UlrichWolf Posted February 10, 2011 Report Share Posted February 10, 2011 (edited) I have a decent box now, but circumstances may allow me to upgrade....significantly. I'll toss up my specs here, and I need a few recommendations from some of you..... RaidMax Smilodon Case - I love these.... Corsair Enthusiast Series PSU 650W MSI Mainboard - USB 3.0, and SATA 6.0Gb/s...onboard ATI Radeon HD 4250 or 4350? AMD Phenom X6 3.3 GHZ - TurboSocket to 3.7 G Skill Ripjaws 8 GB DDR3 RAM Hitachi Deskstar 2TB SATA Drive - 6.0 Gb/s 7200 RPM ASUS ATI Radeon 5670 video card - 512 MB ASUS DVD-RW drive Microsoft Windows 7 Professional The bill for this comes to $964.35. Of course, this will go on the 60" screen, so I was thinking about TV Tuners.....I have heard a lot (not a lot good really) about the Hauppage stuff, does anyone know if there is a TV Tuner card I can just plug into the coax line, and get what I have now? For the record, my cable service is very simplistic, I get the locals in analog and in HD, plus the weather channel, and I think I get WGN somehow.....no premium tiers, nothing with a set top box, I get it all with the tuner in the TV. For those of you hung up on details, my television is a Mitsubishi WD 60735, with ATSC, NTSC, and ClearQAM tuning. Advice and recommendations are welcome. Tim Edited February 10, 2011 by UlrichWolf Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Komeuppance Posted February 10, 2011 Report Share Posted February 10, 2011 I'd run an SSD as your OS drive, not that 2TB. -Robert Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scott87star Posted February 10, 2011 Report Share Posted February 10, 2011 Just scratch and be done with it Tim. So much easier and less costly. Scott Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
backslider Posted February 10, 2011 Report Share Posted February 10, 2011 vagisil might help that itch you got. oh, wait, pc's............my bad. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dred_85.5_TSI Posted February 10, 2011 Report Share Posted February 10, 2011 Get in contact with RWD Addict on here if you can, he builds computers for a living. I bought one off him over a year ago and it kicks tail. The only thing I saw was look at a more powerful PSU the one in mine does 850w and maybe a 1GB graphics card. other than that I like it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prozaq Posted February 10, 2011 Report Share Posted February 10, 2011 FWIW I've always heard decent stuff about the Hauppauge lineup. If you wanted something no-hassle (USB to coax), this is what they offer. Not sure about how friendly their software is, though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chad Posted February 10, 2011 Report Share Posted February 10, 2011 If you are looking for TV tuners, be sure it has the QAM tuner in it, that is how the HD's are carried on cable (either QAM 64 or QAM 256). QAM and ATSC are not the same type of carrier. You are getting your Cable HD's in a QAM carrier. ATSC is the over-the-air standard. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DryBear Posted February 10, 2011 Report Share Posted February 10, 2011 Another option is the SiliconDust HDHomeRun box (http://www.silicondust.com/), which connects to your cable as well as your Ethernet router/switch, and lets any computer on your network view HDTV (but one at a time, two for the dual). Works well for regular HD channels, but unfortunately doesn't work with encrypted cable channels. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeMeyerhoff Posted February 10, 2011 Report Share Posted February 10, 2011 I'd trade the money used on the video card for an SSD boot drive. That video card isn't going to give you any benifit over the onboard graphics for general desktop work and videos. All you get for the money is about 50% better gaming and another noisemaker in the computer. Another thing that not might matter to you is that that video card will not do 3D output. Only the newer 6850/70 6950/70 will. I upgraded from a 4670 just recently for just that reason. And Tim, put a bluray player in the thing, its not that much more! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skullzaflare Posted February 11, 2011 Report Share Posted February 11, 2011 (edited) I'd trade the money used on the video card for an SSD boot drive. That video card isn't going to give you any benifit over the onboard graphics for general desktop work and videos. All you get for the money is about 50% better gaming and another noisemaker in the computer. Another thing that not might matter to you is that that video card will not do 3D output. Only the newer 6850/70 6950/70 will. I upgraded from a 4670 just recently for just that reason. And Tim, put a bluray player in the thing, its not that much more!this depends, assuming the 60" tv he gets runs a 1920x1080, if he starts watching 1080p movies, a crappy card wont cut it either way, why go for older AMD and a older ati card? and theres no point in a SSD unless you plan to constantly bench the main drive, or constantly accessing the same files over and over. otherwise it will just fill up quick Edited February 11, 2011 by Skullzaflare Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeMeyerhoff Posted February 11, 2011 Report Share Posted February 11, 2011 this depends, assuming the 60" tv he gets runs a 1920x1080, if he starts watching 1080p movies, a crappy card wont cut it either way, why go for older AMD and a older ati card? and theres no point in a SSD unless you plan to constantly bench the main drive, or constantly accessing the same files over and over. otherwise it will just fill up quick Since the 780g all the AMD chipsets for the last several years have been able to completely handle 1080p bluray decoding with the onboard graphics without breaking a sweat or even hitting the processor more than 3%. Your comment was true, about 5 years ago. The slowest part inside a computer is the hard drive and its the component a user spends the most time waiting on. I don't see how anybody can say there is no point to SSD. By the same token, you should have said there was no point to having 8gb of ram. Afterall Windows 7 will install on 2gb and the extra ram doesn't do anything but make the computer respond faster. SSDs are not necessary, but I'd say they are a wise use of money to speed up the user experience. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Komeuppance Posted February 11, 2011 Report Share Posted February 11, 2011 I recommended the SSD for reliability mainly, a 2tb hard drive as the main drive is a huge liability. -Robert Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shelby Posted March 25, 2011 Report Share Posted March 25, 2011 I recommended the SSD for reliability mainly, a 2tb hard drive as the main drive is a huge liability. -Robert i'l deff sec that ,, huge hard drvs are great to store things on but do you realy want all that space every time you run a scan or have problems and Tim why no SLi on the ved cards , and your listing isn't all that much better then what you have now , didn't you just build that last yr Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
natallica Posted March 26, 2011 Report Share Posted March 26, 2011 ^^^Word!^^^ SSD FTW!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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