Blue Prints: HTPC part 3

So yeah I've been pretty busy over the holidays and I have not been able to update my blog but it seems that I am free to do that right now. Call of Duty: world at war and left 4 dead seem to be taking up most of my time right now.

So it seems that the next important part that I need to look into is the ram for my HTPC. From what I've read online it doesn't seem that I need a lot of ram for this build but since I will be running windows Vista on it, it's probably a good idea to have at least 2 Gb. Luckily DDR2 ram right now is very cheap since retailers are getting ready to sell new DDR3 for the new Intel i7 systems out that. That made it easy to get 2 GB of ram for under $50. I decided to use G. Skill game from newegg.ca because it is fairly cheap and yet it has a very good rating (http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231144). The CAS speeds are looking pretty good too at 5 around the table. It is also the best kind of ram that the motherboard supports as DDR2 1066 which is the fastest DDR2 memory that is made. Besides that I don't know what else I can get into about this ram, I've never use the brand G. Skill before, mostly get to patriot but I sounds like they are pretty good at what they do.

The Hard drive seems like the next part that needs some special details. As previously stated there are seems special requirements that are need to be met for this build, mostly lot power and quite. For this I have looked into Western Digital line of Green HDD. The one I have consider is their 640 GB model (http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136298). It has the Sata 3.0GB/s speed which is important but also includes a bunch of power saving features. The reviews from this drive seem to be very impressive and the prices is only about $85 which is not much more expensive then a non-green hard drive with the same capacity. It also has a much of features to reduce vibrations to keep it nice and quite.

The only thing left to consider is the case. It is one of the most important parts to consider which is kind of unique when making a HTPC. You have to consider looks and airflow when picking a good case. The case that I'm interested in is the Antec Silver veris Fusion 430 (http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129029). It is a micro atx case so my mother board will have no difficulty fitting into to it. its has the nice little display that you can program what it says which is a nice little feature. Has a 430 watt power supply which is enough power but I may have to replace if it gets to loud. It also come with two huge 120mm fans which is more then enough to keep my HTPC running cool. I think that it will nicely fit into my home theatre.

For now I'm not going to look into getting a Blue-ray drive but I will defiantly do it in the future when prices are much lower so it looks like a DVD burner will have to do. Besides that I think I'm done. If you have an questions or you have found that I have missed something please leave a comment and I will get back to you asap. Anyways this build is done so keep on building.

Merry Christmas

Just had my last day at my co-op a few hours ago an it's Christmas all ready and I've finally finished my Christmas wrapping on Christmas eve. That's my own Christmas tradition I guess. Will add a post for part 3 of HTPC within the next two days hopefully. I will be off work so I'll have more time for posts so look forward to that. The only thing I have to say then I guess is merry Christmas to all!

Blue Prints: HTPC part 2

So I've been pretty busy lately and I haven't had the time to update my blog, sorry for the wait but finally is part two of my blue print of a HTPC. The first important thing is to decide exactly what you want your HTPC to do. I'm interested in having an HDTV tuner and possible to watch blue-ray discs some time in the future when they are cheaper, other maybe interested in play PC games. For this I've decided not to use a graphics card since it will only increase the noise and the heat generated by the system. I've decided after some research to go for integrated graphics based on the AMD 780G chip set. With this chip set I'll get a nice little Radeon HD 3200 graphics chip. I could go for a higher level chip set but all it would add is cross-fire support for 2 or even 3 graphics chips. That maybe a good idea for a gaming PC but to much for my little HTPC. Based on reviews I've heard from this integrated graphics chip, it is the best on the market right now and is more then capable to handle blue-ray decoding. So based on that I can look into a motherboard I'm interested in.

