jackt283 Posted July 17, 2007 Share Posted July 17, 2007 I'm moving my production machine from the living room into my bedroom and I need a cheap computer to fill it's place so people can watch movies and listen to mp3's. Figuring about $300 (aussie dollar) is in ideal price for a such a machine. Power is obviously not of the essence here, just sound and network and graphics. Here's my list: CPU: Celeron D 331 or better ~$50 MOBO P5GZ-MX ~$70 RAM 1GB ~$50 HD 200GB ~$80 DVD Pioneer 111 or 110 ~$50 CASE and PSU ~$50 So it's a little over. Any suggestions what are your thoughts? The P5GZ seems to be very cheap and very compatible anyone here with one? What about a remote control and front row or a TV tuner card? Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/57380-new-build-cheap-media-center/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrSupachicken Posted July 17, 2007 Share Posted July 17, 2007 I'd definitely go for a Pentium D over the Celeron D. I picked my one up pretty cheap off ebay. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/57380-new-build-cheap-media-center/#findComment-409883 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Danyel Posted July 17, 2007 Share Posted July 17, 2007 Hi Jackt283: I bought Griffin's AirClick USB for around $25USD. I downloaded Universal Drivers from Griffin's Website. Remote works great with Front Row, iTunes, DVD Player and even Windows Applications as well. http://www.griffintechnology.com/products/airclickusb/ I built my OSx86 mPC last summer for around $400USD. I bought 19" Widescreen Flat Panel for around $200USD last year (probably cheaper now). --danyel Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/57380-new-build-cheap-media-center/#findComment-409968 Share on other sites More sharing options...
jackt283 Posted July 18, 2007 Author Share Posted July 18, 2007 Hmm. The Celeron D's are very cheap. Half the price of a Pentium D off ebay. I wonder if the machine is being used for web surfing and playing music, avis and dvd's and not much else if the Celeron will do? The griffin USB solution seems to be pretty cool too. Thanks guys!! Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/57380-new-build-cheap-media-center/#findComment-410395 Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrSupachicken Posted July 18, 2007 Share Posted July 18, 2007 Yeah Celeron will work, but it all depends on how many apps you would be running? I got my Pentium D 915 2.8GHz for around $70AUD off ebay, all depends on what you want to spend? I must say though, my proc seems very good in OSx86! Everything worked out of the box using 8.8.1 kernel, and I'm running 10.4.10 no perfectly. Only thing that I had to do was edit the about this mac kext for it to recognize my CPU. I believe this is because Apple dropped support for Pentium processors by this stage. I upgraded to 10.4.10 manually myself, so maybe if I used a install package off a site, it would of had the modified kext. Not sure, but it says everything it should now, and runs perfectly. If you go with the Celeron I hope it works just as well for you! Cheers. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/57380-new-build-cheap-media-center/#findComment-410465 Share on other sites More sharing options...
jackt283 Posted July 18, 2007 Author Share Posted July 18, 2007 I run a Pentium D 920 on my production machine. it goes really well, though not as fast as I would like. I doubt the media center computer with the celeron will be running anything more than DVD player, Itunes, and maybe firefox. It's just not going to be doing that much work. But if i can get a Pentium D of ebay for a little more, I will probably go the extra mile. I would love to hear how people have gone with Celerons in the past maybe some bench marks or something? Personally I think they are pretty good (but I have never seen one run OS X), I think Intel rams all the new processor releases out so fast to try to wow everybody into thinking they are way better when they are marginally better - at best! Everyone says OSX is faster on older hardware than windows is anyway. I think with 1GB of ram, there isn't going to be much that will stop this machine (except for any real work of course.... but it's not sposed to do that)... Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/57380-new-build-cheap-media-center/#findComment-410508 Share on other sites More sharing options...
mohoyt Posted July 18, 2007 Share Posted July 18, 2007 I've got a media centre based on a 2.66GHz Celeron D (331 I believe). I bought the Celeron new for £40ish about a year ago. Its pretty annoying now that the prices of everything have dropped so much as I could have bought a fairly decent P4 with the same money, or a Core 2 Duo for ~£100 now. However the celeron really is surprisingly fast! I used to have it running on 256 of 266Mhz RAM which was pretty awful as the motherboard accepts faster! Now though, I have bought 2 512Mb sticks so it has a total of 1.25Gb of RAM and a result boots in about a 1/4 of the time, almost as fast as my 1st gen iMac Intel (1.83GHz). So I reckon unless you have a lot of RAM, the performance deficit will not be just because of the Celeron. Saying that though, I should probably have a go at OCing my Celeron (apparently they're quite good at it?). My main Intel OSX86 Hackintosh thingy is explained below if you wanna see more about it. But as for Benchmarks, I tried GeekBench 2.05 and got 1253 (http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/view/11893) which is on par with the worst Intel Macs and the best PowerPC ones. Which honestly isn't that bad for a cheap-ass Celeron... I'm intending to use it as a media centre, and did for a bit, using mainly VLC, DivX web player and QT to watch things which worked out fine. VLC was a tad jumpy on high quality files tho, but that might have been when I had only 256mb RAM... Anyway my iMac has gone for a new logic board (the top RAM slot buggered up) and I'm using the Hackintosh full time and it works grand, not really noticing the speed (or lack thereof). For the media centre case I got a Hiper HMC-1S53A from eBay for £20 which was a huge bargain as it included a slim line combodrive. Although I currently can't fit everything all in (need a SATA HD and CPU fan too big) it looks darn groovy! Any more q's or want pics, then just ask! Cheers. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/57380-new-build-cheap-media-center/#findComment-410586 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vlado Posted July 18, 2007 Share Posted July 18, 2007 Try to go for the Core2Duo E2180.It's dirt cheap and overclocks to 3Ghz really fast. I'v had a Celeron D 331 @ 2.6Ghz stock. With a good Zalman cooler i was able to take it at 5,2Ghz 24/7 for the last year and a half. Curently i'm running a machine similar to the highest end MacPro Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/57380-new-build-cheap-media-center/#findComment-410727 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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