My HTPC & the Fiber Optics :)

It’s been 2 weeks since my last thought of installing my 320GB Western Digital WD3200AAKS on to my HTPC. I bought the hard drive on October 19 and it still in a wrapper semi naked with sticker tagged on it. It’s really pain in the ass when you work with mid tower, you don’t have much room to make sure a good air flow. I like to buy a new full tower chassis or a HTPC chassis but than again it’s not really necessary. Hehehe I can get really confuse between what’s “need” and what’s “want” in this scenario. I’m a HTPC enthusiast therefore getting the best for HTPC is a “need” LOL

As shown in the photos, my chassis has a limited room to work with for better air flow.

My current chassis is my favorite case however after considering attaching one more hard disk I than realize that my hard disk would be in sandwich and in order to put in one more hard disk I need to take out/pull out my graphic card, 4 GB of RAM, IDE cable and power cable. Man! I’m lazy for that… (damn chik ak!) Here’s my choice, don’t know what you think about them?
^{1 234}

Anyway, have you heard that computer enthusiast actually recommended minimum 4GB of RAM for Vista? I’m afraid they are right although MS minimum recommendation is 2GB of RAM! The results are enormous! I normally work with Firefox, MSN, Windows Media center, Words, Picasa2, and programs idling on my task bar (AVG, Scotty, windows sidebar etc…) the RAM usage on 2GB is at 50% looks okay right? No, wrong! After I slot in my new RAM and making it to 4GB… the same programs running and now the RAM usage is 50%! My PC actually uses 2GB of RAM instead of 1GB and I’m happy my Window Media Center jerking no more!

Now, here’s something interesting! Have you seen a fiber-optics cable before? Most modern town today is laid with fiber-optics cable underneath the buildings. However you probably won’t realize it and you may mistake it as a copper wire that hanging around the “Tiang” (telephone post). It’s still true that most part of the town is copper wire in use.

I have had optic cable from my Creative Sound decoder DDTS-100 for almost 3 years before I get to use it. Motherboard equipped with optical support is expensive and only available on high end Motherboard! (and very limited) Fortunately these days motherboard spotting optical supports are in a reasonable price example my Gigabyte board.

Two good reason to use fiber optics… One, less signal degradation (important! if you want good crisp, clean sounds and loss less on signal/data) and two, it will not cause fire! (No electricity is passing through fiber optics!)

Like in my many post, I love to mention this “you just can’t catch up!” unless of course you’re crazy enough to invest on new technology that triple the price. (I waited 3 years to finally get a reasonable price of motherboard to pamper my digital thirst)

In the mean time, I’m still looking for the right computer chassis.

1. Antec P182SE Advanced Super Mid Tower – Mirror Look [↩]
2. Cooler Master Cosmos 1000 Ultimate Atx Casing [↩]
3. Cooler Master Stacker 830 Evolution – Nvidia Edition [↩]
4. Lian Li Pc-c32a [↩]

Related posts:

1. Smilodon Raidmax Gaming Development Chassis
2. One year later ~ My Tech update
3. Wow Affect!
4. Asus EN8800GT & Company of Heroes Opposing Front
5. Kingston ValueRAM and Icute power Supply