so lots of guys are doing microserver HTPC builds for media playback - heres one that i did for a buddy and since he is a member here this thread has a lot to do with showing him the pics of what was done 
lets start off with the AMD/ATI HD6450 radeon graphics card - the sapphire one has the relevant low profile brackets and also has passive heatsinks as opposed to fans so its pretty silent as well as effective
removed the 2 gigs of ram that comes standard and replaced this with 2 sticks of 2gig non ECC dimms ..... you dont need a lot ram for media playback ie media players like a mede8er generally make do with 256mb of ram, but the extra helps the HTPC for general purpose usage
added a Pioneer DVD writer for dvd playback etc - the pioneer is an interesting option since Pioneer generally make excellent commercial DVD players
lots of people actually forget that internal USB port on the motherboard of the microserver - this could be useful for using flash drives to hold basic operating systems to boot from BUT this remains unused in this build since its using windows so it can also serve as a basic PC for general purpose usage .... the port is just above the blue screw holding the motherboard in place
hardware all installed and machine reassembled as neatly as i could get it done ie the cabling looks undisturbed as if i did not even open the machine up to put new stuff in (but its all there) - so time for a "break" .... and a Kit Kat :tongue:
on top of mine so that i just use the cables from mine to do the software install
first bootup to set hard drive priority
desktop with a typical wallpaper that i would use - im sure he will change this when he receives the server
XBMC with the aeon nox skin installed
TV series updating system info
to be honest these microservers are excellent for HTPC and media playback purposes and for music playback i have installed Foobar as well so he can play his FLAC files too im sure he will connect this to his AVR via HDMI much in the same way as i do with mine - and mine are configured pretty much in the same was above ...... oh and just to confirm the audio settings - i tried a nvidia GT210 previously for him and it did not work since apparently the HDMI of some of the nvidia cards do not recognise 24 bit audio BUT the radeons work perfectly as evidenced by the properties pictured here
lets start off with the AMD/ATI HD6450 radeon graphics card - the sapphire one has the relevant low profile brackets and also has passive heatsinks as opposed to fans so its pretty silent as well as effective
removed the 2 gigs of ram that comes standard and replaced this with 2 sticks of 2gig non ECC dimms ..... you dont need a lot ram for media playback ie media players like a mede8er generally make do with 256mb of ram, but the extra helps the HTPC for general purpose usage
added a Pioneer DVD writer for dvd playback etc - the pioneer is an interesting option since Pioneer generally make excellent commercial DVD players
lots of people actually forget that internal USB port on the motherboard of the microserver - this could be useful for using flash drives to hold basic operating systems to boot from BUT this remains unused in this build since its using windows so it can also serve as a basic PC for general purpose usage .... the port is just above the blue screw holding the motherboard in place
hardware all installed and machine reassembled as neatly as i could get it done ie the cabling looks undisturbed as if i did not even open the machine up to put new stuff in (but its all there) - so time for a "break" .... and a Kit Kat :tongue:
on top of mine so that i just use the cables from mine to do the software install
first bootup to set hard drive priority
desktop with a typical wallpaper that i would use - im sure he will change this when he receives the server
XBMC with the aeon nox skin installed
TV series updating system info
to be honest these microservers are excellent for HTPC and media playback purposes and for music playback i have installed Foobar as well so he can play his FLAC files too im sure he will connect this to his AVR via HDMI much in the same way as i do with mine - and mine are configured pretty much in the same was above ...... oh and just to confirm the audio settings - i tried a nvidia GT210 previously for him and it did not work since apparently the HDMI of some of the nvidia cards do not recognise 24 bit audio BUT the radeons work perfectly as evidenced by the properties pictured here