I've done my research for my motherboard on newegg.ca at work, don't tell my boss, since they have a wide selection and have a large amount of reviews collected from purchasers. I suggest this method of research for anyone interested in make a computer. The price may or may not be the cheapest but you can all ways look to your favourite vendor after you know what product you want. From there I have found a nice little Gem, the ASUS M3A78-EM(http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131324). This motherboard has a lot of features I'm interested, the correct chip set, AM+ in case I was interested in going for a AM+ CPU (probably not, to much power), and it's a micro ATX which means I can fit it into on of those nice little HTPC cases. Reviews for it too are all most all 100% which is pretty much amazing. Good features, good prices at currently $91 CDN it is a dream come true, now to go onto the CPU.

Kinna set into getting a AMD CPU now because of the chip set, but pretty excited for that because I wanted to make an AMD based build for my gaming PC but Intel kicks their gaming CPU's out of the door. AMD on the other hand has some nice low energy low heat solutions which make it perfect for my needs. For this I've picked the AMD Athlon 64 X2 5050e (http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103298), it's a nice little 2.6Ghz dual core that has a thermal power of 45W. That is an insanely small value for such a fast CPU. It's the fasted of the new Brisbane core series with a 65 nm die size. For 75.99 I would be insane not to pick this CPU. There really hasn't any competition in my mind for which CPU I will be using.

Anyways that's all my time for tonight, look forward to part 3 of this build much sooner then before. I also would like to start posting some Tech news that's happened just recently that I think people would be interested in hearing about. Till then, keep on building.

Blue Prints: HTPC part 1

Sorry for the lack of updates, but I've been busy with work and other Christmas events that have come up. In this section I would to just go into a brief explanation of a HTPC and explanation on why they are so cool. I will try to stick a specific format so my previous post may change appearance over the next little while while I experiment with different formats. The content will most likely remain the same. Anyways here's everything that you would like to know about HTPC's.

Well what exactly is a HTPC one would ask? Well like my previous post on building a NAS, an HTPC is a computer design with a specific role in mind. With the introduction of HDTV's over the past few years the line between the experience between TV and computers have start to blur. Any one can look only line for that latest TV episodes that they have missed. It's equally easy for anyone to play a video game on a PS3 or Xbox 360 against their friends on there PC's. The HTPC is just extension of the idea of combining the two experiences together.

In their simplest forms, an HTPC is a computer that connects to your Television to display content. With the relevantly new introduction of HD TV tuner available on the PC market, they can do so much more. A HTPC is very much like a personal video recording in that matter such as a TIVO. The difference is that HTPC's don't lack the features that many PVR's do and they come out at a lower price. A HTPC can store all your digital stored movies, such as downloaded movies or achieved DVD's, play anything from you movie collection, DVD's Blue Ray DVD's and even HDDVD's, as well as play your stored music collection.

There are a bunch of commercially available HTPC but I won't being going into much detail about these because I'd rather take the DIY-er approach. There are many different aspects of a HTPC that make it unique from a killer gaming rig, you have to remember that this PC will most likely remain in your family so you can use the latest graphics cards with insanely huge fans and heat sinks that sound like a jet-figther in your house. So there are some hardware issues that have to be looked into but also software issues. Should you use the two version's of windows vista that come with the latest version of windows media centre (Vista ultimate and Home Premium), Windows MCE ( a build based on windows XP), or do you go the adventurist way and try a Linux based build. Through out the next week post I will go into these different issues and hopefully you will understand why I have been so interested in making this build. But that's for another day.

N.A.S. Build

So what exactly is a NAS? Well NAS stands for network attached storage which is pretty much what it sounds like. It's a dummy computer that is setup in a network just for the purpose of network storage. Of course there are commercial solutions which are sold for a fair price such as an external HDD or a pre-built NAS (Buffalo LinkStation Pro Network Shared Storage 320GB Network Hard Drive $199.99) but where would be the fun in that? The true DIYer would just take an old computer that they have lying around and setup it up with a large HDD. SSD or solid state drive are available now for the home user but still to expensive. Solid state drives are more durable and require less electricity then the standard HDD but are much more expensive for much less storage. It would be interesting to see a build based on a SSD in which size of the NAS was in consideration.

