Fao TIPSTIR....in need of HTPC advice please

k.jacko said:

thanks for the advice pal, i appreciate that you're busy.
Unfortunately there's no way i can build separate gaming and htpc rigs. I have 3 kids!!!!!
What i will say though is that the htpc will only really be for watching/recording live tv, watching dvd's, playing music etc. There will not really be any streaming done. I suppose you could say its a gaming rig with a tv tuner card in it. Albeit i do want a smallish case. I think, unless i'm persuaded otherwise that i'll probably go for the Silverstone LC-17b case, here

Do you not think Vista Home Premium would suffice, seeing as its half the price of Ultimate?

Will research the haupauge uk web site for details on sky.

I'll let you what i find out, thanks again!

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I understand but once the PC starts recording then when you access such a machine to watch Live TV they you already have the system working very hard. Then to play games on such a system it may crash or run out of memory. 1GB of RAM is good enough.. But under Vista 2GB would better..

You can try it and run games, but you might not be happy. I have to build systems to do many things. The file, print, web, music server is one PC but I never touch it. I remote into it to check on things once in a while. The same goes for the HTPC and MediaMVP Server. I even got a caller ID server when calls comes in the girl friday takes and manages the calls and sends me balloons popups telling me who calls.

But try it and let me know how you make out...

playing games and watching tv at the same time is possible, although as above, doing too many things will impact your system dearly, especially if its one of those very demanding games. But i think that you'd be either recording the tv for later and play the game full screen or not use the tv cards at all whilst gaming..

there's always going to be a trade off in specs for a gaming rig and a media centre pc. Gaming rigs you'd try and get the best possible combinations of parts (possibly high end) to play the games smoothly and last you a bit longer with lots of upgrade options, MPCs you can go as cheap as you want (only things important are tv cards, hdds and some custom features) although some smaller forms of mpcs would be hard to easily upgrade. They both can play games, but how well is the question. Same applies to watching/recording tv.

Vista home prem is fine for your case, unless you need all the extra stuff that ultimate has. Seeing that its just for the kids, yeh.. unless they know how to take the advantages of ultimate. And i'd agree with 2Gb of ram. Look at Coolermaster or Zalman for your cooling options as they are very good, and some models are also very silent (good thing if its going in the bedroom - fan noise makes you go crazy if you forget to turn off your pc and fall asleep). The case you've listed is good, has lots of space and cooling features, also able to fit full sized atx components.

The pc i'm currently on is used as one of those multipurpose pcs that does tv, gaming, study, web, media creation etc and sometimes i do multitask, although most times i usually turn off everything and just use it for that particular function. That being said, i don't run vista nor have room for multiple tv cards on this rig, so performance issues for having lots of things happening i can't really say.....