Simple answer: NO. There are advantages and disadvantages to overclocking, but keep in mind that processors are meant to run in their default configuration. Overclocking is not the recommended state. Unless you have spare cash and just want to test the limits of your computer, overclocking is not recommended.

Limited Warranty – CPU’s generally have about 3 years of warranty. However, if you toast your CPU from overclocking, there’s no way you’ll have it replaced unless you somehow convince them that it wasn’t due to overclocking. GPU’s on the other hand many times have lifetime warranties, and NVIDIA’s GPU’s are meant to run at high temperatures. Thus, you can usually overclock a GPU and get away with it for a lifetime.

Power Consumption – Power consumption increases rapidly as you overclock. Take a look at this graph from Anandtech’s review on Intel’s i5 655k. Notice that after 4GHz there’s a large spike in power consumption, but before that it’s actually more power efficient to overclock. This however only takes into account the power consumption of the CPU. In fact, power consumption is one of the most expensive parts of having a fast computer. For every 100W of power you use an hour, expect an increase of $130 in your annual electricity bill in California.

Increased Temperatures – Not only will the CPU run hotter, but so will everything inside the case. You’re going to need more fans, which costs more power. Your ambient air temperature will also increase, making your room or house even hotter. This will drive up costs in air conditioning if you need it.

Noise – Due to the increased amounts of fan, your computer will become quite noisy. You would probably want water cooling or low noise fans to mitigate this effect.

Limited Benefit – For the most part, you can’t tell if there’s a 10% increase in speed. This is especially true if you don’t use your computer for anything computationally demanding. You may want to overclock for say Folding@home, but what’s the point? You don’t derive any benefit for folding, and folding right now is a waste of time.

Thus, the small benefits of overclocking are greatly outweighed by the large cost of overclocking. I overclocked my CPU, but only by about 10%, and I no longer run folding@home all day, so it runs cool. Casual overclocking like this is the most anyone should do.

There are many guides to building your own HTPC such as Factory8‘s, but these tend to be weak computers that can only view files. I am however interested in other features in an HTPC, mainly server characteristics. It would be nice to have an always-on computer dedicated to your media needs which is also capable of doing other things if needed.

Goals:

• 1080p and good sound quality
• Cost effective including power consumption
• Large storage capabilities
• Enough computational power for encoding
• Flexibility in viewing your media files
• Low noise

Hardware

Chassis: ARK 4U-500-CA Black 4U Rackmount Case 3 External 5.25″ Drive Bays $80

My current HTPC uses a Silverstone GD05B case primarily for the aesthetics. I’m picky with my furniture and anything I have in my house, so I had to get a sleek case. However, this may not be very effective for your purposes since it only has space for two (or one) 3.5″ hard drives and one (or two) 2.5″ hard drive.

Thus, before this HTPC, when I didn’t care about aesthetics as much, I thought outside the box and used a rackmount server chassis, this ARK case. The main benefit is that I’m able to hold more than 7 3.5″ hard drives, making the amount of potential storage very large. Granted most motherboards come with at most 8 SATA ports, this just enough slots.

CPU: Intel Core i7-870 Lynnfield 2.93GHz 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1156 95W Quad-Core Processor BX80605I7870 $230

I would most certainly recommend an Intel CPU over an AMD CPU especially when you can find really good deals on them such as from Micro Center. Otherwise, I would go the AMD route. $230 for a brand new Intel i7 870 is a very good deal considering the AMD Phenom II X6 1055T Thuban 2.8GHz costs $200, $190 at best, and has a TDP of 125W compared to Intel i7 870′s 95W. Consult Anandtech’s CPU Benchmarks for information on other possible CPUs you may want.

Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-P55-USB3 LGA 1156 Intel P55 USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard $120

There are only two motherboard brands I trust: Gigabyte and Asus, but lately I’ve been leaning towards Gigabyte for primarily subjective reasons. I’ve just had very good experiences with them. I would suggest you use the P55 chipset over the H55 since the latter is made primarily made for the integrated graphics Intel CPUs. Also keep in mind the size of the motherboard. You might want a smaller motherboard just because you won’t need those extra expansion slots and it’ll save room and clutter in your HTPC.