Anyways I decided to go the cheaper way and just use a previously used computer that was currently not in use with an old 200 IDE HDD from my previous gaming system that can longer go into my new rig since it only has SATA connections, damn you advances in technology. So the computer I used was an old HP Pentium 850 MHz with 512 mb of ram. This is much more computing power then what you need. You can make a NAS from pretty much any system. As i said before, the system will be using a 200 GB western digital IDE hard drive. If I had to make any suggestion to people interested in making a really nice NAS I would tell them to use a SATA 2 3Gb/s Hard drive and a gigabyte LAN network card. Gigabyte LAN cards are pretty cheap now and will make a huge difference when move a large amount of data.

The software setup for my NAS was pretty easy but it did take a little while for me to get it going. I used FreeNAS which is a free open source NAS OS which a huge range of different features all the while taking up just under 32MB. You can get it to run off the hard drive, compact flash or even a USB key. I decided just to use the hard drive that I am going to use for storage. It was fairly easy to get it to run on my NAS comp but a little bit more difficult for me to get it setup. FreesNAS has a web browser type interface that can be open from any computer on the network with an easy to understand interface. It supports a lot of different protcols (CIFS/SMB, FTP, UPnP and UPS just to name a few) for every computer in your network. Since pretty much all the computers in my network are running off of windows (all except one which is running Ubuntu) I decided just to use CIFS/SMB. It was very easy to setup this up after I got the drive mounted and setup properly. It did take me a while to realize that I need to setup a share so that my computer would have to have some place to add data. The NAS is now running smoothly with not attached to it but a power cord and Ethernet cable. When building a NAS i would consider using more energy efficient parts but I had not considered that for this build. So all in all I've made myself a NAS out of a old computer and a old hard drive all for free. Pretty sweet.

Free NAS web interface

Hopefully pretty soon I will be able to add a new post on a car computer build or a home theatre build that I have been considering. Look forward to both of them.
Price: $0 CDN

Gaming PC Finale

Sorry for taking so long, but I will finally get into the steps I went through to making my gaming PC. The first step that you have to take when you put together your own PC is to replace/install the back plate that came with your motherboard. I have to say that in my experience I've always hated back plates. The process of actually installing it is actually really easy, all you have to do is just snap it in, but I've always had difficulty installing the motherboard properly after the back plate is installed. The reason for this is because the back plate has little piece of aluminum that I guess are supposed to wrap around the different ports on the motherboard but it never seems to work out so smoothly. These little pieces of metal seem just to get in the way and they prevent a clean connection the back plate and the Mobo (motherboard). Maybe I'm just doing it wrong, but feel its easier to just bend and brake these small pieces off.

The next step is pretty easy, all it is installing the Mobo. You do have to make sure that you have your case has the little screw slots setup correctly for the form factor of your Mobo. The standard form factor is ATX and that is the form of my P45R2000. The most important part is that you get the Mobo aligned with the back plate. Screwing the screws in is pretty easy, try not to use a magnetic screwdriver. You do not to need to put a screw in every slot, just put as many in as you can. It's fairly important that you get your motherboard to remain flat and secure. That's pretty much all you need for this step, nothing really complicated.

The next step is to install the processor on to the motherboard. This step is relatively easy with a Pentium LGA775 processor but with any processor the instructions should be pretty easy. Since the pins in the LGA775 are in the socket rather then the CPU itself. This makes it easier and less likely for you to damage it. There is a little are that you need to unlock before your able to place in the CPU. All you need to do is to align the little triangle on the CPU with the on the socket. It's pretty easy because the socket itself is square but it has some notches that also help you align it. There is a little plastic piece that you have to remove from the socket before you add the CPU. Make sure you close the lid and then lock the arm back into place.

