need advice for a rig that'll only be used for music.

[bakaris]

As the topic says, I need advice for a computer that will only be used to play mp3s. It's for the staff room at my work. no games, only music. I have the logitech z560s at home, and i think i'll get another pair of those for the speakers, and a 60GB hdd, but i need advice for the rest of the components. Any help is much appreciated. Thanks.

 

[BatmanNate]

You only NEED about a Pentium 90 or so to decode MP3, and 16-32mb ram would work assuming you were using an older OS on the system.

 

[Oyeve]

Its called "radio", I hear they are fairly cheap now.

 

[eriqesque]

<< Its called "radio", I hear they are fairly cheap now. >>




ROTFLMAO Nuf said huh.

 

[Viper GTS]

There's a nice little Socket A MicroATX board in Hot Deals for $45. Add a slow Duron, a quiet HS/fan. For the HD, I'd look into one of the new fluid bearing Maxtors, or a Seagate Barracuda IV.

Add a cheap PCI video card, a 128 or 256 MB DDR stick, & a cheap CDROM + Micro ATX case (the gray cube one is kinda cool) & you'd have a powerful, quiet box that should work nicely for MP3's.

Viper GTS

 

[Mavrick007]

Are you going to dnload them from work or just play them there? If you aren't going to dnload them from work, then just get an mp3 player and hook it up to a small receiver and speakers. No need for a computer.

 

[CTho9305]

<< You only NEED about a Pentium 90 or so to decode MP3, and 16-32mb ram would work assuming you were using an older OS on the system. >>


Personally I'd recommend a P120 or 133 if you play higher bitrate MP3s (the only p100 i've tried gets fairly high CPU usage with higher bitrates). Grab yourself a soundblaster 16, any old socket5 mobo, and 16 meg ram. 8 meg if you use a DOS-based player (which allows you to boot in under 5 seconds).

 

[Eug]

<< As the topic says, I need advice for a computer that will only be used to play mp3s. It's for the staff room at my work. no games, only music. I have the logitech z560s at home, and i think i'll get another pair of those for the speakers, and a 60GB hdd, but i need advice for the rest of the components. Any help is much appreciated. Thanks. >>



1) Easily rippoffable method

Portable MP3/CD player: $100
Amplified speakers: You already have them.

or

2) Best method

MP3/CD ghetto blaster: $250

or

3) Pain in the @ss method:

Pentium 166 with Win 98SE
64 MB SDRAM
CD-ROM
Amplified speakers
10 GB hard drive
14" monitor
Cheap sound card.

I have used Option 1. My colleague has option 2 for her office and it's sweet. Option 3 takes up too much space. I have also used an Audio Receiver to stream MP3 over the network, but that presumes you have an active network jack in that office and it costs as much as the MP3 ghetto blaster. The benefit for me is that I have my entire 30 GB MP3 collection browseable from that tiny little box.

 

[BD231]

Just build a sh*ty computer and your set dude.

 

[tdawg]

if you're going to use a 4.1 speaker system, i would mate it with a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz sound card. From everything i've read, these are the best.

...My brother has the z560's and they're awesome! Good choice. What kind of office do you work in/preside over that you are able to do this? It sounds like my kind of place.

~tdawg

 

[Siddhartha]

I would recommend a system with a 100 mHz or faster cpu, >128 meg RAM, and a fairly large hd. I got an used IBM Thinkpad 300 mHz laptop with 256 meg RAM and a 18 gig hard drive for playing mp3s, MS Office, and accessing the internet and email while on the road. It works really well.