Memory: CORSAIR XMS3 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model CMX4GX3M2A1600C8 $95

The problem with memory is that regardless of what speeds and latencies you look for, they’re all relatively the same price give or take $20. I personally would spend an extra $20 and buy better RAM since better RAM probably has better reliability. Just keep in mind that up to 1600MHz, speed is more important, then latency. I wouldn’t suggest buying RAM over 1600MHz unless you plan to overclock, which I don’t suggest. Keep in mind that most RAM manufacturers provide lifetime warranty.

Power Supply Unit: Antec EarthWatts Green EA-430D Green 430W Continuous power ATX12V v2.3 / EPS 12V 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC Power Supply $65

Since you’re probably going to be leaving your computer on 24/7, you want a very good power supply. A good power supply will reduce your power consumption some what, have a less chance of dying on you, and a less chance of ruining your components. You can also keep your power supply for a very long time, so I would suggest a good one. You won’t need anything over 400 watts, so choose accordingly.

Power supplies are ranked by their 80 Plus certification. Gold is the best and also the most expensive. It it worth the extra cost? Probably not. I would just stick to 80 Plus Bronze.

Just a note, check that the power supply comes with a power cord. Two Antec’s my friends recently bought didn’t come with any. Quite annoying since they didn’t know and then had to drive to Radio Shack to buy a new one.

SSD: OCZ Agility 2 OCZSSD2-2AGTE60G 2.5″ 60GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) $131

There are many options for an SSD, but I recommend that you get one as your primary hard drive. The brands I would recommend are OCZ, Corsair, Crucial, and Intel. It will make everything run faster and you’ll experience much less lag. If you need more space for your primary drive, by all means do so, but for an HTPC you probably won’t need more than 30GBs.

For a good comparison of today’s SSD, read Anandtech’s Benchmarks.

Hard Drive: HITACHI Deskstar H3IK20003272SP (0S02861) 2TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5″ Internal Hard Drive $120

Regardless of what brand of hard drive you buy, make sure it has 7200 RPM. Anything lower than that will slow down your computer regardless of whether it’s your primary drive or not. Remember to RAID 5 all your storage hard drives.

Video Card: XFX HD-545X-ZNF2 Radeon HD 5450 1GB 64-bit DDR2 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready Low Profile Ready Video Card $50

Today, AMD has better video cards. You don’t need much power for an HTPC, but you want a low power video card since it will be on 24/7. I would also always go with the latest generation, but you don’t necessarily have to. Also, be sure to buy a video card with lifetime warranty. My favorite brands are XFX and eVGA.

Remote Control: Rosewill WMC Remote control/Rcvr RRC-127 for Win 7 $25

There are a lot of different types of remote controls, but honestly they’re all the same. Don’t spend over $50 on one since this $25 does everything you would ever need and more. I suggest using a wireless mouse and keyboard for when your remote doesn’t work since it would be much more flexible.

Optical Drive: LITE-ON Black 4X Blu-ray Reader SATA Model iHOS104-06 – OEM $50

You don’t even need one. This Blu-ray player doesn’t come with software so you will have to get your own. I honestly don’t recommend one because I download all my movies, but if you do get one, get the cheapest one and do not get a Blu-ray burner because you will never need one.

CPU Fan: Scythe SCSK-1100 100mm Shuriken Rev. B 3 Heat Pipes CPU Cooler $35

Depending on how your system works out, you may want a new CPU heatsink and fan. From my experience the stock fan doesn’t work well with high loads in these rackmount style cases. However, you probably won’t need one if you’re not utilizing your CPU. Make sure you get one with a low noise rating and the fan pointing the CPU otherwise it won’t fit.

Chassis Fans: Scythe SY1225SL12L 120mm “Slipstream” Case Fan $9 or Scythe S-FLEX SFF80B 80mm Case Fan $13

Pay attention to noise level as you probably don’t want anything over 15 dBA. By all means, do not buy any SilenX fans as they have a very bad reputation.

Sound Card: HT | OMEGA CLARO Plus+ 7.1 Channels PCI Interface Sound Card $175

You probably don’t need one, but if you wanted an actual sound card with higher sound fidelity and options, I recommend these sound cards. I have one from them and it actually makes a difference.

Software

Operating System: Windows 7

I recommend Windows 7 because thanks to the large user base, a lot of software is made for it. For me, the driving factor is iTunes. If I had a Linux setup, I wouldn’t be able to listen to music on all the networked computers. This of course assumes that you can get it for free because there’s no way I’m paying for Windows.