The next step is to install the CPU heat sink and fan to the Mobo. I never enjoyed this part because the little clips that the fan use to attached to the motherboard never work quite as well as you would like. Before you install the fan and heat sink, make sure you put thermal compound on the CPU if it is not already on the bottom of the heat sink. Just press down on the pins when the heat sink and fan is placed over the CPU. Make sure you clip one in the and then the opposite one to ensure it attaches better. It is very important that you get a tight connect and it may require a little bit of force, you may be surprised by how much. The next step is really which is just to install the ram. Simple align the ram correctly with the ram slot. In my gaming PC I install a pair of patriot 1 GB DDR3 1333 Mhz. Runs pretty fast but I would like to upgrade that since Crisis isn't running as fast as I would like to and I noticed that its my ram that is being bunch and not my CPU.

Installing the Hard drive is pretty easy. The new SATA cables are significantly smaller then IDE ribbon which makes it easier to manage and I lowers the affect on the airflow of your system. Connecting the correct power cables are pretty easy. Pretty much just attached what fits and don't force anything if it doesn't. Installing my Radeon 4850 was pretty easy and it was my first close look at my new video card and I must say this thing is huge. The heat sink and fan are just as big if not bigger then the puny stock fan that came with my Intel e8400 CPU. Pretty happy that I have a full case to work with and not a mid case. Pretty much all that was left was to connect the power supply to everything and my DVD burner. Nothing complicated. Putting together a PC is very easy and I do suggest that everyone try it but only after they have done their research on all the parts they need. The next step was to setup the software which is all ways the hardest part.

When i tried to boot-up my PC it wouldn't work and I would hear three beeps. After looking it up, turns out the motherboard has some problems with ram so I removed on of the dims and it started to boot-up correctly, I later had to flash my motherboards BIOS to fix the problem with my RAM and get 2 GB in my system. Started to install windows vista but it had trouble finding my hard drive. After way to much trying to fix this problem (looking for drivers and what not) I found that I connected it to the wrong place on the motherboard. Stupid me I guess. Got vista running smoothly and then start to go into overclocking. It usually requires you to go through the BIOS, but with my P45R2000 comes with Asrock OC tuner which enables me to Over cloak within windows. Overclocked my E8400 from 3.0GHz to 3.4GHz with stock fan a heat sink with a max load temp of about 50C. Pretty happy with that but considering a water cooling kit it OC it more. Anyways that's the end of this post, hopefully all and a new one a new build idea maybe tomorrow since I have the day off work but we'll see.


Price: $800 CDN

Gaming PC Build

Well here it is finally my first post on a build that I've actually completed last Sunday October 26 2008. I'm just gonna start with the different pieces that I bought rather then the process of putting them all together, hopefully I will post that tomorrow but the latest it will be is by next week.

Let me first start that this is not my first PC that I've built (just my second from scratch, I have done a bunch of upgrades to different machines but not full builds), so for this build I decided to save some money by using a full tower case that I've previously used, a used Benq DVD burner and a 500 watt ultra power supply. 500 watts was just enough power for the build that I had in mind, I may have to upgrade later but it should be fine for awhile.

The most simple piece for me to pick was my 500 GB Hitachi SATA 2 300 HDD. The last hard drive I had purcashed for my previous machine was just about the time when they started to introduce SATA 150 but for some reason I had decided to go with a 250 GB Western Digital ATA. This was my first experience with a SATA drive and I must say that their is a huge difference between SATA and traditional parallel ATA. All the brands for hard drive where pretty much that same price so I managed to pick this one up for $70 CDN. I picked that size of HDD just because it was the best value because a bigger drive would cost significantly more and a smaller driver would not be much cheaper.

The ram that I decided to use where a 2 GB kit of Patriot Extreme Performance DDR3 - 13333. My previous build when they also had just introduced DDR2 so I had decided to use some new DDR2- 533 with that system so it just seemed that I would follow my pattern and upgrade to the new standard. Only reason that I had decided to pick up some Patriot ram was because it was currently on sale at my local Canada Computers. With the sale price, they only managed to put me back about $60-65 CDN. They are pretty cool looking with there aluminum shielding to reduce heat.

