When I came home the other day I heard a strange noise coming from the little room in my house I’d like to call my personal ’server room’. It’s filled with electronics (I’m in the process of getting my master’s degree in electrical engineering), measuring equipment, unfinished projects and my WHS box.
When I opened the door it was as I feared, it was WHS box which was making the infernal racket. I immediately disconnected the plug for fear of overheating my components. After opening up my WHS box I soon discovered my processor was to blame. It’s simply fried and beyond repair. After some careful consideration I’ve decided to upgrade my WHS box since it cannot be salvaged. Luckily my WHS was just an old pentium 4 pc gathering dust.
I’ve decided to go with AMD for a change and buy a cheap but sturdy WHS box. I haven’t settled for anything yet but I’m thinking of building something with the 690V chipset and a cheap dual core processor. Let me know your recommendations.
I’ll keep you guys posted as this project continues.
On to the next part in our online media series: Yougle
Yougle is an add-in which extends your Media Center so it can play online video/audio from sources such as Youtube, live365.com and some others. Their source list isn’t very extensive but they’ve got Shoutcast and Youtube which makes up for a lot.
Unfortunately for us x64 users there are still some problems with playing back flash content. According to the Yougle Website this has to do with the FLVSplitter not being 64-bit.
Which raises another question. I’ve been using Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit for the past year or so, ever since I made the step to 4 Gigabytes of RAM memory, and I haven’t run into any serious problems, except with Media Center.
I think Microsoft should make an effort to support it’s own products better in 64-bit as well. Especially now that x64 is on the rise according to CNet.
If you’re a x64 Media Center user have you run into any problems?
September 4th, 2008 at 9:50 pm
I know MS is throwing 300million to it’s marketing campaign. Maybe they should use some of that money to push x64 support. I mean, 90% of the problem with vista x64 is that manufacturers all but refuse to write drivers for it.
September 5th, 2008 at 6:31 am
You would probably be better of with a 780G chipset, since its powerconsumption should be lower. And if you can find the space for it, go for a full size ATX so you’ll have more expandebility.
Later when AMD releases their low power processor, buy it, install it, and you’ll have a system more powerfull than the ATOM and less powerconsuming (plus you’ll have a lot more SATA connectors). For further reading http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/Atom-Athlon-Efficient,1997.html
September 5th, 2008 at 6:31 am
I know! And it bugs the hell out of me. 4 GB of RAM isn’t that uncommon anymore! x64 is on the rise just because of the need for more memory. And yet there is so little support.
September 5th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
Two months ago I built a home server with the Asus M2A-VM (690G chipset) and AMD Athlon X2 4050e (45W TDP) and loving it. The CPU stays pretty cool with the stock fan which is surprisingly quiet. It’s more powerful than my aging desktop so now I’m looking to replace it soon.
September 7th, 2008 at 6:33 am
Is Yougle still being supported? I tried it a few months ago and it was unusable. The onscreen keyboard didn’t work properly and a hardware keyboard wasn’t supported. Everything was downloaded then played instead of buffered etc.
Sadly there is no other VMC plugin with Youtube support…I’m stuck using IR which isn’t a very “big screen” experience.