New 360...May 1st...$479.99

zombie boy 2000

cheddar wrote:

I think the door was red, but I remember some of the lettering being in a metal finish. Could be remembering it wrong. That was a long time ago. But I loved that machine. It was the king of add-ons. I even brought back a mega-drive (japanese version) from Japan with the cd attachment.

Yeah... I had the 32X and the CD attachment. I belive my favorite game on the console was Eternal Champions...

cheddar

The Japanese games were a riot. The few I picked up all had anime cut-scenes between the action. I didn't know what the hell they were saying, but it was surreal going from a combat game with great graphics to little cartoon characters with bubble heads...

scottvamp

zombie boy 2000 wrote:

I thought the Sega Genesis was black and red...

I loved the PS2's advertizing campaign to compete with the Sega Saturn.
"If your thinging about buying a Sega Saturn, your head must be in Uranus."!
I just remembered that. LOL

Joelsbass

cheddar wrote:

I built quite a few computers. But it would be really nice to have your airbrushing skills. I've got the internal lights/side window thing going, but it's still a black thermaltake case. Are you going intel or AMD?

This is the specific case I'm looking at


I'll probably brush the metallic looking areas with this prismatic chrome...


I was leaning toward the Intel Core 2 Duo 2.13mhz, from what i can find the core 2 duo and extreme have the highest front side bus and it's my understanding that this translates more toward true speed than the mhz speed... I'll probably run 2 gigs of ram and I havn't picked out a motherboard yet. I'm going to scalp some of the components from my current rig, floppy drive, CD-RW drive, I added a USB 2.0 and a Firewire card that I'll re-use. Definitely going with a sound card with optical out so I can process it through my HT setup (why go with little computer speakers when you can have 100wpc 5.1 surround ) and my 42" LCD will be the monitor (1080p native resolution) so I'll probably want a video card with HDMI out... I'd definitely be up for any pointers from someone with experience... this is my first outing into building and I have a lot to learn, I'm a pretty quick study though lol.

I don't have much experience air-brushing btw, but I've got a steady hand so I should be able to do it well enough for a computer case and a 360...

cheddar

Well I can think of only a few pieces of advice off the top of my head:

1. BBs seem to indicate that it's difficult to get an HDCP compliant video card. It's something you'll need if you ever go with an HD drive in the future for watching movies over HDMI. Might be worth having that option.

2. If you are an extreme gamer who likes stuff at the highest resolutions, then you need a top CPU, motherboard, memory, and GPU. Otherwise, you can probably afford to just get average stuff your first time around (that intel chip is still nice) and just get your learn on for the next upgrade cycle.

3. Most new motherboards come with onboard SATA RAID support. Not a bad idea to put a little more into the storage department. If downloadable movies take off, the HDDs will fill up quickly. I like to have a large RAID 5 array for backup of my digital content. It would really suck if your drives crashed and you lost all your digital pictures or something. Building a 1 or even 2 terabyte array is pretty cheap these days as even 500 GB drives are trending to $100. And you only need to reserve one drive for the parity check back-up with RAID 5.

That looks like a good case. Nice ventilation. It's important not only for the processors but for the HDDs as well.

Edit: Oh yeah, since this is an HTPC, make sure your components don't generate too much noise. This is especially important for the HDDs and cooling fans. Read up on the HDD reviews to see which ones are stealthiest. It's been a while since I researched these. And the larger fan sizes are better as in 120mm case fans generally have better airflow and noise characteristics than 80mm ones. So make sure the case allows you to use larger size fans that you can change out if they are too noisy.

Joelsbass

like i said, still kinda new to this so most of the little groups of letters are over my head BBs and HDCP?

I mainly game on my consoles, since I don't have cable i download the shows i like to watch so it's mainly for video playback.

On storage i was going to start out with at least a 750GB drive possibly two, I've got 200GB on my current rig and have been seriously considering a large external to boost it, it'd make the transfer of files later much easier as well... Could you explain the RAID array's for me? I've heard the term several times buy have yet to hear a good explanation of what they are...

