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Last minute reality check before I whip out the credit card

F

Fatt

Senior member
I'm going to build one of those Shuttle SB65G2 865PE Socket 478 systems.

I already have an ATI All-In Wonder card and a Plextor "everything" burner, and I'm going to buy that 36g WD Raptor SATA hard drive. (Also getting an IDE to SATA adaptor for the plextor.)

I'm going to use the 2.4GHz 800FSB HT P4 and the Corsair TWINX Dual Channel PC3200 DDR 400MHz (2 x 256MB) Memory.

This is for a nice high performance (but not overclocked) home system to be used for general purposes and as a personal video recorder.

Basically, two questions:

1) Anything I'm ovelooking?

2) Should I go for 1024m of RAM or is 512m plenty?
 
Hmm looks like a pretty powerful small form factor rig.

How hot is the Raptor? It's a pretty small space in there and I can't remember if the Raptor is really hot or not.
 
Reality check: P4 = waste of money
Reality check: An athlon XP will be cheaper, faster, and will get you more chicks.

Get the SN45G.

Why? Cheaper for one.
But more importantly, the nforce2 is the only solution to encode in 5.1 Dolby Digital. You can then feed that DD5.1 Signal to a HiFi amp that will then do output it to a home theatre. Its the optimal solution. Pure DD5.1. Since youre using it as a video recorder, im sure youll want to output the videos you record through digital tv into DD5.1.

You wont be able to plug Sata in it though, which is good becasue if its a home system, the raptor is a pretty loud disk, and you wont notice the difference. You will get better performance if you stick more ram.
 
I don't do Athalon.

Could you expand more on the nForce2 comment though?
I don't even know what that is, although I do know what 5.1 audio is.

I'd also like to know why you feel the way you do about the raptor.
 
ION -

I think I may add in a couple of small fans to move air through the side vents. I'll have to actually get my hands on the case to see what kind of space I have to work with, but I also have a HD fan, if I have the room for one.
 
I think for video related work, P4 really shines. As for RAM, 512 should be alright, but if you are doing alot of video-encoding (like converting your recorded shows to DivX etc), then you might wanna go for a gig.
 
The athlon has shown time and time again that it is a faster cpu for video editing comparing it to a same speed P4. I just encoded a divx movie in one hour, it took one and a half on my friends P4 2.6 with a gig of ram, and I have 512.

The nForce audio chipset is the ONLY one out there that can do 5.1 Dolby Digital encoding in real time. That means that if you have an audio source being outputed throught the nforce with the DD5.1 encoer on, the signal will come out in dolby digital 5.1 goodness. This is the best for video recorders because if youre recording from digital tv, you will keep the dolby digital audio in an AC3 or an Ogg file or whatever other audio file that supports 5.1. This is great, but an amp needs a digital 5.1 signal so it can output it to your speakers properly. The nForce is the only audio chipset that can do that.
Its stupid how not even an audigy 2 can do it, but there you go. If creative labs would put DD5.1 into heir soundblaster line, it would be the card of choise for home theatres.
I mean prologic 2 can emulate and do pretty neat stuff with a stereo signal, but its nothing compared to a true DD5.1 signal.

The raptor is a great disk, for servers. Its fast and has great transfer rates. But its expensive, loud and hot.
If youre gonna use a video recorder keep in mind that you might want to uncompress video for editing. And that takes up allot of space. 40 gigs is nowhere near enough. Youll need a 200 gig hard drive to cope with a decent amount of videos. Unless you burn it all in DVDs, but then youll only be able to fit a couple of hours of video into 30 gigs. Keep in mind that your OS, Apps, video editing software, tuner and capture software, games, all that will take up space, before you know it youll have no space to record videos on.
 
Originally posted by: derekblankmccoy
The athlon has shown time and time again that it is a faster cpu for video editing comparing it to a same speed P4. I just encoded a divx movie in one hour, it took one and a half on my friends P4 2.6 with a gig of ram, and I have 512.

The nForce audio chipset is the ONLY one out there that can do 5.1 Dolby Digital encoding in real time. That means that if you have an audio source being outputed throught the nforce with the DD5.1 encoer on, the signal will come out in dolby digital 5.1 goodness. This is the best for video recorders because if youre recording from digital tv, you will keep the dolby digital audio in an AC3 or an Ogg file or whatever other audio file that supports 5.1. This is great, but an amp needs a digital 5.1 signal so it can output it to your speakers properly. The nForce is the only audio chipset that can do that.
Its stupid how not even an audigy 2 can do it, but there you go. If creative labs would put DD5.1 into heir soundblaster line, it would be the card of choise for home theatres.
I mean prologic 2 can emulate and do pretty neat stuff with a stereo signal, but its nothing compared to a true DD5.1 signal.
Click to expand...


P4 is usually faster for video encoding...
Same here


What you're saying about the 5.1 output makes no sense. If you're recording stereo TV sound, then you're better off outputting a stereo signal to your receiver and let it do 5.1. And if you're recording a 5.1 AC3 stream from HDTV (not even sure you can), then any sound card with digital output can pass it through to the receiver.

If you start with a stereo stream, encoding it into 5.1 AC3 won't make it sound any better than using Prologic 2. nForce2 DD encoding is only useful for games since most support 4.1 or 5.1.
 
Speed -
Is DivX what you have to turn your recorded shows into to burn them to DVD?

Derek -
I just bought a Raptor with an OEM full copy of XP Home for $183.
BTW, how many gigs do you need to record one hour of television?

I ask because there's nothing stopping me from buying a WD 250GB SATA150 7200 RPM Hard Drive. It's only $254.
I actually had planned to burn to CD or DVD, depending on how much space I need.
I was thinking of this more in terms of using it to record regular TV and doing timeshifting, then just delting the shows after I watch them, but if HD space is more of an issue than I thought then I want to take that into consideration.
 
