Media centre PC (with a tad gaming)

Q121

Q121

New member
Hi there

I have a HD TV in my lounge connected to an xbox-360. I usually play any videos or series through a fat32 formatted hard drive through the xbox.

I am thinking of building up a nice media centre PC so that I can control my downloads ect ect from my main Screen in the lounge, as well as either play movies directly from the media centre PC or through the network play them through the xbox (without having to always copy the new stuff to the hard-drive)

I also would like to play the occasional game on it..... Mainly i want to be able to play Diablo 3 and star craft 2 when they one day come out :)

Any recommendations for a system.... Lets say a budget of around R7000? (I have not built up a PC in about 4 years, is R7k still ok???)

Thanks guys :)
 
I don't think those things will have a gpu - they're intended solely for movie watching. You'll probably want a Shuttle chassis with a micro sized board - K45SE is R1,298 at Prophecy.

Then put whatever components you want into it given that your case size is limited so xfire/sli/x2 gpu won't really be the best option. R7k is a lot to go around.

Or maybe go 2ndhand: http://www.systemshock.co.za/forums/topic/31368-htpc-for-sale/ that guy is a reliable seller and that's a great htpc setup.
 
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best bet is to get a motherboard with a geforce 8200 onboard vga which plays hd movies flawlessly and most newish games on low to medium detail ;)
 
Low to medium detail is pushing it. What's the point of that? Rather allocate R1,4k or so in the budget for a proper graphics card.
 
Hmmm but if you wait until D3 and SC2 gets released, you could prolly pick up a better gfx card or one of the current higher end cards for cheaper then, rather than splurging out now.
 
Yeah, I mean whenever... Just in principle any kind of integrated graphics even nvidia/ati won't cut it for gaming. For that matter though ati has a new chipset (785x?) with 4xxx graphics and HDMI. That might be a good bet to start off with till you get a proper gpu.
 
jasong said:
Yeah, I mean whenever... Just in principle any kind of integrated graphics even nvidia/ati won't cut it for gaming. For that matter though ati has a new chipset (785x?) with 4xxx graphics and HDMI. That might be a good bet to start off with till you get a proper gpu.
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Nice! :) I must look into that.
 
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