I had some spare parts laying around and decided to build a dedicated media center / folding machine. Pulled 2GB of DDR3, the TV tuner, a GTX 285, and one of the 1TB RE3'* out of the big machine. Swapped the efficient 850 Watt with the 1000 Watt, and ordered a $69 AMD Athlon X2 250 and a reliable motherboard to slap it all in, unfortunately the case didn't come in.. So I just used the box. This will be its temporary home until I attempt to cram it all in a micro atx case. I'm planning on lots of dremeling and modifying.



The main reason for this is the infamous "narcoleptic" EVGA X58 motherboard. The big rig doesn't like to be woken up, and it won't turn on from being powered off to record tv, which means it has to be left on 24/7 if I want to catch those late shows. Since I started folding, I've been sleeping with the window open and/or fan blowing, she kicks some heat.

I've been contemplating building my own laptop lately, seems like a fun project. I <3 building computers. Nice setup =)

Building your own laptop eh? I'd be interested to see how that goes. That would be a tough one.

ya I've got a bit more research to do, but it might allow me to try something I've wanted to try for a long time.

My biggest concern would be the scarcity and cost of laptop parts. Nothing'* impossible though.

you'd actually be surprised at how much is out there, you just have to search hard for it

You say you got an Athlon X2 250. This is the 3.0GHz model if I'm not mistaken? Dual core, 3.0GHz for $70? That'* not half bad honestly. This is what I'm in college for. lol. I'm planning on building my own rig soon. Just need to get my funds set. As of now, all I have is a board and a sound card. The board is a S2865 Tomcat K8E. It came out of a friend of the family'* server. The processor is an AMD Opteron dual core 185. Only 2.6GHz but what can I say, it'* a used board that was just handed to me, so I can't complain. lol. The sound card is a Sound Blaster Live CT4830. I'm going to build the rig as a temporary, but then I'm stepping up my game and going all out. . by the way, nice looking rig so far. Should be a nice set up. What kind of board did you end up ordering?

I've got some posts from a while ago when I had the main tower beefed up, now I'm robbing parts from it for this one because it just doesn't take that much ridiculousness to do.. really anything. This is the board I went with Motherboard and you've got the right CPU. I went with that combination because it should be very power efficient and quiet, and so far it is. I'm happy with it. Probably still overkill for recording TV, but I may put a raid array in it and use it for backup as well. Then I can use my laptop every day, the efficient one for TV recording, and the beast will be my testing toy. I'm putting server 2008 on it and I'm going to learn as much about it as I can before we deploy it at work.

I have the EVGA X58 Classified and can vouch for the sleep problem. Mine refuses to even go into sleep mode. It just sits there saying its going into sleep mode but never does. Then I have to do a hard shutdown, so I just started shutting it down whenever I'm going to be away from it for a short while. My rig also kicks some heat but my room'* usually cold so the heat is pretty nice

I ended up doing a BIOS update, and now it'* something like 50/50 on whether it will wake up from sleep. I've tried everything to get it to work and finally given up. I wonder if anyone has tried complaining to evga'* tech support.. I may have to try that and see what I can get out of it.

I've been heating the whole upstairs haha, but the thermostat always seems to find it'* way back up to 75 thanks to the women in this house. I'm thinking a tiny dab of superglue in one or two spots should take care of that though, and then when it comes time to change I should be able to cut through it with a razor blade.