This will be my Media Center computer for the livingroom, as opposed to MyWorkstation and MyFileServer. Here are my plans: MyComputers? !

Tech specs

• Case
  • Medion Reddot Design Award Winner 2003
• Power supply
  • 350W
• CPU
  • Intel P4 3.0GHz with hyperthreading which appears as 2 logical processors in the pc! Windows Task Manager shows me two CPU graphs!
  • 20kB L1 cache, 512kB L2 cache
• Motherboard
  • Micro-Star MS-7048
  • 8x, 4x AGP
  • 800MHz FSB
  • Intel chipset (which one?), Intel PCI/AGP/IO controllers
• PCI
  1. unused
  2. PRISM802.11g wireless adapter (GlobespanVirata) onboard
  3. unused
  4. Medion 7134 WDM Video Capture (Philips)
  5. unused
  6. Creatix V.9x DSP Data Fax Modem (Creatix Polymedia GmbH) onboard
  7. VT6105 Rhine III 10/100Mbit LAN adapter (VIA Technologies) onboard
  8. IEEE 1394 Host Controller, OHCI compliant (VIA Technologies) onboard
• Cooling
  • PSU: 120mm fan provides low RPMs and low noise, and it really works; this is perfectly inaudible!
  • CPU: 80mm rubber-mounted fan under a direct air duct from the side of the case, almost completely quiet
  • GPU: 60mm fan on large heatsink, reverse side has smaller heat dissipation plate (this is where that cpu air duct comes in handy!), noisy high-pitched operation, planned to be replaced by Arctic-cooling VGA silencer (kr145,-)
    • Replaced! Ahh, what blissful silence. This works really well, at no noticeable heat difference.
  • Passive 40mm heatsink on the Northbridge, of course dead silent and not a heat problem at the same time
• Memory
  • 2 x 256MB Samsung PC3200 DDR SDRAM
  • 2 unused RAM slots – adding more RAM is under consideration because 512MB is not enough for concurrent logins
• AGP adapter
  • Medion Radeon 9800 XXL 128 MD DDR SD AGP 8x (gosh, ten words to describe a video card...)
• Other interfaces
  • 4 x USB 2.0 in rear
  • 2 x USB 2.0 in front
  • 1 x Firewire in rear (shared with 1 in front)
  • 2 x Firewire in front
  • 8-format card reader in front (SmartMedia? , XD, MemoryStick? , MemoryStick Pro, SD Card (SD MMC), CompactFlash? , IBM Microdrive, SmartCard? )
  • Medion stereo TV tuner, stereo FM tuner
  • video in: S-video + composite in front
  • video out: S-video + composite + SCART in rear
  • line in, mic, S/PDIF optical+coax in, S/PDIF optical+coax out (in rear)
  • line in, mic, stereo out (in front)
  • 8-channel Digital Dolby surround sound in rear
  • RF wireless remote control for audio/video facilities (USB device)
  • RF wireless scroll mouse & multimedia keyboard (not split layout) (USB device)
  • no PS/2 ports for keyboard and mouse!
• Disk drives
  • DVD/CD-ROM (16/40x)
  • Pioneer DVD-/+RW, CD-RW (4/8/24x)
  • HDD bay 1 with 200 GB Seagate ST3200021A Ultra ATA 100 7200RPM
  • HDD bay 2 empty
  • 1 empty HDD or FDD bay
• Monitor
  • TV set
  • IO Data A16H? 16" TFT
• Speakers
  • Some cheap Logitech speakers

Medion 8083 XL

This was written shortly after I bought the computer to replace my old desktop (actually that old desktop will become my future desktop again!). Think of it as a brief review of the computer, though some parts may have changed since.

!--img src="http://aldi.dk/OFFER_DK/OFFER_13/BILD01N.JPG" alt="open front cover show the I/O ports --- cpu air intake on left side" align=right border=0 hspace=8 I'm excited about this baby. I just got it from ALDI—they often have outrageous special offers and I simply couldn't stop myself. Getting all this swag for that price is a boon, even without a monitor. The old pc has now been put up for sale? .

The front panel is a nice dampened slide-down door that will hide all the ugly ports when not in use. There are also nicely labelled front panels for the DVD-ROM and DVD+/-RW.

The case is nice and sleek, with a black/grey design and silver hifi-style wide feet. The case is somewhat bigger than the blue minitower, similar to the SNI M6 miditowers in the family. There's a large sieve-holed area on the left case side, providing cool air straight to the cpu fan. Inside the case, the first thing I noticed is a giant duct to lead the air from the case side to the cpu fan. There's very little cable clutter, especially considering how feature-packed this unit is. Not a lot of PCI cards since most features are onboard, allowing for decent airflow and future PCI expansions (not that I could imagine what more I need right now). The large silver button on the lower front is actually the power button. Learn, Dell.

Worth noting is also the remote control, since it's not a normal pc accessory. It looks promising and feels good. It seems that it only works with the bundled "media center" software, not with Windows itself or other media applications like WindowsMediaPlayer. The remote longish, fairly thick, and light, so it fits nicely in a hand. The layout is good too, with two separate navigation circles (for menu navigation and channel/volume). Well-arranged special-purpose buttons prevent multifunction confusion, and the buttons have a hard rubbery touch to them. There's also a LED signal indicator so you can see when the batteries run low. What's really fun is that since it's RF wireless and not infrared you can point it anywhere, but you'll invariably point to the monitor anyway!

There's an FM antenna provided, but I've now pulled an extension to the TV/radio signal from the wall outlet to the desk, so I've got lots of TV and radio channels. The features are pretty amazing; I can even set the pc to show the video inside the cinema application, in a free window, as full screen, or even as the desktop itself! Oh, and anything it can play back, it can also record as WMA/MP3/MPEG/DIVX files. Of course it also is a video recorder complete with timer settings, but I've noticed that the onscreen video quality is slightly reduced while recording. More testing is needed for a better evaluation.

The inevitable noise, I guess... At boot-up the main fans turn at maximum speed making the system sound like a jet engine, but within seconds it drops to normal operation, which is very quiet except for the very annoying high whine of the 60mm VGA cooler. If I manually pause that, the system is practically dead silent (thanks to good air flow by a few big, slow fans). That VGA fan will be replaced by a silent one soon!