Rate My Hardware

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ZollyMonsta

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#35977 17-Jun-2009 22:11

Just put together my first HTPC... Here's the specs...

1 x Raidmax RS-500, 500W ATX PSU, Black
1 x Silverstone SST-LC17 ATX Home Theatre Case, Black
1 x LG Electronics GGC-H20L Blu-ray drive, BD 6R/DVD 16R/16W/8RW, Internal, SATA, Black, LightScribe, HD
1 x Kingston HyperX KHX8500D2K2/2G, 2x1GB, DIMM, DDR2-1066
1 x Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400 2.66 GHz, 1333MHz FSB, Socket 775, Retail pack with fan
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST31000333AS Hard Disk Drive, 1000GB, 7200rpm, 32MB Cache, SATA-2
1 x Asus P5QL-EM Motherboard, Socket 775, 1333MHz FSB, 4xDIMM DDR2, PCIe-16, 1xPCI, 2xPCIe-1, 12xUSB2, Firewire, Audio, Video, 1xATA, 7xSATA, BTX

No cards or anything at this stage. Mainly will be used for Internet, BluRay movies and as a NAS storage device.

Just installing Windows 7 RC now... will be the first time playing with a non xp OS.

davidcole

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#225997 17-Jun-2009 22:15

t'nother harddrive?

Or how are you partitioning the one you have? I'd recommend split off 60gb or so for OS, and then get imaging software. Nothing destroys WAF like a non working system. So if you can fiddle with it during the day, and then revert to an image after screwing it, then all the better.

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ZollyMonsta

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#226004 17-Jun-2009 22:29

Yup.. I have 200gb partioned off for boot drive... Windows 7 created a 100 meg system partition for some reason.. I guess this is normal? The rest (around 700gb) will be a partition for all data.. I'll probably add another hard drive at a later stage. I'm waiting for windows 7 to rate my HTPC's performance... :)

Regs

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Snowflake

#226006 17-Jun-2009 22:35

i'd also recommend looking into VHD booting on windows 7 - saves you having to stuff around with partitions if you decide to do a 'clean install' on the release of win 7 final.

i also read somewhere recently that Intel have recently released some beta drivers for win 7 for their video processors - might be useful in offloading h.264 decoding to the video chip

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ZollyMonsta

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#226007 17-Jun-2009 22:35

got a score of 4.1 out of the possible 7.9... Graphics rated the lowest (Aero) and Processor got 7.2

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Snowflake

#226008 17-Jun-2009 22:36

may be worth looking for that beta driver then :)

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ZollyMonsta

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#226014 17-Jun-2009 22:56

Beta driver? ooo Windows Media Centre (gets distracted).

Fun with the motherboard drivers... most dont want to run due to it being an unrecognised version of windows. lol

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Snowflake

#226015 17-Jun-2009 22:58

here is the link to the win7 beta graphics driver, assuming it works with the asus board - http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&ProductID=2931&DwnldID=17709&strOSs=189&OSFullName=Windows%207,%2032-bit*&lang=eng

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ZollyMonsta

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#226033 17-Jun-2009 23:17

Gave it a go... that pushed it up to 4.3 for graphics.. :)

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Snowflake

#226035 17-Jun-2009 23:19

lol. 0.2 improvement. perhaps it does a better job of bluray acceleration though, so it might not be as bad as it seems :)

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ZollyMonsta

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#226046 18-Jun-2009 00:16

Hmmm having trouble sleeping.. bloody cold.. :( Tell me, does Bluray playback come standard with Windows 7? I have a cd that came with the LG Blu Ray drive but haven't installed it yet... Don't yet have a blu ray disc to try.

Nety

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#226052 18-Jun-2009 06:20

Nope no native bluray playback. You have to use third party software. What software did the LG come with?

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Microsoft

#226514 19-Jun-2009 02:46

Regs,

Remember, the beta will reboot every two hours starting July 1st. If you have not moved to the Win 7 Release Candidate, please do so here: http://tinyurl.com/cwl3fs

Jessica
Microsoft Windows Client Team

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Snowflake

#226822 19-Jun-2009 19:20

Jessica, well worth pointing that out. I'm already on the RC on my htpc and work laptop and as soon as the RTM makes it to MSDN you can bet i'll be on that straight away :-)

I initially only installed win7 mc for testing, but my xp mce lost all the channels on the dvb-s and i couldnt re-tune for some reason so i made the jump :P

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ZollyMonsta

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#226824 19-Jun-2009 19:24

I'm running the release candidate. It's been good so far.. I've been using Windows XP and never had a chance to play with Vista.

Some oddities I'm still trying to work out.. Quicktime was working yesterday, but today when I click on it nothing happens. Also having issues with random static on the audio via HDMI.

Windows 7 has played every video format I've thrown at it natively so far. Except BluRay.
I installed the software that came with the BluRay drive tonight (Cyberlink) and works well. Doesn't appear to be a time based trial either.

The Quicktime issue and the random static over HDMI has got me puzzled at the moment... oh and one more thing, putting the HTPC into sleep mode, as soon as it goes to sleep it wakes up again. puzzling.