Media Player: VLC, Windows Media Center, and Hulu

Windows Media Center is actually pretty good, especially compared to Mac’s Front Row. There’s a Netflix plug-in, but unfortunately no Hulu plug-in. You can use VLC to play everything since Windows Media Player doesn’t have all the right codecs. I recommend downloading VLC and Hulu through Ninite.

Codecs: CoreCodec CoreAVC, Combined Community Codec Pack, Media Player Codec Pack

CoreAVC is the best codec for viewing your H.264 files if you’re on an NVIDIA GPU, otherwise it doesn’t really matter. These two codec packs will make sure you’ll be able to view all the files you want on Windows Media Player and Center, though I still have some trouble with it. Always use VLC as back up.

Encoding: Handbrake

Simply the easiest and quite robust method of encoding your DVDs or Blu-Rays. Keep in mind that encoding is a long process. Expect to spend at least twice the length of the movie on the encoding process. Download Handbrake through Ninite and read my encoding guide for details.

DVD Ripping: DVD Decrypter

Simply the simplest and free way of ripping a DVD onto your hard drive. I recommend doing this before encoding with Handbrake.

Alternatives

Apple Mac Mini $690 – If you’re lazy, don’t care for storage or CPU power, and want something beautiful, by all means get a Mac Mini. My favorite aspect of buying a Mac is the retail value. In 3  years you’ll still be able to sell your Mac Mini for at least half the price.

Other sockets (LGA 775, AM3) – You can save some money by changing the sockets, but you’ll still be paying at least $50 for a motherboard and $100 for a decent CPU. I recommend an AM3 socket since the LGA1156 socket is going to be replaced soon.

Dual Core’s – If you don’t play on encoding, consider getting these dual core i5′s and i3′s. You can even try using the integrating GPU’s for displaying your media, but you might experience moments of lag. You’ll save at most $100 moving to dual cores, especially when you’re buying a quad-core for only $200.

Ebates

Make sure you sign up for Ebates so that you can get 2% of all your purchases from Newegg. It’s not much, but every penny counts! And just for signing up you’ll get $10 if you purchase using Ebates within 30 days. You have no risk!

My OCD kicks in when I see someone’s Gmail account with thousands of unsorted e-mails. Gmail is the most efficient mail client ever designed by man kind, yet people don’t know how to use it efficiently. It saves a lot of time if you spend a little time setting up Gmail. I literally spend less than 10 minutes a day checking and replying to my e-mail not because I don’t receive any, but because I set my Gmail so that I know which ones to automatically discard and which ones are important.

