Suhit Gupta
05-08-2004, 11:00 AM
<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.reed-electronics.com/ednmag/article/CA411162' target='_blank'>http://www.reed-electronics.com/ednmag/article/CA411162</a><br /><br /></div>"When you last read about Spirit (my hand-built, mini-ITX-based living-room PC) almost two months ago, it was adroitly handling conventional computing tasks. Its 3-D graphics capabilities, however, significantly lagged behind what was required to kick my Xbox out of the home-theater cabinet. Likewise, its jerky PVR (personal-video-recorder) playback performance left my ReplayTV feeling unthreatened about its prospective obsolescence.<br /><br />Time and technology predictably advance in lock step, however, and I've made progress optimizing the original system based on Via's 1-GHz C3 Nehemiah processor. Incremental hardware- and software-tweaking produces diminishing returns, however, and, beyond a certain point, no amount of fine-tuning and customization effort will turn a Yugo into a Ferrari. So, I'll also discuss the results I obtained when I swapped out Via's M10000 motherboard for a mini-ITX alternative from Lippert, based on an Intel 1.6-MHz Pentium M processor."<br /><br />A nice article about building your own home media PC in a small form factor which is great for gaming and serves as an excellent PVR/DVR. It is definitely worth reading. Benchmarks for the PC are available <a href="http://www.reed-electronics.com/ednmag/media/livingroompc/livingroompc.htm">here</a>. If you are interested in reading part 1 of this article where the PC was initially built, you can read about it <a href="http://www.reed-electronics.com/ednmag/article/CA411162#ref">here</a>.