[tmyoungjr]

So I had a simple Ubuntu server just doing basic UPNP streaming to my PS3 for movies at my house. I just purchased a new home and was able to end up with a "man cave" in the basement. It was already pre-finished and gave me a good space. I routinely keep my servers in the basement (out of sight out of mind). So I started thinking to myself, why not just use that as my HTPC and not bother with the network, just HDMI to my receiver directly. So I went and acquired a vid card as the onboard NIC wasn't going to cut it :

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6814121397

Shortly thereafter my main server died, well might as well get it running again! I just received via UPS :

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6819103871
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6813128394
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6820227550

What I'm looking for is input. Did I grab decent gear? Should I replace any of it? For my purposes its most likely rather overkill just for the XBMC portion, but remember I use this machine for other things (web, mail, dns, occasionally a router if the fancy strikes, etc). The cost was also relatively minimal since I had a case, a bit of storage already (my HDD didn't die), power supply and memory.

Thanks for the thoughts / opinions. Feel free to lay the smackdown if needed. I'll be putting my OS on the box, I'll probably start with the XBMC Live CD and do an install from there and then add the other pieces that I need.

[darkscout]

Well, that's ungodly amount of overkill for everything listed.

I just got one of those CPUs for my solaris server. Debian under VirtualBox is running faster than debian on the bare metal of the previous setup. I just compiled ffmpeg in a few minutes (For AirVideo).

My XBMC by comparison is a 1.8gHz celeron. Those numbers are correct 526 on the CPU bench. The GT220 does ALL the heavy lifting for me.

At one time I ran sickbeard, sabnzbd, couchpotato and a few other things on my HTPC. I'd just get a bit of lag when it was unrarring.

-

Not sure how the ATI will work with linux or how to get all the setup working. Most people aren't fans of ATIs drivers.

[tmyoungjr]

Not sure how the ATI will work with linux or how to get all the setup working. Most people aren't fans of ATIs drivers.

Note that I'm dropping a NVIDIA GT430 into the box so that I can hopefully not worry

As for overkill - yeah a bit for most of it. I do use it for other tasks, but not consistently, so on occasion I'll actually use most of the 4GB of memory and about 1/2 of the CPU. But mostly it's cheap nowadays, so why not overkill a bit.

[poofyhairguy]

Did I grab decent gear?

I love it all. Great mobo, SSD and GPU.

[tmyoungjr]

Good to hear. Now to find time to slap it all together and get ubuntu and XBMC rockin.

Thanks PHG