New to the game

(2012-07-18 23:07)bluray Wrote:  

(2012-07-17 18:35)mprez333 Wrote:  

Quote:Newegg.com only charges taxes in California, New Jersey and Tennessee.

And I live in Tennessee. Lucky me, right? Amazon is potentially building a distribution center in Chattanooga, TN in the near future, which would mean I would get taxed there as well.

No....not Amazon. They have a big distribution center near me, but they don't tax me.......

I thought I had heard otherwise on the local news, but I definitely hope you're right. Sales tax in TN is insane and its nice to be able to get components from Amazon for a good price without the tax.

(2012-07-17 19:49)Dougie Fresh Wrote:  IIRC, there is an issue with the height of the stock Intel cooler in the MI-008 (Google "MI-008 intel stock cooler" or read the reviews). It's right up against the bottom of the power supply. You might want to consider either a G630T for $10 more: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6819116407 or get a low profile aftermarket heatsink.

One of these "CPU Cooler Slim Silence i-Plus or Dynatron K129" low profile CPU cooler should fit in there......

I'm looking to do (mostly) the same thing and ditch cable for xbmc. My plan is to more ease into it though. I've got XBMC up and running on some laptops and ATV2 for now which is working but I want to switch to some proper HTPCs so I've been agonizing over the builds too.

If you're going to do a scratch build why not do it in stages? If you have an old HDD you could use that instead of an SSD. Be a little slower but save $60 there, upgrade later. Same on the fans, with the AMD builds they say the stock cooler fans are noisy but you could live with it for a while and save $25, swap the new cooler in later. Same for the picoPSU. Ram could be a single 2gb stick vs 2x2 or maybe 2x1gb but then you waste them later on. Or if you can get OpenElec running you shouldn't even need an SSD/HDD right? Just a $13 stick that you might already have.

As far as that goes though too almost any old PC will run XBMC depending on your content. I've got a laptop (winXP) with a 1.86GHz pentium single core w/ 2gb ram and it does alright up to 720p. I rip everything to 720p or less because of the ATV2. You could always buy an old PC on craigslist for now.

Might not be pretty or real quick with an old PC or half-way build but considering you're savings $100/mo that should add up quick. The other thing for myself and my wife is I'm going to go over our cable package and see what I can cut out to get the cost down in the meantime. I find I watch very little cable tv now so I can get rid of 'my' channels easy enough while I pick away at her resistance.

I still have Directv but I havent turned it on since football season ended. If I could find a way to watch all of my games online, I would cancel it and not look back.
I would actually pay for some service to watch it online.

(2012-07-19 15:44)malibu327 Wrote:  I still have Directv but I havent turned it on since football season ended. If I could find a way to watch all of my games online, I would cancel it and not look back.
I would actually pay for some service to watch it online.

I love football as well, so I'll be relying on: ESPN3, OTA antenna to get games that come on the major networks, and social gatherings with friends to sort out the rest.

Between ESPN3 and OTA, I should be able to cover almost all of my football needs. When college basketball season rolls around, the same should apply, though I'll have to probably go check out a few games here and there with friends or just miss them. Nothing wrong with spending some times with the guys though.