Thanks for the help

cheddar

Sorry about the terms. Guess I should have known better.

BB is just my shorthand for forum boards like this one except for people building computers. I just mentioned it 'cause if you google video cards and hdcp you're likely to get a lot of information from forums with people having trouble matching the hdmi enabled cards with their hdcp displays. I haven't researched it too much, but it's been known to cause trouble even with home theater equipment that's designed for it.

HDCP stands for high-bandwidth digital content protection. Basically it prevents non-HDCP compliant devices from connecting to each other and transmitting the pretty 1080p pictures of blu-ray or hd-dvd over hdmi connections. If it didn't, someone could just hook up a computer to the hdmi output of a player and copy the digital signal and pirate the movie. It's a complicated hardware process where each device in the chain has to handshake with the next device or it breaks the chain. So you have to have an hdcp compliant player, an hdcp compliant display, etc. The problem is when you insert a computer in the chain, now you need an hdcp compliant video card as well. I think NVIDIA just came out with cards that are supposed to be hdcp compliant. You might want to look for them and see if they really do the job. If they do, they might be worth the money for a future upgrade when cheap internal HD players come on the market. Just a thought.

RAID stands for redundant array of inexpensive disks or redundant array of independent disks. You can basically think of it as a hardware or software ability to control many HDDs (hard disk drives) and treat them as one big HDD with any combination of partitions (you can make the big hdd appear as one icon or many icons on your OS (operating system display)).

The advantage to this is in both speed (3 250 GB HDDs with 3 independent read heads will access data faster than 1 750 GB HDD) and in data back up.

These are the common configurations:

RAID 0: Data is striped across multiple disks (increases speed)
RAID 1: Multiple disks mirror each other (data back up so drive 1 is a copy of drive 2 etc. The disadvantage is that half your drives back up the other half.)
RAID 0+1: Exactly what it sounds like. Mirrored disks that are striped across more than one disk. (Of course you're talking about at least 4 drives now.)
RAID 5: Because all data is digital (0s or 1s). An alternate way of data back up is just to add up the bits across an array and store the parity information (whether this addition comes up odd or even) on the equivalent of one dedicated drive. Then, if one drive fails, the system can rebuild the array when you pop in a new one from the data on the other working drives. This has a slight disadvantage in speed (It's still striped though.) as you have to deal with parity calculations, but it has the advantage that you only need one drive for the back-up info instead of half your disks as in the mirrored option. (You do need at least 3 drives to make this more economical than the mirrored option, though. 2 data and 1 parity vs. 2 data and 2 mirrored data.)

As you can see, using software to do all this is pretty much a non-starter. All the advantages in speed would be negated by the fact that you need to do all the calculations in software. But with a good hardware solution, a RAID array will run circles around a single drive in both speed and reliability. A lot of motherboards come with RAID. But you have to make sure it has the RAID 5 option if you choose to go that way. They usually support 4 disks although you can buy cards that support like eight. Then, since you've already decided on a 750 GB disk, you could buy 4 250 GB disks instead. You will have more choices in brand and price at this level so you can shop for quieter drives too. RAID 5 them and know that all your data and movies are safe from a single drive failure.

Hope this helps. I was clueless about this stuff a few years ago. You pick it up fast when you have to do your first troubleshooting. Google will be your new best friend. The only drawback is that you will become tech support for all your friends :rolleyes: .

Joelsbass

Very cool, the info is much appreciated!

polkatese

engadget compares the Elite with core, and came back with almost NO reason whatsoever to upgrade/get an Elite. HDMI and Component output rendered almost no noticeable improvement.

Shizelbs

True. I saw the screenshot comparison too, and component looked pretty much the same as HDMI. Unless you need the HDMI cause you are out of component input spots, and download everything off Live and erase nothing, there is no point to upgrade.

