Well, for the first time in five years I'm building a computer again. I swore I wouldn't do it and just get an HP or DELL, but they just didn't have what I wanted. Plus, it's fun to assemble. When searching for the parts I wanted I found that NewEgg.com was the best computer store ever. Eat your heart out, Fry's. Below is the list of items that I chose to use for my multimedia master:
![](http://images10.newegg.com/NeweggImage/productimage/24-116-373-09.jpg)
ViewSonic VA1912wb 19" DVI Widescreen LCD Monitor. It doesn't tilt to portrait, and the speakers aren't great, but I wasn't going to use those features anyway. It has a crisp clean color and is BIG!
![](http://images10.newegg.com/NeweggImage/productimage/11-129-173-01.jpg)
Antec P-160W Silver Case with Side Panel Window, big and easy for part installation. It even has a thermometer inside the case for temperature readings: Fahrenheit or Celsius.
![](http://images10.newegg.com/NeweggImage/productimage/17-103-929-01.jpg)
Antec TruePower 2.0 480 Watt Power Supply, quiet and powerful.
![](http://images10.newegg.com/NeweggImage/productimage/13-121-287-01.jpg)
Intel D945PVS ATX Media Series Motherboard with Onboard SATA RAID, digital sound, and more USB and Firewire Ports than you can shake a stick at.
![](http://images10.newegg.com/NeweggImage/productimage/19-116-238-03.JPG)
Intel Pentium D 930 800MHz FSB, 2 x 2MB L2 Cache, 3.0GHz; Dual core, put XP x64 on here and also another heatsink and fan. The fan it comes with is LOUD!
![](http://images10.newegg.com/NeweggImage/productimage/14-102-661-02.jpg)
ATI All-In-Wonder 2006 Edition 256MB DDR3 VIVO PCI Express x16. This bad boy has a TV Tuner, FM Radio, remote control, and so much included software features there's no need for Media Center Edition.
![](http://images10.newegg.com/NeweggImage/productimage/35-129-030-01.JPG)
Antec 120mm Ball Case Fan. With all the hard drives I'm putting inside I needed a way to put more cool air inside the case... quietly.
![](http://images10.newegg.com/NeweggImage/productimage/22-145-087-02.jpg)
Hitachi Deskstar 250GB 7200RPM SATA II 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive. Four of these puppies in a RAID 5 configuration gives me 750GB of data storage that keeps my data intact in case of a hard drive failure.
![](http://images10.newegg.com/NeweggImage/productimage/35-103-001-02.JPG)
Cooler Master CPU Fan/Heatsink. I want a quiet machine, Intel's included heatsink and fan were just too loud, and this one keeps the dual cores cooler too.
In the end I think I should've gone with Microsoft's Windows 64-bit version over the Media Center Edition. But who really knows if it would be any better. People ask me why I didn't put Linux on it instead, but that's because my wife will be using this computer too. And she only wants to know how to use Windows.