritable Drive $5,800
Case Silverstone CW03B-MT ATX $5,500
PSU Seasonic M12-700W $1,500
Keyboard/Mouse Microsoft Bluetooth Entertainment Desktop 8000 $2,100
Operating System Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate Retail $1,600
TOTAL $35,850
Mid-range
Currently Intel are riding high with the performance crown, and as anyone who builds their own PC will know, the only real option above the budget low-end is Intel. As the budget increases we see a switch to much better performing components, peripherals, as well as having the ability to play the latest PC games in high-definition. The inclusion of two 1 Terabyte (1000Gb) hard drives means we have a massive storage ability at our fingertips. Unfortunately these 1TB hard drives are at a premium, adding over $5000 to the system. The Sapphire Radeon HD 3850 is currently my pick for midrange gaming video cards, meaning you can finally throw out that noisy Xbox 360 and start playing games in silence.
Processor Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 (3Ghz) $1,700
CPU Cooler Thermalright SI-128SE w/ Nexus Real Silent Case Fan $550
Motherboard Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX $840
Memory Corsair (2x1Gb) DDR2-800 PC2-640 $400
Video Card Sapphire Radeon HD 3850 256Mb $1,300
Hard Drive 1 Western Digital Caviar GP WD10EACS 1TB $2,650
Hard Drive 2 Western Digital Caviar GP WD10EACS 1TB $2,650
Optical Drive LG Blu-ray / HD-DVD / DVDRW-DL Combo $2,450
Case Zalman HD160B ATX $2,200
PSU Corsair HX520W $660
Keyboard and Mouse Logitech diNovo Edge Bluetooth Mini Keyboard $1,500
Operating System Microsoft Vista Home Premium OEM $1,100
TOTAL $18,000
Budget
My budget configuration is based around an AMD processor and motherboard, which both retail for less than anything from Intel. The interesting thing about the AMD X2 5000+ Black Edition is that it can reach much higher speeds through relatively simple overclocking techniques – without much of the risk associated with such a practice. A simple search on Google will yield numerous websites with a plethora of easy-to-follow guides. Don’t expect to be playing many games on this system though; the lack of a separate video card means this HTPC will play pretty much any high-definition movie you could throw at it, but will struggle with video games.