PoLk FaN

BIZILL wrote: »

you can argue hd dvd vs blu-ray still, but the gaming platform is owned by xbox 360 right now. hands down. a year's head-start worth of titles. yes. and when ps3 begins to ramp up, i may just end up getting one, though i hate sony. lay the argument to rest, xbox is the best.:cool:

btw, i have yet to strike down the ps3. but i damn well will defend the 360 against monkey-boys whom speak from their asses.

sorry dude in till xbox sells over 30 milion system like PS2,
PS2 is best;)

BIZILL

ps2 has the biggest customer base after how many years? either way, 360 is hand's down, as it stands now, the BEST system EVER!

PoLk FaN

so if its the best EVER, then why are they coming out with the elite?
If your the best system EVER why change it and add HDMI, bigger HDD, if they were the best EVER then why come out with the elite? please tell me.
true xbox fanboy.

jdhdiggs

His statement is backwords looking numbnuts.... Think about it.

BIZILL

PoLk FaN wrote: »

so if its the best EVER, then why are they coming out with the elite?
If your the best system EVER why change it and add HDMI, bigger HDD, if they were the best EVER then why come out with the elite? please tell me.
true xbox fanboy.

last i checked, the 'elite' is in fact, an xbox 360, thus making it the BEST EVER!;)

...by the way, you need a hug, son?

Demiurge

I don't know if he does, but I need one.

polkatese

chuckle. chuckle.

"Let's Hug it out, ****!" says Ari

Shizelbs

PoLk FaN wrote: »

so if its the best EVER, then why are they coming out with the elite?
If your the best system EVER why change it and add HDMI, bigger HDD, if they were the best EVER then why come out with the elite? please tell me.
true xbox fanboy.

So, if the PS2 is the bestest system ever, why did they change it and make it smaller and slimmer, release a hard drive, and a broadband network adapter?

What a stupid argument.

BIZILL

dave, you know you want a 'tug' and not a hug.

Demiurge

BIZILL wrote: »

dave, you know you want a 'tug' and not a hug.

Only if you're sending some wimminz over.

BIZILL

yup, too bad you don't live closer. we could hang out and what not. NO TUGGING, THOUGH! let's be clear on that fact!

Demiurge

BIZILL wrote: »

yup, too bad you don't live closer. we could hang out and what not. NO TUGGING, THOUGH! let's be clear on that fact!

No 'hanging out' either.

BIZILL

BIZILL wrote: »

yup, too bad you don't live closer. we could hang out and what not. NO TUGGING, THOUGH! let's be clear on that fact!

...unless polkFAN decides to stop in.

PoLk FaN

Shizelbs wrote: »

So, if the PS2 is the bestest system ever, why did they change it and make it smaller and slimmer, release a hard drive, and a broadband network adapter?

What a stupid argument.

were did I say PS2 was best ever I said most sold:cool:

Shizelbs

PoLk FaN wrote: »

sorry dude in till xbox sells over 30 milion system like PS2,
PS2 is best;)

Sufficient?

Sherardp

POlk Fan you must surely love Playstation, everytime Xobox 360 comes up you go into attack mode. Theyre only consoles, all of them are fun to me. PS3 just needs more games , thats the set back with it now, and the reason I havent purchased one. I would love to buy one right now to game on Resistance, but I need more than just that. I have standalone BR already so Im waiting it out. Would love to get my hands on a 20g just for gaming though.

Metric

PoLk FaN wrote: »

were did I say PS2 was best ever I said most sold:cool:

Obviously this was the best console ever

PoLk FaN

Sherardp wrote: »

POlk Fan you must surely love Playstation, everytime Xobox 360 comes up you go into attack mode. Theyre only consoles, all of them are fun to me. PS3 just needs more games , thats the set back with it now, and the reason I havent purchased one. I would love to buy one right now to game on Resistance, but I need more than just that. I have standalone BR already so Im waiting it out. Would love to get my hands on a 20g just for gaming though.

Im just having fun:D if you can find a 20g I have not seen one since the launch, I guess you can try ebay.
resistance is so much fun, it will keep you going for awhile with online play;)

audiobliss

Wow. Umm, interesting thread.

jdhdiggs

PoLk FaN wrote:

were did I say PS2 was best ever I said most sold:cool:

Umm, how about:

PoLk FaN wrote:

sorry dude in till xbox sells over 30 milion system like PS2,
PS2 is best