From: http://furiousfanboys.com/
Now THIS is how you show off your geek pride, by making a custom-build media center PC out of a Millennium Falcon. And it looks like he put in some pretty nice hardware…SSD drive…good ram. Nice job!
Cupertino City Council is likely to approve Apple's plans to build a new four-story spaceship-like HQ in the city, which would house around 12,000 staff. In response to Apple CEO Steve Jobs' presentation to the council, Cupertino Mayor Gilbert Wong said: "There is no chance that we're saying no [to Apple]. The Mothership has landed in Cupertino."
Jobs on Tuesday unveiled plans to build a new campus near Apple's existing headquarters in Cupertino, in a circular shape that looks like a spaceship. The new space would be used to accommodate Apple's growing staff numbers. "Apple's grown like a weed and as you know, Apple's always been in Cupertino," Jobs said in his presentation. "The campus we'd like to build there is one building that holds 12,000 people."
Cupertino City Council reacted positively to Apple's plans for a new HQ. Wong said: "Every time that we have a large company that has a large sales tax produced we are very accommodating to that company."
The four-story Apple mothership is expected to be completed in 2015, and would use self-generate energy, with the grid only used for backup power. In his presentation, Jobs empasized the green credentials of the upcoming campus, which will be built on land Apple originally bought from Hewlett-Packard while downsizing.
Parking at the Apple spaceship HQ will be underground, and 80 percent of the area currently used for parking will be landscaped, from currently 3700 trees to around 6000. A new research and development center will also be built, along with a new auditorium, so that Apple won't have to go to San Francisco for big k eynote events.
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Before I go on, first let me explain briefly what a HTPC is and how it differs from a regular PC. Basically, an HTPC (sometimes called a Media PC or Media Center) is a PC that’s specifically designed to playback music and video. Also, since it’s an entertainment system, you want to be able to control the PC remotely, and you want to keep noise down to a minimum.
Computer cases tend to reveal certain things about their owners. With one glance, your friends can estimate just how serious (or casual) your computer hardware addiction may be. Whether the chassis is a generic, cream-colored throwback from the 90's, a standard mid-tower with a couple of LED fans, or an extravagant full-tower gaming behemoth with see-through side panels and custom graphics, first impressions unavoidably start with the enclosure.
Although the market is loaded with a myriad of attractive cases, one product from Thermaltake caught our attention from the moment we laid eyes on it and it has captivated us ever since. The Level 10 gaming tower is a new over-the-top enclosure made specifically for enthusiasts who want to make a statement without saying a word; or at the very least, appreciate cutting-edge design and absolute precision build quality. Of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but few can deny the Level 10's eye-catching good looks and extraordinary construction. As you may have heard, this case was created by BMW Group Designworks USA for Thermaltake. The BMW Group designs new concepts for a variety of industries, such as yachts, trains, and aircraft. Let's check out its latest creation made specifically for gamers, to see if it's really as revolutionary and well-built as it looks...
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| Model | Level 10 |
| Type | ATX Full Tower |
| Color | Black |
| Material | Aluminum |
| Expansion | 3 x External 5.25" Drive Bays |
| Front I/O Ports | 4 x USB |
| Cooling | 2 x 60mm Drive Bay Fans |
| Physical Dimensions | 24.17" x 12.52" x 26.22" (Length x Width x Height) |
| Weight | 47.11 lbs |
| Warranty | 3 Years Limited (parts / labor) |
| Price | $850 |
A good example of what we can do with an empty whisky bottle.
Made by Janos Marton with the desire of a “more quiet, small and low power consumptioning computer to function as a basic home server”, the Whisky PC has proved to be one of the most weird and interesting inventions.
Janos Marton explains how he made this strange computer here.
by Will Smith
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Stop surfing the internet for a minute (we know, a tall order) and go get your last cable or satellite TV bill. Back? Good. Now skim to the bottom and look at the total amount of money you paid for TV last month. Do you feel like you got a reasonable amount of entertainment for that $60, $80, or even $100-plus? Are you happy about the money you spend for the privilege of watching TV? We’re not. The vast majority of TV we watch is available for free, over the air. Sure, we’ll occasionally watch an episode of Flight of the Conchords on HBO or a documentary on Discovery, but most of the TV we watch is on one of the big over-the-air networks—ABC, CBS, Fox, the CW, and NBC. So we started looking for alternatives.
It turns out that the vast majority of new TV shows are available online, either as part of an ad-driven website like Hulu or TV.com, or available for sale on iTunes or Amazon’s Unbox service. However, having a PC in the living room has traditionally sucked. After all, you don’t want to hear a big, noisy PC when you’re enjoying a movie or a TV show, and using a mouse and keyboard as the primary interface just doesn’t cut it when you’re kicking back on the couch. But times have changed. These days, it’s easy to build a PC that’s quiet enough to be virtually unheard, yet powerful enough to play all the high-definition video that’s currently available.