No actually I dont think u can burn DivX. But DivX is a type of compression to store video. It allows to store a pretty good quality 2hour movie at 700megs! But you need to uncompress to MPEG4 I think to burn VCDS and DVDS. Also, if you get a P4, it should be able to convert your shows faster to DivX, so you can store more! A 30 minute show that looks decent quality enough to display on a TV is around 200megs with DivX.
 
Originally posted by: Fatt
Speed -
Is DivX what you have to turn your recorded shows into to burn them to DVD?

Derek -
I just bought a Raptor with an OEM full copy of XP Home for $183.
BTW, how many gigs do you need to record one hour of television?

I ask because there's nothing stopping me from buying a WD 250GB SATA150 7200 RPM Hard Drive. It's only $254.
I actually had planned to burn to CD or DVD, depending on how much space I need.
I was thinking of this more in terms of using it to record regular TV and doing timeshifting, then just delting the shows after I watch them, but if HD space is more of an issue than I thought then I want to take that into consideration.
Click to expand...

No, DVD is MPEG-2 video.

DVD format is variable bitrate up to 10Mbps. Let's say it averages 6-7Mbps, 1 hour of video would take about 3GB.
 
Originally posted by: Fatt
Speed -
Is DivX what you have to turn your recorded shows into to burn them to DVD?

Derek -
I just bought a Raptor with an OEM full copy of XP Home for $183.
BTW, how many gigs do you need to record one hour of television?

I ask because there's nothing stopping me from buying a WD 250GB SATA150 7200 RPM Hard Drive. It's only $254.
I actually had planned to burn to CD or DVD, depending on how much space I need.
I was thinking of this more in terms of using it to record regular TV and doing timeshifting, then just delting the shows after I watch them, but if HD space is more of an issue than I thought then I want to take that into consideration.
Click to expand...

Sorry, didnt know you were rich, hehe.
I never remember paying for an actual copy of Windows.
Recording one hour. Depends on what compression method you use.
If youre gonna do allot of editing afterwards, then youll need about 20 gigs. If youre just cutting and joining, you can get away with divx and virtauldub or nandub. then you only need about a gig.
Also if youre in the US, then you have a crap NTSC signal with lower resolution and you wont need much space since you can switch to a framerate of 23.976. If youre in europe however youll need a tad more space, since the signal has a higher res, and the framerate is 25 or 30 depending on your choice.
If its regular TV, then I guess youre allright with stereo, and letting your amp emulate the surround sound. But if youre doing Digital TV, or freeview with a digital signal, you want an nForce.
 
I have a Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 PCI hooked up digitally to my JVC 5.1 surround reciever and it sounds great! These cards can be had for fairly cheap.

I never remember paying for an actual copy of Windows.
Click to expand...

tsk tsk...
 
OK, so for the way I'm actually meaning this to be used, the 36g will do just fine.


More thoughts on RAM...

Should I bother with a full gig or stick with 512?
 
Maybe you should get a wireless lan card? I just hate wires.
You could network it with your other computers and use them for mass storage.

I've built two shuttles so far. They're great and so small I take them all over the place like an uber powerful laptop.
Just be careful not to get really hot drives. Oh, you should mess with your bios fan settings and make sure your ram is really running the speed you want it to.
As for the ram, I like 2 sticks. P4's the way to go

Good Luck
 
Originally posted by: Fatt
OK, so for the way I'm actually meaning this to be used, the 36g will do just fine.


More thoughts on RAM...

Should I bother with a full gig or stick with 512?
Click to expand...

Well, considering how you said the Raptor was 'only' $254, I'd say go for the one gig and be done with it 😀

My 2c
 
Originally posted by: Kai920


Well, considering how you said the Raptor was 'only' $254, I'd say go for the one gig and be done with it.
Click to expand...


No, I said the 250g WD with the 8m buffer was only 254.

The raptor was 183 and that was WITH a full OEM copy of XP home.
By itself the raptor is only $105.
 
BTW, once you want to start working with video captures from camcorders etc, you'll want to go with avi-->mpeg 2 conversion. This lets you get the highest quality captures that are dvd disk compatible. Even with the huffyuv compression codec, two hours of vid can be 16gb. For anything with video, I"d say get a big drive.

Oh and the 250GB $254 is really expensive considering you can get 160GB drives for $80 or less.
 
Well, in a situation where you can put in multiple drives for lots of storage, an array of smaller drives is a great idea.
But in a SFF computer, where you have room for ONE hard drive, it pays to go bigger.
Besides, the $254 is for a WD with an 8m buffer. I personally use Pentium Chips & WD hard drives exclusively.

Still looking for more thoughts on the memory question though...
 
I never remember paying for an actual copy of Windows.
Click to expand...

Maybe that's why those of us that do ALWAYS remember it, because they pass those piracy costs on to the legit people. :disgust:
rolleye.gif
 
Originally posted by: Fatt
I don't do Athalon.

Could you expand more on the nForce2 comment though?
I don't even know what that is, although I do know what 5.1 audio is.

I'd also like to know why you feel the way you do about the raptor.
Click to expand...

Hahaha Athalon....soooo out of the loop
 
Don't bother with a SATA adaptor for the CD-Drive: IT WON'T FIT!

Trust me, the case is cramped enough as it is and there is hardly any clearance behind a normal CD-drive and the rear wall. Just use the supplied ATA-100 cabel. It is nicely routed out of the way of everything and shouldn't be a problem.

Also the Raptor is IMO not really ideal for the cramped case: It will get very hot and those Shuttles aren't exactly quiet to begin with - uness noise is not an issue of course-
 
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