Sooo. I’ve had my PC for about 4 years…which is beginning to show its age a little in the tech world. I believe it has a 2.4 gig Intel Pentium processor in it. I also have only 256 Mbs of rammage…expandable to 2 gig.  And a 80 gig hard drive, which seems to be ample.
I have installed a Soundblaster Audigy Plat. Ext. sound card which gives me more than enough varied inputs to choose from. I’ve grown to love the Creative media player…though I do find it a bit buggy at times (maybe due to my pc’s age?) and it will tend to crash when I’m the slightest bit impatient (due to lack of ram?). But I know it quite well and I haven’t even reached full potential with it.
In order to combat with the RIAA from rearing its ugly head again, and, spotting all my ‘trophies’,  I bought an external case and installed a 250 gig hard drive to store all my media. I’ll post my partitioning problems later:)
 Thats what I’m working with. Now I’ll briefly explain what my future plans are.
Music is my main goal here. I want to eventually have a virtual ‘jukebox’. Which is what the external hard drive is for.  I want to upgrade my video card as well. I also plan on purchasing wireless peripherals. I want to be able to connect my PC to my TV….which I also plan on purchasing new in the future.
 So with your collective EXP and brainpower….guide me. I know I need more ram-jam. And I think that my first step is to max it out. But, do I leave my processor alone? Next is a video card. Whats the best quality video connection I can get with one? I have a Sony Dreamsystem that has component video outs…I’m sure that will suffice for DVD. But I’ve heard of quality loss when you connect a PC to a TV. Whats the best type of screen for viewing both?
Sorry this was long winded and scattered. I’d appreciate your input. Tax time is near and I smell a purchase coming on.
cheers!
~db
If you enjoyed this article, please consider sharing it!
9 Responses to time for an upgrade!
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Considering I am running a 1.8mhz still I honestly do not think a processor upgrade is needed.
I would dump in more ram, possibly reformat your OS drive and reinstall it. This will get rid of all those dormant registry files, defunked programs, etc. Maintenance should be in your practice say once a week with running defrags, spyware/adware scans. Usually these steps are neglected and things compile with no easy way out leaving you with a slow moving system. Other than that you can try installing FreeBSD or Gentoo instead
I’m with Rob… go for the RAM.
Reinstall your OS.
I’m running a P3 700Mhz and it does ok. No gaming though.
Mos def. I agree with these guys. Buy RAM. There’s no need to sink tons of money into your box if you’re not doing heavy gaming.
That being said, if you wanna stretch the multimedia limits of your PC (including TV/Video), talk to Grendel. He’s the man.
thanks guys! Grendel hit me up on the video tip!
~db
I totally over looked that you wanted to use the machine for TV/Video.
So your wanting to connect your computer to your Sony Dream System and a TV.
Connecting the Sony Dream System should not be too hard. Since you have an Audigy card you can use Digital Audio to the Sony Dream System.
Now on video you have to think about resolution. TV resolution is much lower than Computer Monitor resolution. You will need to use an application called PowerStrip so that you can manually tweek your Video card drivers so that the TV will be able to receive the signal. It will take some time playing with the software in order tog et the right settings you want that is best for your viewing pleasure. Personally I have used it on a Mitsubishi 65″ Rear Projection and because it was purchased from Best Buy the larger Resolutions were disabled during the build of the TV. I later found that all Mitsubishi TV unit at Best Buy are specificlly made for Best Buy stores and have less features than the real deal. So playing with PowerStrip was a pain because it took hours on end.
If you plan on using your machine as a PVR then you will need to get more gear and software. I have yet to dabble into this area yet. But from what I have read the way I want to set up my unit is with MythTV (Linux).
This is all I can come up with this morning. Grendel hit whatever I missed please. Its early and I’m tired.
These 6 jobs are starting to kick my butt.
Oh, boy. This could get ugly…
I’m running Windows XP Media Center as my entertainment hub (with my XBox360 hooked up through the media extender in XP). My computer is truly my main media center – I use it as a jukebox, Live TV / Recorded TV (records my DirecTV scheduled programs to the hard drive), video editing, Reason/Sonar production, and – of course – gaming. I have a Soundblaster card similar to yours and I get 5.1 out of all my stuff – my XBox is hooked up w/Optical out and the rest is analog. I’m going for a full digital system with a projector this year, with the Media Center and the XBox – and, uh, the PS3
– all talking to one another. Right now the TV Signal is either passed to my 22″ Viewsonic monitor, or to a secondary LCD. It’s cool to watch TV in a little window while I’m writing email.
If you want to rock the TV thing, some software apps you might want to explore are SageTV (kicks ASS) and BeyondTV. These run on Windows. Stay away from Linux right now unless you want to throw your weekends away for the next 6 months.
I find Winamp to still be the best audio player for Windows out there. Give it a try, you won’t be disappointed.
I don’t recommend tweaking any drivers. That’s kinda old school (sorry theDarkStranger). You can get a good video card with TV Out (S-Video or Composite) that will take care of it for you. I prefer NVidia cards, but ATI has some really fine cards that are targeted for the home theater crowd. I like NVidia cause the gaming is better on them. (Shameless plug – PGR3 and Halo 2 in High Def on my 360 look very, very nice.)
You can probably get away with using your current processor. Get a gig of RAM and get a big ass external HD (120GB – 250GB). You’re looking for USB2 or (preferrably) firewire. If I were you, I’d budget for the RAM first, then the vid card, then the hard drive. Memory is king! After that, do a complete reinstall of your OS, starting with a format and repartition of the HD. Like the boys said – a clean system is a happy system.
The important stuff! Dude, you gotta surf smart and compute smart. I don’t know what kind of stuff you install on your system, but I treat mine like she’s a virgin nun in a high tower. Ain’t NOTHIN gettin through unless it’s absolutely chaste and pure. (Mr Bingko’s Strip Tease Whack-A-Mole does NOT get installed on my baby.) I’m really, really careful about what I install. If you want to run a media center, you have to be sure that the software you install is going to play nice. It really, really sucks when you wake up, try to throw on your new Sunn0))) album, and the whole thing crashes.
Be wary. This shit sucks you in quick. Call me this weekend and we’ll rap, if you like.
Grendel, you treat your pc like a virgin nun….. I am not a catholic but I would assume all nuns to be virgins. Maybe you should just consider yourself the Pimp of your PC and the software manufacturers should pay you to install their goods
Cool to hear all the feedback boys. I guess I was right on the money with my thinking on this. I’m gonna do the ram upgrade onetime…just go for 2 gigs and max it out. Fromm there I guess I’ll do the video card when I get a tv. As for as the hard drive goes….I have a 250 gig hard drive but I frigged up and never partitioned it….now I’m closing in on 130-ish gigs of media and I cant partition without deleting. Is there no way around this? I have room for another internal hard drive in my external stack. I was thinkin’ of getting at least another 250 gig if not bigger. I could then partition my new drive (like a good boy should) and dump my existing data to that. Then partition the old drive. I took Phillys advice and got and external with firewire connection. Have a great weeekend mates!
You can re-partition your drive by using third-party software such as Partition Magic and others.
I need to rebuild another machine… I’m so behind the game.