One motherfucker media center rig.
Philosophy
A lot of home theatre enthusiasts build rigs that are super quiet, slick looking, and low power. This is not that rig. When I built the Gonzee Box, I wanted to fulfill three main requirements:
- Desktop power underneath my TV - I needed to transcode HD streams on the fly, power AAA games, and never chug on visuals.
- Extra processing capacity - This thing needed to be able to play ultra-high bitrate 1080p content while serving as a processing node for my sabremetric regressions, CI builds, and other general computing chores.
- Scare the shit out of visitors - Anyone seeing this under my TV for the first time needed to assume I was some sort of evil wizard.
Spec
I built this thing back in the fall of 2009, so the spec is now fairly antiquated. It'll still kick the shit out of any Mac mini or off-the-shelf HTPC, though.
- Proc: Wolfdale 3GHz
E8400
- Low wattage for a desktop proc, but crazy overclockable
- Dialed up to 3.2 GHz, it's still pretty stable with air cooling
- RAM: 4GB Mushkin
Blackline
- Sacrificing cas for capacity here - 4-4-4-12 timing not an issue for the rig's primary uses.
- Dual channel keeps the north bridge unclogged while working both a stream and some other processing task
- Mobo: Zotac
GF9300-D-E
- The crown jewel of this rig - HTPC form factor with an LGA 775 socket.
- Onboard Nvidia Geforce 9300 GPU, gigabit NIC, wifi radio and strong driver support for all on Linux
- Mini-ITX is about the size of a 45 record. This shit is small.
- HDD: Seagate Barracuda
1.5TB
- Good balance of spindle speed versus platter density.
- SATA II interface gives 3 gigabit pipe - Handbrake sails on this fucker.
- Case: Silverstone Grandia
GD05B
- I started with a Rosewill Mini-ITX case which lasted about two years before the 150W weenie power supply finally self-immolated. Still love the monolith look, though I had to dremel the shit out of the guts in order to fit the heatsink.
- When the Rosewill's PSU dirt-napped, I swapped out for the Silverstone Grandia. It's definitely too big for the rig - the interior is more spacious than my bathroom.
- Still looks intimidating as hell.
Software
- OS: Ubuntu Maverick
- None of my Precise upgrades went well, so the box is still hanging back on a pre-Unity desktop
- VNC enabled so I can control from laptop / iPhone
- Usenet: SABNZBd
- A bazillion clients for these things. Can queue up anything from anywhere.
- Great post processing tools for getting downloads sorted into their proper homes for XBMC / Boxee libraries
- Written in Python, as Jesus would want it to be.
- Media Center: XBMC Eden
- Really the only choice for an open source media center right now.
- The team has grown a lot in the last year and their diligent effort on development process is producing higher quality, more frequent releases.
- Media Center Backup: Boxee Beta
- Discontinued from the New York startup (and my former employer), but you can find it on the Pirate Bay.
- Plays Flash, and still has a lot of my old apps that I still use.
- Still adore Whitney Hess' design here. Remains my favorite 10 foot experience.
- Remote: HippoRemote Pro
- Best damn remote on the iPhone. Period.
- Fully programmable
- Support for VNC and XBMC / Boxee gesture
- Miscellaneous stuff