The Build from Hell: Part I: Shopping

Isn't it nice when things just work? You get in your car, turn the key, and the engine starts. You pick up the phone, push some buttons, and someone answers on the other end. You turn a knob on a faucet and water comes out.

This is the way computers should be and, until recently, the way they had been working for me. That all changed with The Build from Hell.

So, as is becoming an annual custom, at my yearly review, my boss informed me that they had underpaid me by quiggly-thousand dollars (again) this year, so I'd be receiving a large check to cover the balance. This should make me furious that they've been underpaying all my (snerk) "hard work", but, for some reason, I look forward to this inevitable occurrence. Probably because, like an IRS refund, the brain just interprets it as FREE MONEY! WOOHOO! when it's actually been my money all along, and someone else was just holding on to it, interest free. Secondly, because this is the closest I ever get to a Christmas bonus. You see, my company doesn't pay Christmas bonuses, because our directors are too busy taking the entire UK staff up to the Lake District to stay in a rented castle (I imagine it looks like Hogwarts), so they need us poor saps in the US to stay in the office during the week between Christmas and New Years and if we could just come in on Saturday that would be greeeeeeat.

So I actually almost prefer that they don't pay me all my salary over the year, but save some until the very end, so it feels like I'm getting an end-of-the-year bonus. So long as we don't tell me brain, it's happy to live in its own little delusion.

All of this is a very roundabout way (or "traffic-circular" way, for those in the US) of pointing out that I recently had a bunch of money burning a hole in my pocket. Instead of doing something responsible with it, like investing in a college fund for Damien and Anthony, or paying off my credit card or student loans, I decided it was time to upgrade our living room computer.

When I last upgraded my desktop computer, I took the old one and hooked it up to the TV to create a home theater-esque PC. Since we didn't have a good DVD player in the living room, this was what we used, and since the TV's speakers were crappy, but we have a nice THX-certified 200 watt speaker system for computer, this was our method of actually hearing audio from the TV. But the computer was getting old. I built it nearly 8 years ago, right after we got married, when it was totally the rage to have a computer with enough fans to power a NASA wind tunnel. The thing was loud. Loud enough to drown out audio from the TV, and since it needed to be on to get audio for the TV, it was its own Catch-22. Also, the DVD drive had about a 10% success rate on reading DVDs, so the whole purpose of using it to watch movies was kind of defeated.

I decided now was the time to upgrade to a real Home Theater PC, with Blu-ray support. We've had a 1080p TV for about 4 years now, but with no Blu-ray player, only 720p cable TV HD, and a video card manufactured in the Dark Ages of twenty-aught-four, before 1920x1080 was a commonly-supported video card resolution, we had no way of using all 360 of those extra rows.

I also wanted to be able to play (some) games on it, at least those that could be played with our wireless Logitech controllers, so a newer graphics card and CPU would be nice. Plus, have you used Windows 7? Seriously nice, man. But that requires more memory to run, and by this time, we're basically talking about a brand new build.

So I had been looking up components on Newegg for a couple months, getting a feel for what I would need. I found a nice low-profile case, about the size of our DVR. Since it's low-profile, it dictated certain motherboard and expansion card sizes. I found a nice Asus Micro ATX board, and the fastest low profile-ready video card available.

I had to wait a day to place the order, due to waiting for my bonus check to clear, but by the next day the video card I wanted had sold out. Not settling for anything less than the best, I was left with the option of waiting until it was back in stock (which could be days to months), purchasing from a place that is not New Egg. Through searching, I found that only one other company made a video card with the chipset I wanted in a low-profile form factor, although Newegg didn't seem to carry it.

I went to the manufacturer's website to see who did sell it, and they listed Newegg. I followed the link, and they did in fact have it in stock, but the card didn't come up in searches for low-profile video cards with that chipset. (It does now, so Newegg seems to have fixed the error.)

OK, everything good to go.

In order to use this PC as an HTPC, I would want some way to get video on to it, and this involves a TV tuner card. You see, the HTPC I already had had a TV tuner, which allowed for video and audio input from the cable box. Problem was it was over an S-video cable, which is an analog connection, low-resolution, and comes with significant image quality degradation. For a while, I had been wanting to set up a system that could record HD video from the cable box.

The TV tuner I had planned to purchase claimed "HD recording capability!" but when I went to the manufacturer's website, it turns out that is only true if you have an unencrypted feed from your cable provider, and not through a cable box. So, basically, never. Investigating further, it turns out that cable companies, for the most part, don't want you to be able to record HD feeds. Firstly, why would you want to, you pirate? What are you, some kind of stealing, copyright-infringing, pirate? You want to steal everything without paying for it, don't you? You monster.

Secondly, it would allow you to build your own DVR. You monster.

However, exactly one company makes exactly one TV tuner card that can record HD, either through unencrypted HDMI inputs (like from an Xbox or PS3) or over component cables (YPbPr; which works from cable or satellite set top boxes). Problem was, they did not make the card in a low-profile format.

Blargh.

I emailed the company's sales email address asking if they planned to make a low-profile version of the card so people could use it in HTPCs which, y'know, seems like the type of place one would want to use it. I got a prompt reply saying they had no plans for such. Crud.

This meant that I needed to, basically, find a new case and review every component choice I had made to see if there was a better or cheaper full size option. It also opened up my video card options, and I was able to pick a slightly faster video card.

I dithered over cases for a few days, not finding one that really grabbed me like the low-profile case. One was cheap and came with a built-in 500w power supply, but every review on Newegg said the power supply was terrible, and would fail within a few months. Since a bad power supply killed my computer once about 8 years ago (necessitating the build that was currently hooked up to the TV), and took my hard drive with it (which is why we have no pictures from our honeymoon), I am extermely cautious about PSes. In the end I found an OK one, but it was kind of expensive, and without a PS I would have to buy that separately, and those tend to run into money (especially for the good ones that don't destroy hard drives). I still think it's dumb that the case and PS can cost more than the processor. One is a shaped slab of metal and a plug, the other is, y'know, the entire brains of the computer.

Finally I found everything I needed, and placed the order....

...which was promptly rejected because Bank of America flipped out. "OMG," they said. "You're spending money on the internet! Credit card fraud!" I had to specifically call them to pre-approve the order.

In the end, I ordered:
Intel Core i3-2100 Sandy Bridge 3.1GHz Dual-Core Desktop Processor
Hauppauge Colossus TV Tuner
Logitech diNovo Mini Black Bluetooth Wireless Mini Keyboard (this thing is awesome!)
Rosewill Stallion Series 500W ATX Power Supply
ASUS P8H67-M LX LGA 1155 Intel Micro ATX Motherboard
HIS Radeon HD 6770 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card
LITE-ON Blu-ray Burner with 3D Playback and LightScribe Support
G.SKILL Value Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Desktop Memory

nMEDIAPC Black Aluminum panel; Steel Micro ATX Media Center / HTPC Case

(Note the absence of a hard disk. Flooding in Thailand damaged two of Western Digital's factories, and has caused a 100%-200% increase in the price of drives. I simply swiped an old 120GB drive from my current HTPC, and will buy a 2TB drive once they're back below $100. Although, it seems kind of like a first-world problem to complain about hard drive prices during a flood)

It was at this point that I decided, y'know, I probably should have checked to see what the best bang-for-the-buck processor was. I hopped over to Tom's Hardware to check and found this.

Phew.