Archive for the Entertainment Category

No gaming rig :(

Posted in Entertainment, Gaming, Tech with tags , , on October 4, 2008 by michael b

It’s been a few days since my last post but that hasn’t been intentional. I’ve been working so hard the last week and a half that almost every night I’ve crawled straight into bed after I got home. Working these 12 – 16 hour days were starting to take it’s toll so I’m relieved the weekend has come.

Anyways as I mentioned in an earlier post that I was planning to build a gaming rig in the coming months but after some reflection I have decided to put that on hold indefinitely. I wanted it ready by the time Diablo III & Starcraft II were released but right now to splash out on such an expensive piece of hardware doesn’t make sense. I hardly have time to play my PS3 which has numerous titles on the way for the winter season I might add. So spending a couple thousand dollars on a rig I will use maybe once or twice a week is a waste really.

As an alternate however, I did build a Window Media Center PC this weekend because I was tired of watching my movies from a laptop. Here are the specs:

  • IN Win BT610 Slim profile media case
  • Asus P5N-EM HDMI
  • Core 2 Duo E4600
  • 2GB DDR2 800MHz RAM (2×1GB)
  • 1TB SATA HDD
  • SATA DVD-ROM
  • Windows Vista Home Premium (32-bit)
The beauty about this particular Asus mobo is that it features HDMI out so I can hook it straight to a HDTV without the fuss of getting a DVI – HDMI cable. I haven’t put it through its paces yet because I’m copying over my library but I hope to give it a good thrashing this weekend.
I’ll post some pics of the final build tomorrow after I’ve slept.
UPDATE: As I said I would post some pics but I have setup the media center already and can’t be bothered to move it now (I’m being lazy). So here is a link the the product page where you can take a closer look. This is a low profile case and the only issue I had with it was fitting the HDD. There didn’t seem to be a enough space to fit it and the mini extractor fan which was disappointing.