Daily News Round #1
Comment | Print | Email to a Friend | Font Size: AA- How to Build a HTPC for US$1000
The lads from HTPCNews have a fresh guide up which explains how to go about building up a "silent" HTPC from scratch for a rather bold figure of around a grand USD, using recommended materials and methods previously tried and tested in their labs.
This Guide will focus mainly on the hardware aspect of HTPC's while touching base on the software side of things. When looking to build an HTPC you have to keep in mind the various costs of extras that normally wouldn't be in a regular PC. These costs involve extras like silent case fans, CPU heat sinks, VGA coolers, rounded IDE cables, specialty cases, hardware capture devices, etc.
If you get anything out of this guide, I hope that it is the fact that an HTPC is something you will want to be as quiet as possible. Almost every feature in this guide focuses on keeping the machine silent! For the most part, you could consider this guide as one for building a blazing fast silent machine. It just happens that it's an HTPC that we are building.
- Dell GX60 BIOS Corruption
Pyroport have given us the heads up on an issue with Dell's latest A06 BIOS update for their Optiplex GX60. It seems to be corrupting the computer's BIOS in several cases, and apparently leaving the owner with no alternative but to replace the mainboard. More details over at Pyroport's website here, and here.
Dell have kept this fact rather quiet, but I learnt from personal experience this morning the cool, harsh reality of a failed bios flash.
The Optiplex GX60 has available on Dell UK's support website an A06 BIOS. Whilst it appears innocent enough an insider at Dell informs us that "the A06 BIOS has corrupted the system BIOS of many GX60s and as yet we do not know why". Those unfortunate enough to suffer this fate are left to arrange a motherboard swap with Dell. A faulty flash causes the indicating lights on the rear of the case to show (Y flashing G)YGG, which according to our insider points to either a memory issue or a faulty BIOS - clearly the latter is the case.
- Articles and Reviews from around the Web
- Mobile AthlonXP the Coolest, Quietest Ever @ Sudhian
- "Newcastle" 64-bit Athlon processors @ News.com
- Corsair TwinX1024-4000PRO Memory @ Lan Addict
- Agere Joins the 802.11 Fray: Upcoming WiFi Technology @ Anandtech
- Trendware 2 port KVM switch @ Iceteks
- Glidetape Glidepads @ ExtremeReviews
- D-Link DP-311P Wireless Print Server @ NextGenElectronics
- XP Service Pack 1 VS XP Service Pack 2 @ OnlyNewz
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