Im building a dream multimedia system...

That is a sexy case. The fact you can turn the touch screen off is a nice touch too. I've got a silverstone HTPC case and can recommend them, but they can't touch Zalman for that price. Plus my experience iwht Zalman is that they've always been high build quality. You might find that you want to change the fans in them to something quieter though, but that's no biggie.

Regarding graphics cards, I can see why you've got yourself confused; it's not as complicated as it seems though as long as you approach it from the point of view of what you want to achieve. Don't worry about every possible configuration that the graphics card can support, does it do what you need?

In this case, it seems that yes, it does, and then some. The only reason I can think for dual HDMI would be if you wanted to run a media PC that conected to a flat panel for regular TV watching and then a projector for movies. The dual HDMI would mean you don't need a switcher, you just turn on either the projector or the TV, they're both connected at the same time.

This is pretty close to what you want, except that one will be connected via VGA (the 19" for Eastenders) and the other is over either HDMI or DVI. It doesn't sound like you'll need dual HDMI but it's not a bad thing. It'll make your card futureproof (by about 8 days) and it's very rare that you get a card that does ONLY what you need, there's always an extra bolted on here and there. What it does mean is that when you do want a projector or your missus becomes jealous of your crisp, clear picture and wants a 37" for herself, you won't need to shell out £150 on a new graphics card.

Also, don't worry about what input goes to what output, it doesn't work like that.The blu-ray drive in your machine will, most-likely, output to all your screens simultaniously. This won't affect frme rate or quality or anything, you just turn one of the TVs off. It'll be the same as when you output tv, it'll appear on both screens at the same time. Whatever source you're playing on your PC will go out to whatever monitors you've got connected. That's assuming you'll be working them in mirror or clone mode, which I assume you will.
 
If you're looking for a supplier for that case Overclockers.co.uk sell the '+' version for £387.74. Comes in two flavours: black or silver.

I think the HDTV out on the graphics card just means that it supports HDCP over DVI. This card has HDMI and is about half the price of than the one you posted, the 8800GT is perfectly capable of running Crysis.
 
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I completely missed your GFX card post, I was probably writing an essay while you were posting!

There's no way you need to spend £200 on a gfx card at the moment. If you were running a 1080p 50" plasma or a projector and competion gaming, then maybe. The 8800 will be more than enough it's directx10, supoprts HDMI for your panel and will run crysis at a decent frame rate. The onboard VGA (make sure you get a motherboard with VGA output if you get that card, unless your 19" panel has sVideo in) will run the panel in the other room until that's upgraded, in which case you can you upgrade the cable to a DVI.

HDMI won't be superceded for a few years yet.
 
I completely missed your GFX card post, I was probably writing an essay while you were posting!

There's no way you need to spend £200 on a gfx card at the moment. If you were running a 1080p 50" plasma or a projector and competion gaming, then maybe. The 8800 will be more than enough it's directx10, supoprts HDMI for your panel and will run crysis at a decent frame rate. The onboard VGA (make sure you get a motherboard with VGA output if you get that card, unless your 19" panel has sVideo in) will run the panel in the other room until that's upgraded, in which case you can you upgrade the cable to a DVI.

HDMI won't be superceded for a few years yet.

Just have to make sure the onboard video is not disabled if you plug in a video card.
 
There's always something I forget!

Which motherboard are youthinking of? If you can post up a few model numbers I'm sure the many wise here will be able to recommend. I might have something to offer too.
 
There's always something I forget!

Which motherboard are youthinking of? If you can post up a few model numbers I'm sure the many wise here will be able to recommend. I might have something to offer too.

Heres the next big thing, the mobo...im looking to go quad core with this Intel i think are better quads so i will opt for that, i also want Esata as i want to run a caddy with 2 SATA pioneerr burners in it so i can burn 2 discs at once, im not sure how this would work or whether i would need one Esata port for each burner, your thoughts on this are greatly appreciated, other features i am looking for on the board are WIFI, possibly bluetooth ?, lots of SATA ports for HDD, gigabit lan, dual slots to fit one of the gfx cards posted below, plenty of pci slots (i have noticed these are coming as 2.0 other varieties now, i would assume they are backward compatible ?) I intend on running 2x 2gb mem modules and obviously silince is golden so i may need to mod northbridge chip fans ?? anything else you can think of that would benfit my system would be cool, im also going to be buying a home theatre sound system so would the onboard sound be any good or should i go for a seprate card ?...with regard to the sound, with hdmi the card below im not sure if it would require a SPdif outlet on the mobo for the card to plug in as the sound and video would all be coming down the HDMI cable.
ADDAGE...the zalman case i am buying has a card reader built in, i would need to be able to plug this into the mobo ?

Just have to make sure the onboard video is not disabled if you plug in a video card.

I may just buy a really cheap secondry card if that is the case, so i will try it first and hope.

