the mediapc
My Media PC “FastMF”
This is my mediacenter toy, I can record Comcast cable (including unencrypted HDTV), regular analog cable and play DVD’s off the network, etc. Since I’m a bit of a mediacenter nut, I have this as the ONLY source attached to my tv, so all of my entertainment comes through this computer.
Right now the MCE and the receiver are mounted in the basement, so all you have in the TV room is the TV itself, the speakers, and a small Radio Shack remote control extender receiver/transmitter (to get volume up/down to the receiver). The speaker wire runs through the floor, and the flat screen is mounted on the wall. Since the remote and keyboard for the mediapc are RF, I don’t need any receivers for that visible in the TV room, but I did run a USB extension cable up and hide it just so I could hook up a real keyboard, mouse, digital camera, etc if needed. The only bad part is that if I rent a movie, I have to run downstairs to put it in the drive, but that’s a small price to pay for the neatness of the setup.
AMD Athlon 64 FX-55, 1MB L2 Cache, 64-bit Processor
Thermaltake Venus heat sink/fan
ASUS “A8N-SLI Deluxe” nForce4 SLI Chipset Motherboard
upgraded chipset fan because of the crappy ASUS one
CORSAIR XMS Extreme Memory Speed Series 4GB(1GBx4) DDR PC-3200
PowerColor ATI RADEON X850 XT Video Card, 256MB GDDR3, 256-Bit, PCI-Express
gigE connected
2 * Seagate 7200.7 7200 rpm, 8 meg cache sata 320 gigs total space
Silicon Dust HDHomerun network based dual tuner card (this is actually mounted in the rack in the basement, doesn’t need to be near the mediaPC since it is network based)
Enermax Noisetaker 650 watt power supply
Avermedia MCE150 fm and analog cable tv tuner
Gyration MCE remote mouse and wireless keyboard (RF)
CompUSA brand internal camera card reader (USB, does all the formats) (Not sure why I have this in there, I have NEVER used it)
Silverstone LC16B case (looks like a piece of audio equipment, and this doesn’t matter because the pc is in the basement)
Monitor is a Panasonic 50″ 720P plasma display, new as of 1/15/08.
This machine runs Windows Vista Ultimate
The audio runs to a very OLD but (barely) sufficient Kenwood receiver, it does DD, DTS, etc and will do for now.
Speakers are DCM bookshelf in the front (left, right and center)
Rear speakers are Boston Acoustics bookshelf speakers (left rear and right rear, nothing fancy)
the subwoofer amp is a Crown Comtech 210 amp in bridged mono mode (got this from the auction when the startup I used to work for went under for a steal). The amp lives in the rack with my computer equipment. This is perfect since the sub is right above the rack in the living room.
the subwoofer itself is a Swiss audio 12″ sub, I can’t find any specs on it, a friend had it and let me “borrow” it when my old faithful JL 12W6 finally gave out on me. The sub lives in a 7.5 cubic foot 3/4″ MDF custom box that is very well braced, built by me of course. This thing sounds better than any commercially available sub I have run across in person. I’m sure there is something better, but not for near the total actual cost of $400 that I have in this thing.
