Intel Core 2 Quad Q8300 okay for WMC?

[jewrican]

I am trying to figure out if a Q8300 Core2Quad processor will be okay for a 4 tuner Ceton setup.

I plan to use it to watch live tv, record, and just playing music / displaying pictures. I plan to use one xbox 360 as an extender as well.

Will this work out okay for my WMC computer? How much RAM do you recommend to go with it?

[Doctor Feelgood]

IMO - That should be a strong processor for that. 4GB of memory would be the minimum I would recommend, and 8GB might the minimum I would actually feel comfortable with to be ready for live TV playback and perhaps a simultaneous recording or two. Problem is, I believe you would only be running DDR2 memory with that processor - and these days that is expensive! A 4GB dual channel kit of DDR3 might be under $40, while a 4GB kit of DDR2 might be double that. It gets worse at 8GB, where a DDR3 kit might be $60ish, but a DDR2 kit might be $160.

Do you already have memory?

[foxwood]

Additional tuners don't require extra RAM. If you're only planning a single extender, you'll be fine with 4GB - of course, it won't do any harm to go with 8, except to your wallet!

[erkotz]

That's faster than my HTPC was until recently (I upgraded to an i3 as I had one laying around)

[jewrican]

Thanks a ton for the feedback. Perfect!

As far as hard drives. What do you guys recommend? Is there any need at all to RAID 0 hard drives or will a standard drive be okay? Any minimum specs to be aware of with the drives?

Yeah you arent kidding about the RAM. It is ridiculous how expensive it is. So odd.

I just ordered Comcast this evening. I now just need to order my tuner, hard drive, video card, audio card, hard drive and remotes. I am pretty stoked about this... other than spending the money on it ha ha.

[foxwood]

You don't need RAID for performance. 6GB files are big, but it's 6GB per hour - even recording 4 streams at a time, you're still only looking at ~7MB per second.

[jewrican]

You don't need RAID for performance. 6GB files are big, but it's 6GB per hour - even recording 4 streams at a time, you're still only looking at ~7MB per second.

perfect. Just ordered a 3TB drive 7200 RPM. Thanks a bunch.