*Work in progress, will attach pics later*
I've been mulling the idea of new home theater toys for a while now, and with Ming complaining about the DVDs that are stacked on top of the full DVD rack, around/under the TV, and stuffed in my computer cabinet, I decided now was a good time.
For the HTPC itself, I ordered the below:
http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=14230067
On the initial build, the motherboard was bad, and fried my wireless USB mouse, and USB memstick, that and the onboard NIC not working resulted in an RMA. I'm expecting the new board soon.
The PCI SATA card was an afterthought. I haven't dealt with really large partitions and Windows before. It was enlightening to discover that while I can make a nifty 4.5TB RAID5 array, MBR can only address 2TB, resulting in epic fail on my part, wasting 2.5TB, and a do over. I spent time digging around and decided to try GPT, which would work with a drive array of this size, however I discovered that you have to convert it to GPT before you install Windows, and to get Windows to install on a GPT drive, you must have a motherboard that supports EFI. Mine doesn't so I was boned with my array size.
My initial idea to get around this was to simply pull a drive from the array, but then found that lolWindows would not allow me to install to the single drive when I had the RAID BIOS loaded. This put me back into the boat I was in on the previous paragraph. It seems with this board it's all or none... I ordered a $20 pci sata card to stick in with one of the raptors out of my old box to use as an OS drive, which will then allow me to format the original 4.5TB array in GPT so Windows can fully utilize all of the space.
I did pull the ram (8GB PC800) from my old PC to stick in this, as well as my Xeon 3.0GHz Wolfdale.
I lapped the CPU and heatsink. The CPU was quick and easy to lap as the material on top of the core is really soft. The HSF was a different story, it's really top heavy so it was hard to keep it stable while I was wet sanding it. It wanted to tip and snag the sand paper. I finally resorted spinning the damnable thing, so lapping took ~2hrs.
The 80mm fans I ordered have rheostats you can use to control fan speed and with those set on low, you simply cannot hear this machine from more than 5-6 feet away unless you really listen for it.
Once I get the new mobo and controller card in, I'll put it back together again and update this. I should be able to store all of my DVDs on this, plus record plenty of HD content.
I must mention the remote before I forget. It's bloody awesome. You program it for activities. I.e., you push "Watch DVD" and it will turn on the TV, change the input to HDMI, turn on the DVD player, turn on the recevier, turn it to DVD input. Then you push volume, and the volume on the receiver goes up/down, push play, the DVD plays, etc. No more remote juggling or switching devices on the universal remote. It was kinda pricey, but damn it's nice. It's great for Ming's mom too. I tried to get her to turn the receiver off after she was done watching the TV for 6 months. Now she pushes the off button, and the remote turns everything off. I currently have it set up for TV, tuner, DVD, PS2, XBox360, Wii, and will add the HTPC when it's done.
I'm going to finish parting out the rest of my gaming rig and Ebay it. I'll stick with this and my laptop for the time being. I think all that is left is the EVGA NV780i motherboard, two 8800GTX superclocked with aftermarket coolers, Sound Blaster X-Fi PCI, DVD +/-RW, 850w OCZ PSU, and three WD RaptorX 150GB HDDs.
I've been mulling the idea of new home theater toys for a while now, and with Ming complaining about the DVDs that are stacked on top of the full DVD rack, around/under the TV, and stuffed in my computer cabinet, I decided now was a good time.
For the HTPC itself, I ordered the below:
http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=14230067
On the initial build, the motherboard was bad, and fried my wireless USB mouse, and USB memstick, that and the onboard NIC not working resulted in an RMA. I'm expecting the new board soon.
The PCI SATA card was an afterthought. I haven't dealt with really large partitions and Windows before. It was enlightening to discover that while I can make a nifty 4.5TB RAID5 array, MBR can only address 2TB, resulting in epic fail on my part, wasting 2.5TB, and a do over. I spent time digging around and decided to try GPT, which would work with a drive array of this size, however I discovered that you have to convert it to GPT before you install Windows, and to get Windows to install on a GPT drive, you must have a motherboard that supports EFI. Mine doesn't so I was boned with my array size.
My initial idea to get around this was to simply pull a drive from the array, but then found that lolWindows would not allow me to install to the single drive when I had the RAID BIOS loaded. This put me back into the boat I was in on the previous paragraph. It seems with this board it's all or none... I ordered a $20 pci sata card to stick in with one of the raptors out of my old box to use as an OS drive, which will then allow me to format the original 4.5TB array in GPT so Windows can fully utilize all of the space.
I did pull the ram (8GB PC800) from my old PC to stick in this, as well as my Xeon 3.0GHz Wolfdale.
I lapped the CPU and heatsink. The CPU was quick and easy to lap as the material on top of the core is really soft. The HSF was a different story, it's really top heavy so it was hard to keep it stable while I was wet sanding it. It wanted to tip and snag the sand paper. I finally resorted spinning the damnable thing, so lapping took ~2hrs.
The 80mm fans I ordered have rheostats you can use to control fan speed and with those set on low, you simply cannot hear this machine from more than 5-6 feet away unless you really listen for it.
Once I get the new mobo and controller card in, I'll put it back together again and update this. I should be able to store all of my DVDs on this, plus record plenty of HD content.
I must mention the remote before I forget. It's bloody awesome. You program it for activities. I.e., you push "Watch DVD" and it will turn on the TV, change the input to HDMI, turn on the DVD player, turn on the recevier, turn it to DVD input. Then you push volume, and the volume on the receiver goes up/down, push play, the DVD plays, etc. No more remote juggling or switching devices on the universal remote. It was kinda pricey, but damn it's nice. It's great for Ming's mom too. I tried to get her to turn the receiver off after she was done watching the TV for 6 months. Now she pushes the off button, and the remote turns everything off. I currently have it set up for TV, tuner, DVD, PS2, XBox360, Wii, and will add the HTPC when it's done.
I'm going to finish parting out the rest of my gaming rig and Ebay it. I'll stick with this and my laptop for the time being. I think all that is left is the EVGA NV780i motherboard, two 8800GTX superclocked with aftermarket coolers, Sound Blaster X-Fi PCI, DVD +/-RW, 850w OCZ PSU, and three WD RaptorX 150GB HDDs.
