What do you recommend for system requirements for new PC for Homeseer

[Blade]

Hi guys,

I am going to buy a new PC and all it is going to do is run the home automation stuff.

What does everyone recommend for system components in the new PC? Here are the things that will need to be run on the PC:

Automation stuff:

Homeseer
Homeseer Phone
Media Player Plugin
NeoSpeech voices
Doomotion plugin
DooNetwork Plugin
Gameport Plugin X 4
Message Server Plugin
RCS X10 Thermostat Plugin
Touchpad Plugin
W800 RF (32bit) Controller Plugin
PhoneWeb Plugin
CM19A Ninja Plugin

Other stuff:

Ivista


Here is the system I am thiking about getting:

Intel Celeron Processor
2.6 Ghz
Windows XP Professional
Six USB 2.0 ports
512 MB DDR Memory (RAM)
Western Digital 160GB 7200 RPM Hard drive
1.44MB Floppy Drive
SoundMax 3D sound, SPX & MIC. pre-amplifier
Speakers
52XCDRW/16XDVD Combo Drive
10/100 Network card
9-pin Serial port X 3
Internet keyboard
Optical wheel mouse


If anyone can offer any suggestions, I would really appreciate it. I am not going to play games on this computer. I am only going to use it to run the home automation stuff. It would need to be good enough to support any future releases of HS (2.0 for example).

I am not sure if I need 512 MB of RAM or if 256 MB would do.

All comments welcome.

[sonypoolplr]

I would definetly go with at least 512, especially if you are going to use the homeseer voices. Don't know what's going to happen with 2.0, but now when speaking the voices use alot of memory. I have noticed other posts where after increasing the memory it helped out. Also, since it appears you will be playing music on this unit as well more memeory can't bea bad thing.

[Blade]

Thanks for the reply.

Yes I will be using the NeoSpeech voices. I forgot to mention that. I have updated the above post.

[Skibum]

Blade

Is this a preconfigured box a la Dell, or Gateway, etc?

[Blade]

No, it would be a clone. No name machine.

One that I would build myself at the store and then they would build it for me.

[Skibum]

I'd be glad to make some specific recommendations if you like. (this is one of the things that I do for a living)

E-Mail me.

[sbessel]

I would loose the Celeron and get a Pentium HT. The HT (Hyper-Thread) version will give you much better performance. I would also consider 512 MB of ram minimum, in fact ram is cheap I would add even more ram. More ram will never hurt performance and it will usually increase it.

[fireball]

I'd say drop to smaller hard drive and loose the Celeron processor and/or add some more RAM.

[Blade]

Here is the system that I got a quote for. From what I have read in previous threads, it should work just fine to run the Home Automation stuff only. I am not going to be playing any games on it or using it for anything else.

Here is the quote. It is in Canadian dollars:

2 year parts and labour warranty.
Norton AntiVirus 2003 OEM
Intel D845GVSRL 400MHz Motherboard with Video, an & Sound
Intel Celeron 2.6Ghz 400MHz Processor
512MB PC3200 400MHZ DDR Memory (S/N)
WD 160GB 7200RPM 8MB Cache HD
Integrated Video
Integrated SB 128 Compatible
Integrated LAN/NIC
LG 16X Black DVD-Rom (8162B)
Mitsumi 1.44MB Black Floppy Drive
5 Bay Micro ATX Black Case with Front USB
Altec Lansing 120 Black 2 Speaker System

The total (including taxes) is: $765.00


Let me know what you think.

[Skibum]

<IMHO>
Loose the Celery stick
Add more memory
Get a smaller HD
loose the speakers
get a better MB
</IMHO>

[Blade]

What size of HD do you recommend? What motherboard are you referring to (Pentium 4??)

BTW, I sent you an email as well. Sorry for the duplicate. Did not know you would be that quick to reply to this thread

What is a celery stick?

[Skibum]

EMail sent...Celery Stick - An older reference to a Celeron CPU. (The reference is actually to a Celeron SLOT CPU)

[zoomkat]

How many PCI slots on the motherboard? Generally, more is better.

[Rick Tinker]

My $0.02...

Yes, ditch the Celeron. My rule of thumb which is pretty accurate is to take the CPU speed of a Celeron and divide it by 2, and the result is the more realistic speed of the machine.

You don't have to get the latest HT CPU, but at least get a real Pentium or equivelent AMD processor... none of those cache-less ones.

RAM to the max because, as has been said, it is cheap. People used to gripe years ago when RAM was expensive and Microsoft kept upping the requirements, but the workstations of the day (e.g. real workstations running some Unix derivitive) used to take 2x or 3x the RAM that PCs had, and nobody complained. Now the OSs out of MS make much better use of the RAM, so treat it like a workstation and give it a ton of RAM. Everything works better/faster with more RAM. Even a slow, bottlenecked hard drive can be somewhat compensated by giving the system more RAM.

PCI slots are less important than what they used to be - one for the PCI modem if that is what you use is about all I can think of. Even though my production HS machine has a Stallion multiport serial card that is PCI, I would go without that on a new machine as I have already seen a few more USB devices than before, and I found a $15 USB to serial adapter at TigerDirect that has been working perfectly (works better than the $40 converters!). There are a lot of inexpensive USB sound devices out there if the mobo does not have integrated sound, but they all do today as with Ethernet too.

The only other PCI slot need might be for a video capture device if you are not using Internet cameras and do not use an AGP video/capture device. Requiring two open PCI slots is not a big demand on today's PC - I bet only the e-Machines are eliminated by that requirement.

Them's my thoughts...

[Blade]

Thanks for the replies!

There are 4 PCI slots on the MB. I will use one for PCI modem, extra com port board and the capture card I have