And making the proposition even more appealing, there are software frontends like Boxee and the new Hulu Desktop that let you harness all that hardware power in an easy-to-use, remote-friendly interface that combines the massive library of streaming video on the web with the DRM-free content you rip from discs or purchase legally on the web. We’ll introduce you to a couple of the options, then help you configure our favorite. By combining a few hundred bucks’ worth of hardware with a free software app and your broadband connection, you can reduce the money you spend on entertainment from $100 a month to $100 a year.
The ultimate living room PC is a balance between high performance and low power consumption—i.e., it must play high-definition H.264-encoded video while running whisper-quiet
At the heart of your living room PC should be a CPU that sips power, even during demanding tasks, to minimize heat, and thus fan noise. After testing several contenders, we ended up choosing a low-power Phenom X4 9350e ($185, www.amd.com), which draws just 65W under full load. We considered a dual-core Athlon 64 but decided we’d rather have the extra two cores for transcoding than save 20W. The CPU must be 65W or lower because of the power supply, case, and limited cooling in our system.
It crossed our minds to use an Atom or other ultra-low-power processor, but we found that the current single-core CPUs simply don’t have the muscle (or enough help from onboard graphics) to play H.264 at 1080p. We had some luck at 720p, but that’s not real high-def as far as we’re concerned. Perhaps Nvidia’s Ion chipset will give Atom a needed lift, but you currently can't build your own Ion-platform machines.
Like our CPU selection, the case must balance two conflicting forces—cooling and noise—all while fitting into a living-room-friendly formfactor. For all those reasons, we chose Silverstone’s LC19 ($200, www.silverstonetek.com). Its svelte profile (only 68mm tall!) fits perfectly into our entertainment center along with our other components, while muffling the noise so as not to disturb us.
We also like the slightly larger, less expensive Antec Veris Remote ($160, www.antec.com), which isn’t as compact or sexy as the LC19, but easier to build in.
After we selected our CPU, we went shopping for a Mini-ITX Socket AM2 motherboard that featured decent integrated graphics. Since we’re not playing games, we really just wanted a GPU that would pull a little of the heavy lifting for video decodes off the CPU. The Jetway JNC62K ($140, www.jetway.com.tw) features Nvidia’s GeForce 8200 chipset, which is more than sufficient for our needs. It offers analog VGA and DVI/ HDMI (using an adapter), it has a pair of Gigabit Ethernet ports, and its onboard audio features both analog and optical S/PDIF outputs.
Honestly, though, any Micro-ATX or smaller board that supports your CPU, includes integrated sound with an S/PDIF output, and sports integrated graphics from Nvidia or ATI will do the job.
Your entertainment PC doesn’t need a ton of storage—just a few gigs for the OS and the streaming software. (You’ll access the content you’ve ripped or purchased from your desktop PC or server over a network share.) We used a Western Digital Green terabyte drive we had in the Lab ($90, www.wdc.com), more because of its low rpm than its capacity, which is admittedly overkill for this purpose. You could just as well drop a 2.5-inch notebook drive into this rig. We initially considered running the OS on a CompactFlash card or a USB thumb drive, but having some storage in the box is preferable—if you connect your living room rig using a slow wireless link, you can copy movies to the hard drive before playing them. It adds a few more minutes of prep, but the playback will be buttery smooth despite your hoopty network.
The Jetway motherboard we're using is an AM2 motherboard with only one DIMM slot, so any generic 2GB module will do. We went with a single 2GB stick of PNY DDR2 memory, which you can find on Newegg for $25.
For very tiny PCs, it’s a good idea to have access to short SATA cables with one right-angle connector. Since the cables have a direction, you’ll need to get the type of cable that angles down, or you’ll have to mount your hard drives upside down. You can find right-angle SATA connectors at pretty much any screwdriver shop or on Amazon, but to find cables shorter than 18 inches, we had to go to Newegg.
We skipped the TV tuner in our living room rig for one simple reason: We don’t need it. While it would be nice to add over-the-air capture to our rig, we’d rather let this machine fall into its sleep mode when it’s not being used, rather than running 24/7 to pull all our TV shows from the ether. Combine that with the fact that most HD tuner cards can’t pull content from your cable or satellite service, and you’d be spending money just to get the same content you can pull from Hulu.
If you insist on hooking your cable box up to your PC, the best way to get HD content into your PC is to use the FireWire interface on your cable box. This will give you high-quality HD video for the content that isn’t marked as protected by your cable provider (typically only HBO, Starz, Showtime, and other paid channels are “protected”). Unfortunately, it’s incredibly difficult to configure, and it requires special drivers and a ton of hacking. Check out http://home.comcast.net/~exdeus/stbfirewire/ for the full scoop.
