QuietPC D.Vine Media Center kit

Conclusions

All in all, how can we say this racks up?

Performance: Although the Dothan Pentium M has now been outclassed by its dual-core Yonah successor, it still packs a decent enough punch for everyday activities. In some ways, it’s not ideal for a media centre system, as the Pentium 4’s longer pipelines and higher frequency make it much better at video encoding. But the Pentium M is good enough, and it has an arguably more important ace up its sleeve – low power, with the knock-on effect of less drastic cooling requirements.

We found that it performed perfectly in normal MCE use, and still performed well in our benchmarks, being beaten by a far louder dual core processor.

Specification: QuietPC has matched components pretty well here. The choice of the Spinpoint to keep hard drive noise to a minimum is good, as is the use of Corsair Value RAM - there's no point in spending money on performance RAM when you're not gaming. The only real weak point in the system is the graphics, which lack any kind of video acceleration for H.264 and also won't let you do any gaming on the rig. You could solve both these problems with a low-profile 3D card, but you may run into thermal and noise issues.

Form factor: It's hard to argue with the statement that the D.Vine looks gorgeous. Because it's low-profile, it looks far more like a bit of Hi-Fi kit than a desktop computer. It's so quiet - the CPU fan rarely spins up and the case fan is almost inaudible. This really is a Quiet PC - the closest to silent we've ever heard.

Value: Probably the biggest downside with the D.Vine is that you don’t actually save any money by building it yourself. If a basic MCE system is what you’re looking for, this is a relatively pricey way of achieving your goal. But it’s also a very carefully considered package, with no component we could single out as a weakness. The dual Black Gold TV tuners make use of one of MCE 2005’s best features. You can watch TV and record at the same time, or even record two programmes simultaneously. Couple this system with a monitor sporting its own built-in tuner, and you’ll never need to squabble over which channel to watch again.

Of course, you could get a Thomson DHD4000 dual-tuner PVR for less than a fifth of the price. But then you wouldn’t also be able to use it as a music jukebox or image slideshow, you wouldn’t be able to burn your recordings to disc, you wouldn’t have a prayer of streaming them over a wireless network, and the growing number of legal video downloads (such as Channel 4’s The IT Crowd) would be beyond your reach as well. The list goes on.

Final thoughts

Although the price and the problems we had outputting to a TV are drawbacks, this doesn’t put us off recommending this system. If you’re planning to use it with a PC monitor or TV sporting DVI or D-SUB connectivity, the lack of S-video output won’t be an issue anyway. And in every other respect, it fits the bill for a front-room media centre perfectly – quiet, good looking, and fully functional.