Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
below the floor. So, for the time being, we decided to install a wireless net-
working card in the media center system and simply make it a client on our
wireless network.
If we intended to use a wireless network adapter as a permanent solution,
we'd install an ASUS PCE-N13 802.11 b/g/n PCI Express wireless adapter, which
sells for under $30, is very fast, and provides full WPA2 security. However, be-
cause we'll use wireless networking only until we have time to install an Ether-
net cable, we fished around in our spare parts closet and came up with an old
D-Link DWL-G520 AirPlusXtremeG 802.11 b/g/g+ PCI wireless adapter. With
nominal data rates up to 108 Mb/s and WPA support, it's both fast enough and
secure enough for our temporary needs. And it didn't cost anything.
Of course, as Barbara will tell you, Robert's “temporary” solutions have a way of
becoming permanent, so perhaps we should have installed the ASUS 802.11n
adapter. Oh, well. That'll be easy enough to fix later.
HardDiskDrive(s)
Seagate Barracuda XT ST32000641AS 2TB (two)
(
http://www.seagate.com
)
You'll have some decisions to make when you choose a hard drive or drives for
your media center system. If you're not storing much video (or if your video is
stored remotely on a home server system), you can probably get by with one
$50 mainstream desktop hard drive. At the other extreme, if you have a large
DVD collection that you want to rip and store locally on your media center
system, as we do, you'll need all the hard drive capacity you can get.
When we were building our media center system, the largest drives available
were 2 TB drives, the most expensive of which cost more than twice as much
as the least expensive models. Why the large difference? Speed, amount of
cache, and interface. The least expensive 2 TB drives run at 5,400 RPM, have 8
MB, 16 MB, or 32 MB of cache, and use the SATA 3.0 Gb/s interface. Those that
cost twice as much run at 7,200 RPM, have 64 MB of cache, and use the SATA
6.0 Gb/s interface.
At this point, the SATA 6.0 Gb/s interface is just marketing hype. Even the fast-
est current hard drives can't saturate the SATA 3.0 Gb/s interface, so doubling
that interface speed is meaningless. But rotation speed and cache size are real
issues, ones that may affect the performance of the media center system.
For simple media playback, a 5,400 RPM drive is fast enough, and it has the
advantages of being quieter and cooler-running than most 7,200 RPM drives.
In this class, the standout choices are the Samsung SpinPoint and EcoGreen
series drives and the Western Digital Caviar Green series drives.
If you're doing more than just media playback on your media center system,
or if it will also multitask—for example, serving multiple audio/video streams
to other systems in your home—7,200 RPM drives are a better choice. They're
more expensive, run hotter, and make more noise than 5,400 RPM models, but
they're fast enough for disk-intensive tasks like serving multiple video streams
or editing video.
