The Virtual Media Center: Hardware

In continuing to document my virtual environment, I’ve decided to outline the hardware I’m using since it was the first question a friend asked. So here’s a quick breakdown of all the components, and some general comments about them second. Bare in mind, most of the components are couple years old now, but the machine, despite my harsh treatment has held up remarkably well.

The components:

The machine was technically a rebuild that started in 2012, and as my primary PC for 3 years, it served me well.

The Asus M5A99FX is a solid motherboard, providing a USB 3.0 as well enough SATA connections to meet my needs. If I were to build a newer version of an AMD system for this purpose, I would consider something similar, but a little newer of course.

The AMD FX8320 is also a solid performer, I had it overclocked at 4.2Ghz the majority of the time I was using as a desktop, and that included a brutal 24/7 regimen of muxing, transcoding, and gaming activity, and it was always on so that it could record my shows for my family. FWIW, to keep it nice and cool while beating the heck out of it, I have a Cooler Master Hyper T4 cooler on it, a great upgrade from a stock cooler.

The Ballistix memory is pretty run of the mill variety memory, though again, a solid performer, no major concerns there.

The power supply from Cooler Master has been a great investment. Prior to making the switch to this fully modular PSU, I didn’t really pay much attention to where cables where run in my case since I never saw them anyway. However, with the modular cables combined with the CM Force case, I have cables run nicely out of the way allowing for maximum airflow. At first this doesn’t seem relevant, but the cpu temperature dropped 5°C which is pretty significant.

^{*Technically, I have the V700, which is a little harder to find these days, but they are in many respects the same PSU.}