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Loading ...Shafted on the TV card, PSU/CPU problems… and finally some pictures!
thewelshbrummie
Plenty to talk about in this update.
It appears that my TV card isn’t twin digital at all….
I’ll start by pointing to the forum topic about a recommendation for a dual-DVB-T TV card… I immediately recommended my twin-tuner Compro card.
Now I’ve never used the card to record one digital channel while recording a 2nd, so it came as a surprise when the responses said that it might not be a twin digital card… but a quick look online and a check in the device properties confirmed what it was: by “twin tuner” Compro mean “hybrid”… why couldn’t they have used that word? It would have saved me the cost of buying a card that’s now of limited use.
This is especially true that the FM receiver is now surplus, as Griffin Technology have FINALLY released a version of the radioSHARK application that is Vista compliant… it’s taken 15 months and could still do with improving (it won’t record a scheduled programme if the scheduler is still open) but at least my £30 investment works again. And there’s the added bonus of being able to record directly to mp3!
Back to the TV card: I’ll hold onto it as it does video capture from external sources… but I’ll need a 2nd card, which will have to be PCI-E as my other PCI slot is taken by the USB card.
Here’s the catch: not only do I watch very little digital television, I’m also aware of the recent HD over Freeview announcement. Which requires an MPEG 4 decoder. I’ve yet to see a TV card with hardware MPEG 4 decoding, with the exception of BlackGold’s TV cards, which are rather excessive for my needs: the only satellite I’d use is Freesat and there’s better choice on Freeview: I also don’t need any more analogue tuners and they’ll become obsolete within 5 years. So I’ll probably rely on an MPEG4 software decoder to do the job (if Blu-Ray drives are software upgradable to profile 2.0 then I’m assuming that TV Cards will also be software upgradable). So I may be investing in an E700 twin-digital Compro card: which is listed on Scan as supporting HD (1080i). Compro have anounced the E900, but again I can easily manage without the analogue tuners. And I’ve found a rather good guide to installing more than 2 digital tuners: it seems that Media Centre won’t recognise more than 2 unless you hack the registry, which seems easy enough.
Onto other issues…
I’ve either mounted the Intel Stock CPU cooler badly, or it’s rubbish: The CPU (a Pentium E2160) is idling at 65 degrees with a small overclock of the FSB to 240MHz over the 200 stock setting (giving me around 2.16GHz). I’m leaning to getting a Tunic Tower 120 or a Thermalright Extreme 120 as the results I’ve seen for those are practically identical and are by far the most efficient, but I may opt for a silent/passive cooler: the Intel reference HSF isn’t that loud but it’s still the loudest fan in the computer…
…apart from the PSU fan, and the PSU itself is making a random clicking noise, as though something is caught in the fan. Admittedly it doesn’t affect stability but I’ve opened my computer up and will be having a look soon…
…which has given me the perfect excuse to take some pictures!
It is my 1st build and as it’s far from finished I haven’t bothered with tying all of the cables down just yet… there’s still the small matter of a better CPU and cooler to install.
So onto the pictures…
Starting off with the main chamber: obviously the cables need sorting, especially the USB header cables (the 2 beige cables tied together).
The sacrifice you have to make if you want the iMon Ultra Bay: a 24 pin passthrough connector. This allows 2 of the pins to be split and power the Bay when the PC is powered down in soft-off mode. You can also see the 4 DIMM sockets populated with the 4 OCZ sticks of DDR3.
The small PCB above my Creative X-Fi is the on-board 802.11n wireless card: there are 2 antennas for it.
Another shot of the cards I’m using. From top to bottom, Sound Card, TV Card, GPU and USB card. If I add a 2nd TV card, I’ll swap the USB and TV cards around.
The PSU and the cables I’ve used.
The lower HDD bay from the left side of the case…
… and from the right
This is one of the best features of the P182: the space available to route the PSU cables behind the motherboard.
This one shows the holes that I’ve used to feed the power cables: the 24pin to the left, the 8pin on the top right and a modular SATA cable through the other hole at the top.
And the SATA cable running through the top into the main chamber, along with the CPU motherboard fan connector. The SATA cable has 4 connectors but I’m only using 2: one to power the optical drive, the other to provide power to the Kama Panel.
Just to prove that I needed the 2 internal USB ports! One is for the iMon, the other for the card reader on the Kama Panel
The 5.25″ bays from inside… the top is taken by the iMon Ultra Bay, which takes 2 slots. Below is the optical drive with the Kama Panel below that. I may move the parts around as the Kama Panel is completely inaccessible in this configuration, unless I remove the optical drive. That’s easy enough thanks to the rails, but the iMon Bay took ages to mount properly and the Kama Panel has smaller than standard screw holes and isn’t mounted properly yet.
The 2 Remote Controls, the Compro TV remote on the left, the iMon Remote on the right.
The iMon Bay from the front… bizarrely it thinks I’m running Windows Vista Media Center Edition! It also reported the OS as having Service Pack 0 before I upgraded last month.
The front of the case with the lights off: I only bothered connecting the SATA power cable to the Kama Panel so I could have the fan speed controllers lit, it looks really good.
With the lights on from the front. The slimline slot-loading drive is in the lower part of the Kama panel. I’ve removed the door as I have no use for it.
A shot of the power/reset buttons, the USB/Firewire ports on the case and the 3.5″ bay between the 2 HDD cages. The upper one doesn’t have any HDDs behind it to aid cooling of the main chamber, the lower cage has the 3 disks shown earlier. In the 3.5″ Bay is the IcyBox tray for my 2.5″ external HDD, which connects via standard SATA to the motherboard, rather than E-SATA.
That’s the current state of the build… but there’s still plenty to do.
CPU: I’ll be going Quad in the not too distant future, (I may wait until the rumoured Q9650 is launched late this year) but clearly I’ll need a better cooler. As I’m not prepared to try water cooling, I’ll be going with either the Tuniq Tower 120 (if I can find it), the Thermalright Extreme 120 (I’d replace the stock fans with the quietest I can find) or something like the Thermalright HR-01 Plus, or another silent/passive cooler. I’m after a quiet option, certainly quieter than the stock Intel HSF and all 3 options would reduce volume.
Monitor: I’ll wait for 1920×1080 TFTs to be available before I take the plunge, though the Dell 2408WPF is very tempting.
GPU: There’s little point in me upgrading my 3 month old 256MB 8800GT while I still use my 17″ TFT as my primary monitor.
Blu-Ray: It’s becoming more tempting, especially as the LG Blu-Ray/HD DVD combo drive is around £85, cheaper than most non-HD DVD optical drives. It also writes to CD-RW at 24x, just shy of the 32x I get from my current full sizes optical drive.
I’m still undecided on Bluetooth and I’ll probably hold out on an 802.11n router until the n standard has been finalised. I transferred 3Gb of data over the g standard in about 30minutes from laptop to desktop, it’s not quick but it does the job more than well enough for the time being.
I’ll end on the mouse pad: I’ve just got a Steelseries SP. It’s certainly well built but the tracking on my MX Air isn’t fantastic…
But I have a fully-functioning PC: time for some Supreme Commander methinks…
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