The video card that I would have to pick would be very important to my machine if I were to use it for gaming so I spent a lot of time to do research on what was the best value. I decided to pick an ATI Radeon 4850 for the value. I had read a lot of good reviews on these cards and they were about $100 cheaper then the 4870's. I had been interest in a nvidea card but the 280's are damn expensive. Just not something that I can afford. Canada Computers did have another sale on the Palet Radeon 4850 for $150 but by the time I had got there they had sold all ready. In my dismay I decided to just get the Saphire version since I have heard good things about there products. This card does use the new PCI express X2 which is the new standard along with direct X10. I would be interested in crossfire in the future but was not an option at my current time on my budget and from what I've read from the reviews I would not need it. This ended up the most expensive part of my machine and more expensive then the original one I wanted at $200 CDN.

The CPU was the next really important part that I would need to buy. I like to go on account that I've had a long history of bad experiences with Intel (a 3.2 GHz single core and a 3.0 GHz dual core D, both which seemed never to work) and my dad had just purchased a new AMD based machine so I was more then interest in getting a AMD X2 6000+ or a Phenom X4 9850 but after doing some catching up on some new developments on CPU's i had decided against it. I had know that the AMD duals cores destroyed the Intel D series but I had not heard any news about the new dual core duo's. Turns out Intel has turned the tables. I looked up a article from TomsHardware.com (which is a great site if your interested in computer hardware) that they had create a chart of all the new CPU's for 2008 Q3 on a bunch of benchmarks. No AMD was even in the top ten. At about 6th I found an affordable looking Intel core 2 duo e8400 at $150. I looked into more and found people were going crazy for it. Turns out that it can be overclock insanely not that I was interested in overclocking my gaming PC. I did wanna try a AMD for the first time, but I decide to go for the better Intel core 2 duo e8400 at $200 CDN.

The most important part for an PC is the motherboard. I can't really explain why I decided to go for a less know and less popular ASRock motherboard. It was sorta based on a cheap motherboard of theirs that I was interested in that I didn't even end up buying. I've had two Asus motherboards and they had only been trouble for me so I thought I would try something new. I decided on the AsRock P45R2000-WIFI. My timing was perfect with the recent release of the new Intel P45 chip set (Sept 2008). This motherboard has option for both DDR2 and DDR3 ram separately like the another of the models I was interested but this one had 4 DDR3 slots rather then the other that had 4 DDR2's. I know it might be weird in a gaming computer to use wifi rather then being hard wired but it was an important selling point for me rather then buy a wifi card separate. It put me back about another $200 CDN for it.

So in total the system cost me about $800 CDN which really isn't bad for a gaming PC especially considering how much of a monster I thought this machine would be. I had previously bought a new 22" Acer monitor from Canada Computers for $200 CDN so I very interested in getting this rig up and running. Next post I will get into the installation and the setup for my new gaming PC, look forward to it soon.

Intro

Welcome everyone to my first blog. This blog will be Tech/DIY based, I planned to post info on different projects that I have undertaken, future projects that I plan for in the future and about interesting topics in the world of tech that I find interesting.

Just to let you have some background information about myself, I am a 21 year old chemical engineering student at Ryerson University in Toronto Ontario Canada. Since I'm student, I don't really have that much capital so most of my projects will be more budget based then other blogs. I would like everyone to know that I am an engineering student and not an English so my writing may not be the best but please try to bear with it. The second purpose of this blog is for my own personal reference. Hopefully I can find out how to get google advertisements into that blog so that I can use that earned money in projects. I apologize to all my readers in advance if this in any way offends you.

I hope you will still read my blog.I hope to update this blog every week with a new project idea of project update. I will also try to make it a little bit more interesting with photos of the projects as they are be developed. A lot of my ideas will be computer/tech based but I do have a few of interesting ideas. Hopefully others will be inspired to undertake their own projects or suggest ideas of our own. I hope to heard back from others, and I hope that this blog will have a long life.