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Need help/advice to upgrade older HTPC

408 Views 2 Replies 2 Participants Last post by  christo76
Hey guys need a bit of quick (easy, I hope) help.

I built a 'cheap' HTPC about 3 yrs ago, that really was used as more of a TV connected PC for surfing the net from the couch. I didn't get an OTA tuner at the time because their wasn't many good ones out. I didn't get a great video card, but was told what I got should be good enough once I got the OTA tuner. I bought an OTA tuner cheap at a Going out of business Circuit City, and it didn't seem to work the greatest, choppy video and can't get recordings to work easily.

I think I need to upgrade some components to get it working better.

Here is what I have:
MOBO Abit KN9 Ultra
CPU AMD Athlon 64 3500+ single core
Video Gigabyte GeForce 7300LE
RAM 1 Gig OCZ Gold DDR2 800
Tuner Pinnacle PCTV 800i

I am looking for the cheapest, yet still good, way to get this system to act as a 2 tuner PVR for OTA. Currently unemployed and figure I need to cut back on some things, so I am gonna ditch Directv and just watch OTA. Hoping I can do the upgrade for just over 1 months bill (about $100)

Open to anything, more RAM, new CPU, new Vid Card.... and of course at least 1 more OTA tuner.
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Ok, $100 is more then enough to make it a bit better. You should replace the 7300LE with a more capable card. This card is $65:
Sapphire HD4670 with native HDMI port
This videocard also has an onboard HDMI audio chip.

With the other $35 you could buy another 1GB memory for a total of 2GB:
Another OCZ Gold 1GB (2x512)
Thanks for the quick reply.

Also, do you know how quiet this card is? My current one is passive cooling to keep the whole pc silent? If I need to I can just get a quieter fan I suppose.
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