1. Archive EVERYTHING and NEVER delete. You have gigabytes of storage on your account. E-mails are ridiculously tiny. You should never delete anything unless you are close to this maximum limit which is impossible unless you’re extremely popular or you’re sharing files. Your inbox should always be empty by archiving all the e-mails you’re done reading or don’t care to read. Your inbox should only have e-mails you have not processed yourself.
2. Star your important e-mails, but still archive them. This is useful since your inbox won’t be cluttered and you can easily find these e-mails by typing “is:starred” in the search field.
3. Setup labels. This is Gmail’s version of folders except e-mails can have more than one label. There are only two folders in Gmail: inbox and archive. This is how my left menu looks like with all my labels. Notice that you can rearrange your menu on your left.
4. Setup filters. You can create specific criteria so that Gmail will label them correctly. The criteria can be: From (sender), To (recipient), Subject, Has the words, Doesn’t have words, and Has attachment. Most of my filters are either from sender (for example @berkeley.edu or specific people. I only wish you can filter groups of people…) and subject (for example e-mails with a [MATH228A] tag). This is why I wish grouped e-mails have tags in the subject line (for example [HOC] in the header). After you create the filter, you can choose what you want Gmail to do with e-mails that match the filter. For e-mails you don’t care for, Skip the Inbox and archive it. Otherwise, I would apply a label. The best part is that you can retroactively apply the filter to the e-mails you already have . For example, I automatically archive all e-mails from “CALmessages@berkeley.edu” since, as an employee of UC Berkeley, I’m unable to unsubscribe from the mailing list and, to me, it’s equivalent to spam.
5. Organize your contacts. Gmail makes it ridiculously easy. Gmail remembers everyone you’ve ever contacted and clicking contacts allows you to choose who to put on your contact list. The best part is that if you take some time to make everyone’s name accurate, there’s a simple “Find & merge duplicate” function that saves so much time and effort.
6. Setup Microsoft Exchange with your smartphones, e-mail clients, address books, and calendars. I have another blog post that covers this for smart phones. This will automatically sync all your e-mails, calendar, and address books with your Gmail account and, for iPhone users, push notifications. You will never worry about losing any data ever again unless Gmail somehow fails.
7. Create unique Gmail addresses simply by adding a + after your account name. For example, I would register for Reddit under the account name jongleberry+reddit@gmail.com. It will still go to my jongleberry@gmail.com e-mail address, but I would be able to filter it by to: jongleberry+reddit@gmail.com. This is helpful if you’re getting a lot of spam as you would know where they are coming from.
8. Similarly, you can create unique e-mail addresses by adding periods in your e-mail address. For example, jongle.berry@gmail.com is equivalent to jongleberry@gmail.com.
9. Unsubscribe from all your mailing lists. Alternatively you can filter them, but I prefer just to be unsubscribed. You can easily do this by searching “unsubscribe” and unsubscribing from every single spam mail you get.
10. Find useful gadgets from Google Labs. These can be found and installed on the settings page in Gmail. My favorites are Hide Counts and Multiple Inboxes. Hide Counts simply streamlines your left menu so that there’s less numbers everywhere. I’ll know that there’s unread e-mail by that label being bolded. Multiple Inboxes is especially useful since I star my important e-mails. Every time I log into Gmail, I’ll see both my inbox and my starred e-mails. There are countless possible gadgets that you can install to make Gmail more efficient for you, but these two suffice for me.
11. When writing e-mails, press the “pop out” button so that you’ll compose the e-mail in a new window. This is helpful when you’re replying to a long e-mail and you want to read what the e-mail says while you write.
12. You can easily manage multiple e-mail accounts. I have all my e-mails forwarded from my Berkeley e-mail to my Gmail. The best part is that I can by default send either from my Gmail address or Berkeley address. I have the option to choose every time I send an e-mail. Google also just added functionality that allows better management of multiple Gmail accounts, but I don’t see the point since I got two different Gmail accounts so that they’ll be separate. These options can be found in Settings -> Accounts and Import.
13. Make sure you go to Settings -> Web Clips and uncheck “Show my web clips above the inbox”. These are basically advertisements from Google and to me is spam.

These are the only tips I can think of right now. Let me know if you can think of any others.

I recently just built two of these $800 custom built computers for two of my friends. These are the recommended parts from Newegg and Amazon. Why these two stores? They offer the best prices and best service. Amazon’s better for a lot of things because of free shipping and no sales tax in California. I would have recommended TigerDirect, but Bing no longer offers cash back for them.

For NewEgg items, please register through Ebates and use Ebates to log on to Newegg so you can receive a sign-up bonus of $10 and cash back (2% for Newegg) on your purchase. If you would like other recommendations, please ask me directly!

These are all recommended items. I would suggest getting a better case and power supply however since they generally last longer and you can re-use them in the future.

• Case & Power Supply:Antec Three Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case & Antec NEO ECO 620C 620W Continuous Power ATX12V v2.3 / EPS12V 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Power Supply $99 (Newegg). I’ve had this case before and I loved it except that it was too cluttered, so I upgraded to a Silverstone Fortress FT02. If you are looking for a better power supply, be sure to buy one that is at least 80 Plus Certified. This combo is a great value combo however.
• CPU:Intel Core i5 750 Processor 2.66 GHZ 8MB LGA1156 CPU $195 (Amazon). If you are willing to travel, I suggest you go to the nearest Micro Center and buy the Intel Core i7 870 for $200, though you’ll also be paying sales tax. You really don’t need anything better than a $200 CPU for almost anything now a days, so don’t bother. GPU’s are more important. As long as you have a quad-core with hyperthreading and turbo (this being the cheapest CPU that does), then you’re good.  Also, don’t buy a LGA 1366 platform CPU/Mobo because it’s not worth the price hike unless you want multiple GPUs, which, again, isn’t worth the price.
• Motherboard:Gigabyte LGA1156 ATI CrossFireX ATX Motherboard GA-P55-USB3 $120 (Amazon). My favorite motherboard manufacturers are Gigabyte and Asus as they are consistently reliable. Google uses Gigabyte on all their servers. P55′s are meant for quad-cores, so be sure to get a P55 chipset motherboard. If you want, you can buy a micro ATX motherboard, but there’s no point.
• GPU:XFX Radeon HD 5770 HD577AZNFC 1GB DDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card $160. If you don’t have a monitor bigger than 1920×1200 and don’t play super intense games, this is the video card for you. It’s the most power efficient video card out today.
• Ram: Corsair XMS3 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory CMX4GX3M2A1600C8 $110 (Newegg). DDR3 1600MHz RAM with 8 CAS timing. This is simply the best deal for RAM right now especially prices for 2 x 2GB sticks are almost always around this price. If you’re wondering, the MHz matters more than the CAS latency.
• Hard Drive:Samsung HD502HJ 500GB SATA II Hard Drive $53 (Amazon). There are a bunch of hard drives available, but if you’re not looking for an SSD, this is probably the best deal out there. Be sure to buy an at least 7200rpm hard drive. If you want both storage and speed, consider buying two and RAID 0 them together.

