[dlord91]

Hi I am new to this xbmc thing and I recently saw a friends of mine, and instantly fell in love. below is the spec of a simple mini-tower HP I bought on ebay. I was going to use it as a basis for my own xbmc machine. I was going to run it off xbmcbuntu. therefore deleting completely everything on this old machine anyway. I was then considering installing a MSI ATI Radeon 5450 HD 650MHz 1GB PCI-Express 2.1 x16 HDMI (a hdmi video/audio output) so Icould connect it to my tv. But after doing additional research it seems that this is not a good machine to use.

HP Compaq dx2200 Microtower Computer 2.80GHz\ 2Gb\ 80Gb Hdd\ DVDRom\ XP Pro
Operating System: Windows XP
Operating System Edition: Professional
Graphics Processing Type: Integrated/On-Board Graphics
Sound: OnBoard
Processor Type: Intel Pentium D 820
Memory: 2Gb
Hard Drive Capacity: 80Gb

Please help, I'm dying to get this up and running before college starts!

[artrafael]

Welcome to the XBMC forums.

You can easily test this out by burning the XBMCbuntu ISO to a CD to create a boot disc that you can use to run XBMC in "live" mode and verify compatibility. If you are happy with it, you can then install it on the hard drive.

[dlord91]

Thanks for reply

Thats true.
I'm also a little worried that the system will not be able to handle the added components (HDMI/couple of 1 or 2 TB hard drives) due to the amount f watts that the system puts out. I have also heard that a system that hold may not recognize those hard drives. can you shed any light on this?

Your reply is much appreciated.

DLORD91

[artrafael]

A cursory scan of the specs seems to indicate the system should be able to accommodate a total of two SATA drives (i.e., you'll have to swap out the existing drive if you want two 1 or 2 TB drives); you should be able to verify this by opening up the case and looking at the number of available drive bays on the case and the number of SATA connectors on the motherboard. Can't tell you anything about the proposed video card. The power supply is a bit on the anemic side. Perhaps some of the hardware experts here can chime in and provide you more input.

[dlord91]

Thanks for your reply.
That is very helpfull. It has given me an idea of what my next step should be, Thanks again