There are a multitude of possible input devices you can use for your living room PC, ranging from a traditional remote control to a keyboard/mouse combo. The keyboard/mouse is the easiest to set up and lets you fully tap into the massive flexibility of the PC—after all, you can fire up a web browser or iTunes and play any content you can download using a mouse and keyboard. We’re especially fond of the DiNovo Media Keyboard from Logitech ($160, www.logitech.com). It’s a full-size board, but it has a handy touch pad in the lower right corner, which makes mousing possible.
On the other hand, a more traditional remote control can be mighty handy, especially when you’re sitting on the couch. Hulu Desktop works with any Windows Media Center remote, which means you can use a cheap one like Anyware Computer's GV-IR01WT IR remote ($30, www.anywareus.com).
Boxee will work with pretty much any input device, but we tested a couple of Windows Media Center–compatible remotes and found them to work well. You can find a wide variety of Media Center–compatible remotes at Newegg and Amazon; they’re usually around $50. Alternately, the Logitech DiNovo Mini ($150, www.logitech.com) is a remote-size clamshell device that includes a mouse and keyboard in a smaller package. It’s a little spendy but worth the bucks.
So you have decided to take the plunge and build your own computer? Well that’s good but there’s some problems attached to that plan. First you don’t know the difference between a motherboard and your own mother. Secondly, you wouldn’t know an Ethernet card if one came up to you in the street and shook your hand.
But that’s no reason to abandon the project and look up the phone number for your local Dell representative, because as usual, MakeUseOf has you covered. With the complete amateur in mind who has no technical knowledge whatsoever, we are going to show you how to build your own PC! This is a guide where we literally ‘hold your hand’ every step of the way.
MakeUseOf has teamed up with our very own Karl Gechlik at Ask The Admin to bring you nearly 50 pages full of screenshots, links to video demos and easy how-to instructions for every step involved. The result? The Idiot’s Guide To Building A PC. This guide is so easy to follow, even your technophobe grandmother could do it.
It’s definitely one of the better manuals out there. You can take a look at the screenshot showing the table of contents below.
In case you’re also wondering WHY you would want to build your own computer, there are a lot of reasons.
So, download your free no strings attached manual here.
If you've cracked open your PC before to install a new hard drive or TV capture card, but you've never built a whole new system from the ground up, it's not as difficult as you might think.
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In October, we spec’ed out a respectable $800 gaming PC in our monthly Buyer’s Guide feature. While the price and parts looked promising, we had to see for ourselves if this sub-$1000 system could hold its ground against today’s top rigs. After all, if you don’t need to spend your next month’s paycheck on performance parts, why should you?
We had to make some careful choices to keep this machine within our constrained budget, but in the end we were surprised by this little PC’s kick ass performance. Want to learn how to build it yourself? We’ll walk you through our meticulous build process, explain why we chose each component, and give you our final thoughts on the benchmark results this little-PC-that-could throws down.
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Back in our September 2008 issue, we published a list of 9 Skills Every Nerd Needs – a lighthearted examination of the essential abilities Maximum PC readers should have in their geek arsenal. We still stand by that list, but we were somewhat one-upped last month when we saw that Gizmodo had since run its own list of 50 key geek skills. Their list was very respectable, but we thought that we could do better by not only expanding and refining our original story, but actually teaching you these skills. The highest echelon of geeks will be able to do everything in this list, and this is by no means a full categorization of the complete geek skillset – only what we consider to be the most indispensable abilities. Have anything to add to our list? Post it in the comments!
Finding hidden hardware gems in bins of archaic cards at computer shows and swap meets is an ever-so-crucial nerd skill. Frequently the only way to discern the difference is to do an on-the-spot ID of the edge connector. True nerds should be able to identify even the most esoteric connector in their sleep (if they sleep with their eyes open, that is). Can you separate the crap from the kick ass? No cheating!
A. PCI-Express connector
B. DDR memory
C. Dual-channel RIMM
Any real nerd is almost sure to have a USB thumbdrive in his pocket at all times. After all, USB flash storage is pretty much the best way to keep data conveniently at hand. What the average nerd might not know, however, is that it’s possible to install all sorts of apps on a thumb drive, meaning that you can use your USB stick as a mobile platform for your browser, email and instant message client, office suite and more. That means you can access these programs, settings intact, from any computer with a spare USB slot.
It’s all made possible by PortableApps.com, an open source platform for portable software. To get started with PortableApps, go to this page and download whichever version of the portable suite suits your needs. Then run the installer, and choose to install to the root of your USB drive. In the future, if you want to add additional portable applications just download the app, then select “add a new app” from PortableApps’ options menu and browse to the .paf.exe file you downloaded.
Right now, there are portable versions of heavyweights like Firefox, Thunderbird, and OpenOffice, as well as a whole ton of other, awesome programs.
There are two quick ways to realign bent pins on older CPUs.
The first, quickest way is to take a credit card and run it through the rows of pins in each direction, which will realign lightly-bent pins.
If a pin is bent too far for the credit card trick, use the barrel of a mechanical pencil to sheath the pin and gently bend it back up straight.
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