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Beerdrinker
12-04-11, 03:18 AM
Hey.

I have been doing thinking about how to make better use of my current HW....I am doing this because of many reasons. First and foremost because our local compagny for the 3īrd year in a row announce price increases on our electricity. :(
My thoughts go in the directions of using the most energysaving HW, on those setups that run the most. I will therefore take down "SilentHunter" and do a fresh install - and will then be my youngest sonīs pc. The board he has now is a Asus with a Geforce 8200 onboard:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/product_geforce_8200_mgpu_us.html

Does this mean that it is reasonable to presume that I can put this in my HTPC to watch movies on?

This also means that I will be a 1-box cruncher only - although I have plans on scraping together to upgrade it. The futures for my crunching box will be 8 or 16-core CPU (hopefully) and 1 good, efficient GPU.

Hope you can understand my reasons for this "consolidation" - I got no ekstra money to spend these days - and the payraise is at least 6-8 months out in the future still..And even then my compagny has announced that they will be strict...= very small raise...(like 15-20 cent pr hour, which will give me like 10-15$ netto pr month)
Fire$torm
12-04-11, 03:40 AM
Hey Beer,
Sorry to hear these tough times are effecting you so much. No worries mate. RL always takes priority.

As to the nVidia motherboard, it does 1080p HD video so yeah, it will work well for an HTPC. Which AMD2+ CPU will you be using in that MB?
Beerdrinker
12-04-11, 04:24 AM
Hey Beer,
Sorry to hear these tough times are effecting you so much. No worries mate. RL always takes priority.

As to the nVidia motherboard, it does 1080p HD video so yeah, it will work well for an HTPC. Which AMD2+ CPU will you be using in that MB?

Thanks FS.
I think itīs tough times for everyone. I gotta make the most of it, with what I have on hand. Canīt afford to spend any rigth now. I am really impressed with rgathrigts way to build a cruncher. Make one box, but make it STRONG!
So until I can build one strong box, I gotta consolidate a little.

As for the CPU. I recent purchased the Phenom II X4 840 with a 95W TPD, to replace the 45W X2 240e I had in SilentHunter. I figured if my son keeps the 45W and I put the 95W in the HTPC, I will save some energy since his computer runs like 4-7 hours pr day, while my HTPC is only used 1-3 times per week to watch a movie. So that will net me a 40 hour benefit per week on just one setup. (7 hours * 7 days= 49 hours @ 45W - compared to 3 hours * 3 days = 9 hours @ 95W
Actually have been thinking about NOT having a HTPC - but rather a normal BR player. But I figured that the in the future we will rent movies on the net...And the WiFi BR players are to exspensive yet.


I am way over my head with these thought, or are they reasonable enough??


Edit: My sonīs current CPU is a Sempron single core 62W. So the X2 240e will be a step up to him. (and maybe I can land a few bucks for the Sempron..)
Fire$torm
12-04-11, 02:04 PM
...I am way over my head with these thought, or are they reasonable enough??

The advantages of having an HTPC is a lot of flexibility which you cannot get with a standalone BR player. With that said if you did get a BR unit, I would suggest buying one with an RJ-45 Gigabit Ethernet port. Wired Ethernet is much more reliable and much faster.
rgathright
12-07-11, 05:43 PM
While you are at it, I enjoy using my FAVI 2.4Ghz Wireless Keyboard RT-MWK01 (www.epinions.com/content_572426260100) to control windows on my television screen. The wireless keyboard and touchpad are the size of a "Direct TV" remote and it is even rechargeable!
http://di1.shopping.com/images1/pi/48/16/2a/101961217-200x200-0-0.jpg