DVD+RW dual layer (8.5Gb) format

Cant see the point in that Linn machine.

You can get a home theater style PC case for around £200 or less.

Remote controlled keyboard and mouse (neat designs BTW) for around £100.

You can buy low spec processor and graphics and use passive cooling - no noise.

These cases have plenty of room for hard drives. How does 4x 250Gb drives take you?

A small 15" TFT monitor for £200

A good soundcard of the same sort of caliber as the Terratec EWX24/96 or M-Audio Audiophile 24/96. Less than £200.

This PC should cost far less than 2 grand, and will perform far better than that hifi badged ripoff POS....

 

What you dont get is the Linn support, installation, future firmware, badge, resale value, etc etc - but you are probably correct.

 

As it happens, I'm very happy with the sonics of the Barracuda 7200.7 in my home PC - built for low noise rather than for max performance - otherwise I'd have probably gone stripped SATA-RAID seeing as the m/board I've got in there supports this option.

What sort of spec processor can you get away with using passive cooling on - could I get away with passive cooling on an Athlon XP 1700+ ? If so what cooler?

 

Wouldn't have thought you'd get away with passive cooling on an AMD XP1700+ - they run pretty hot!

The VIA C3 can run without a fan, but performance is pretty limited. For MP3 streaming and such like, I would think it to be OK, though. I'd recommend installing a better sound card rather than using on-board, for both quality reasons and also CPU utilisation levels.

I'd stay clear from budget USB sound cards - recently bought a SoundBlaster MP3. Good in terms of opticial in/out and RCA connections - no more digging behind the PC, plus with a long cable, I can integrate it with my HiFi kit, but the down side is high CPU utilisation, causing choppy audio if I'm doing something processor intensive.

Perhaps the more expensive ones such as the Extigy and the likes of the M-Audio models are better though - to be fair, I've only used the cheaper stuff. A USB2 or FireWire soundbox would be cool, as both buses can go up to 480mbps. FireWire 2 or whatever the newest version is called can actually go up to 800mpbs.

 

Hi Henry,

If youre going to stripe at raid0 then make sure youre sata chipset is true 150 - all chipsets before Intel ICH5 are throttled by the 133 bus limitation.

Intel motherboards are still the best IMO.