If you're looking for a supplier for that case Overclockers.co.uk sell the '+' version for £387.74. Comes in two flavours: black or silver.

I think the HDTV out on the graphics card just means that it supports HDCP over DVI. This card has HDMI and is about half the price of than the one you posted, the 8800GT is perfectly capable of running Crysis.

Im goping to buy case today and gfx card...heres one i found, nice price and just look at the connections, i believe its faster than the one posted...?

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?NOV-96GTS
 
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Im goping to buy case today and gfx card...heres one i found, nice price and just look at the connections, i believe its faster than the one posted...?

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?NOV-96GTS
Wow! Dual DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort!

I've yet to see a DisplayPort enabled TFT come to market but its better than HDMI as it supports 'full bandwidth' resolutions - HDMI only supports up to 1080p in the current version (HDMI 1.3).
 
Wow! Dual DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort!

I've yet to see a DisplayPort enabled TFT come to market but its better than HDMI as it supports 'full bandwidth' resolutions - HDMI only supports up to 1080p in the current version (HDMI 1.3).

Needless to say im buying that !!!....i managed to get the zalman case for £370 delivered...OC UK came in at £2 shy of £400 after delivery.

Need to get to work on this mobo now...any ideas.
 
I've got the ASUS P5K-E/WIFI-AP AiLifestyle. Whilst 'E' stands for economy it still costs £82.54 from ebuyer: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/129126

Its got the wifi, gigabit lan (only one ethernet port mind), 2x eSATA and 6x SATA. It hasn't got bluetooth, but with 10 USB ports (I think its 8 external and 2 headers) you could use a dongle. USB pinout on the motherboard will allow you to plug in the card reader. Motherboard is passively cooled, so no noisy chipset fans to worry about.

I've got a double width graphics card installed on it with no problem other than loosing a PCI slot.

I've also got 4 sticks of 1GB Corsair DDR2-1066 (PC2-8500C5D): http://www.ebuyer.com/product/119190. Whilst this RAM is on the QVL pdf, it isn't shown as being supported in a 4 DIMM mode (none of the DDR2-1066 sticks are), but works fine on my board. I say this as it means my RAM matches my CPU FSB.

There is also the Asrock 4CORE1600P35-WIFI for £66.94 @ ebuyer: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/144219 it looks good for the price as the spec is very similar apart from only one eSATA port, until you notice it takes both DDR2 and DDR3. Most people would think 'good, its more future proof' but you can only use one or the other. Plus there is a performance hit no matter whether you go for DDR2 or 3 when benchmarked against just DDR2 and just DDR3 enabled p35 motherboards.

Whilst I am a bit of an ASUS fanboy at the moment I was unable to find any other manufacturers than the two above who provide onboard wifi on the ebuyer website.
 
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Thanks for that, ebuyer is to a favourite of mine but i found recently that they dont seem to hold such a vast array of everything. Well, i have the case and graphics card bought so thats good.
 
Thanks, going to be a f**king burden on my wallet to...well hell, i deserve it.........bit stumped at the moment with all the mobos, wish i could narrow it down to like 20 or something.
 
I have been using gigabyte boards without problems for the last two years.

I have noticed that though the new chipsets support 10 USB ports, a lot of recent M/B have only got a single USB header (2 ports) on the M/B so if you want front USB and a card reader you might be struggling.

What features are you specifically looking for ?
 
All the ones li listed further further up in the thread, wifi, lots of sata and esata, not sure if i can burn to 2 drives in a caddy with one esata or whether i will need one for each drive so thats a a deffo, dual pci, support quad core, not to worried about ddr3 as i dont think it will give much of an overall denefit, WOL, i have heard some boards allow you to play music without actually having to fully boot the os ?? may not work with the setup i have in mind but would be nice if it did...
 
Thats interesting...would be cool if it had removable/hotswapable caddy bays...as i have a different drive to burn my 360 games.
 
So you are looking at running 3 external writers ?

To be honest, I was looking at that and I reakon that for around 50 quid you could assemble you own external array if you 2 or 3 drives. If you start with an old midi tower PC case with a power supply you can get a couple of power convertors for a few quid, hot wire the PSU to the front panel switch and Sata cables could be routed through the rear panel.

Can of car spray paint so it matches the room and job done.
 
or just find yourself an old AT case? Or just an old AT PSU an build your own enclosure?

The AT PSU's have an actual on/off switch that doesnt need a motherboard to turn on devices.
 
True, but I find old AT cases very difficult to find even at the local skip.

To be honest, ATX is not difficult to hot wire, just short the green cable with any of the black ones. I was thinking you could also put a USB card reader and other bits and pieces via USB hub and extension cable. That way you could hide the main noisy system with CPU fan, hdd, etc away and have silent one on display.

You could put together power supply extension from the main case and you would not even need a PSU in there.
 
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