And there you have it, an approximately $740 PC not including sales tax and shipping for Newegg.

Other Optional Stuff:

• Optical Drive: SAMSUNG 24X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 16X DVD+R DL 24X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 12X DVD-RAM 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 4X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM 2MB Cache SATA 24x DVD Burner $26 (Newegg). You really don’t need any optical drives except to install Windows now a days, so I would say that this is purely optional. Recycle your old ones. Which one really doesn’t matter, so just buy one with good reviews.
• Keyboard:Logitech Illuminated Ultrathin Keyboard with Backlighting $50 (Amazon). I love Logitech keyboards. This is the sleakest one I could find that didn’t cost too much. If you’re a gamer, look at the Logitech G15 Gaming Keyboard $80 which is so good it’s actually banned in tournaments.
• SSD Drive: OCZ Agility 2 OCZSSD2-2AGTE60G 2.5″ 60GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) $140 (Newegg). If you have an extra $150 to spend, I suggest buying an SSD since it makes booting up and opening any program significantly faster. This would affect your computer speed much more than upgrading your CPU. I would also remove the 500GB Samsung Hard Drive above and replace it with 1TB+ hard drives for storage.
• Hard Drive Storage: Samsung 1 TB Spinpoint 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.5 inch Bulk/OEM Desktop Hard Drive HD103SJ $68 (Amazon). Only $15 more than the 500GB hard drive and still 7200rpm. I have two of these and you can’t go wrong with them. If you have a little more money, buy two of these and RAID 0 them together. I wouldn’t suggest anything more than 1TB right now as there aren’t any really reliable ones out yet.

Be sure to read my blog post on how to install Windows 7 for free!

Half the Facebook events I receive are where people try to get everyone’s numbers after losing their phone and somehow people are willing to post their numbers in public. I purposely ignore these invitations as retribution. Here’s a simple guide to setting up your contacts so you never lose your numbers ever again while having the most complete address book possible with minimal effort.

1. If you don’t have one, get a GMail account.
Nothing compares to Google when it comes to integration. I do have Yahoo and Microsoft accounts, but that’s only for Flickr and Bing Shopping respectively. If you refuse to use Gmail, don’t tell me because I will lose respect for you.

2. Take an hour or two and sort your contacts in Gmail.
This isn’t too hard if you never set it up, but I imported all my Facebook contacts information back when FacebookSync was legal and I had more contacts than I ever wanted. This is important because you’ll need proper names to sync your contacts with other services. This is also easy with the suggested contacts feature. And don’t use nicknames, and separate first and last names.

3. Setup Microsoft Exchange on your smartphone and on your PC.
The crucial step: this syncs your contacts, calendars, and email on your smartphone, and syncs your address books and calendars on your PC. It works for both Apple’s Address Book and Microsoft Outlook. Thus, when you set it up, all your contacts and calendars will be synchronized, and iPhones will have push notifications!

4. Download contacts from 3rd party applications.
This includes Facebook and LinkedIn. Whatever information your friends let you see, you can easily transfer it all to your phone using their applications. The only problem with this is when your friends don’t use their real names.

5. Go to your GMail and reorganize your contacts.
Use “merge contacts” since you’ll probably have a lot of duplicate entries. Finally all your contacts will be organized, the same address book will be available to you on all your devices, and you’ll never lose your contacts again.

Even if your smartphone doesn’t have data service, you can use wifi once in a while to sync your contacts.