cohbra
02-23-2009, 09:21 PM
Well, I have finally had a chance to really sit down and play with the new system now that I have it installed and running in my home theater. Some of you may have seen my other posts talking about doing this as well as a minor issue I previously had that seems to be fixed now.
Prior to purchasing my F131, I had been running an old Dell Desktop that I would use to play music and occasionally watch movies on my home entertainment system. It seemed to do the job just fine at the time, however I had not been exposed to a "real" home theater pc yet, or a desktop PC that had been built specifically for the application. Eventually the Dell died on me and I ended up giving it away knowing that my next system would be far more capable than the clunky old Dell Optiplex.
After patiently waiting for the last 6 months, I finally had the opportunity to order my new system and I read many reviews online about many different companies. The one that really stuck with me was cnet's review of the F131 and how well it did compared to the other "top tier" PCs out there. I also found a lot of information here on MG's forums that gave me the confidence to go ahead and order my new F131 without any hesitations.
When it finally showed up at my front door, I felt like a little school girl, I couldn't wait to open the box and start playing with the "Beast" for the first time (no punn intended). I only had about an hour to set it up and fool around before I had to leave to go to a birthday party for a friend, so I wasn't planning on getting too involved at that point. Just before we were supposed to leave, I rebooted the system after installing a windows update and I was no longer able to receive a video signal, a little concerned, I powered down the system, unplugged the power cord, and left for the party.
The next day, the system powered right back up and everything appeared to be fine. I spent a couple of hours playing around and then decided I was tired of sitting on my floor next to my Samsung 61" DLP I am using as a display so that I could explore the new machine. As a result, I got back to work on the entertainment center I had previously started in anticipation of the new rig.
I wanted to build in my receiver, satellite receiver, Klipsch center channel speaker, and finally run all of my surround sound for the rest of the room. The new PC was just the motivation I needed because I didn't want to see it sitting on the floor next to the TV knowing that it would be constantly ****ing up all of the dust bunnines off of the floor like it was the most expensive vacuum cleaner ever purchased.
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I tried to upload some pictures here but for some reason it is telling me that I am unable to because I have exceded my quota even though the .jpg images are much smaller than the maximum allowed. I will try again later.
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Just as expected, the system performs beautifully. My Blu Ray movies are unbelievable to watch and the sound is awesome. I have the display configured for 1080i to my Samsung DLP and the audio out of the Soundblaster Titanium Fatal1ty card is also quite impressive. Also, the LG Super-Multi Blu drive seems to do a great job of upconverting standard def movies when ompared to watching them on my Xbox 360.
The only other issues I have had was with my raid configuration and that was quickly resolved with MG's support by rebuilding the raid array, and I can't get the higher resolutions to work in Crysis: Warhead. When I set up the resolution in the game to match my 1080i display, the image seems fine, however the cursor image on the screen doesn't match up with where it actually is when clicking on objects in the menus. I'll figure that out later.
Again, I'll try to post some pictures later on.
Prior to purchasing my F131, I had been running an old Dell Desktop that I would use to play music and occasionally watch movies on my home entertainment system. It seemed to do the job just fine at the time, however I had not been exposed to a "real" home theater pc yet, or a desktop PC that had been built specifically for the application. Eventually the Dell died on me and I ended up giving it away knowing that my next system would be far more capable than the clunky old Dell Optiplex.
After patiently waiting for the last 6 months, I finally had the opportunity to order my new system and I read many reviews online about many different companies. The one that really stuck with me was cnet's review of the F131 and how well it did compared to the other "top tier" PCs out there. I also found a lot of information here on MG's forums that gave me the confidence to go ahead and order my new F131 without any hesitations.
When it finally showed up at my front door, I felt like a little school girl, I couldn't wait to open the box and start playing with the "Beast" for the first time (no punn intended). I only had about an hour to set it up and fool around before I had to leave to go to a birthday party for a friend, so I wasn't planning on getting too involved at that point. Just before we were supposed to leave, I rebooted the system after installing a windows update and I was no longer able to receive a video signal, a little concerned, I powered down the system, unplugged the power cord, and left for the party.
The next day, the system powered right back up and everything appeared to be fine. I spent a couple of hours playing around and then decided I was tired of sitting on my floor next to my Samsung 61" DLP I am using as a display so that I could explore the new machine. As a result, I got back to work on the entertainment center I had previously started in anticipation of the new rig.
I wanted to build in my receiver, satellite receiver, Klipsch center channel speaker, and finally run all of my surround sound for the rest of the room. The new PC was just the motivation I needed because I didn't want to see it sitting on the floor next to the TV knowing that it would be constantly ****ing up all of the dust bunnines off of the floor like it was the most expensive vacuum cleaner ever purchased.
_________________________________________
I tried to upload some pictures here but for some reason it is telling me that I am unable to because I have exceded my quota even though the .jpg images are much smaller than the maximum allowed. I will try again later.
_________________________________________
Just as expected, the system performs beautifully. My Blu Ray movies are unbelievable to watch and the sound is awesome. I have the display configured for 1080i to my Samsung DLP and the audio out of the Soundblaster Titanium Fatal1ty card is also quite impressive. Also, the LG Super-Multi Blu drive seems to do a great job of upconverting standard def movies when ompared to watching them on my Xbox 360.
The only other issues I have had was with my raid configuration and that was quickly resolved with MG's support by rebuilding the raid array, and I can't get the higher resolutions to work in Crysis: Warhead. When I set up the resolution in the game to match my 1080i display, the image seems fine, however the cursor image on the screen doesn't match up with where it actually is when clicking on objects in the menus. I'll figure that out later.
Again, I'll try to post some pictures later on.