Reubilding my capture rig: AGP/PC or USB/laptop?
 

Hello!

I have captured over hundreds of tapes so far. Now my P4/2Gb/AGP AIW capture rig went dead. I have been looking for over a year for decent AGP/LGA 775(Core2Duo) PC but it seems I am not finding it (Europe).

So I have come to conclusion whether I should now change my PC for i5/Happauge laptop or I should build new PC around Maxtor/Aja capture cards because I think I would not be able to find any 775 AGP rig in the near future (while I am having hundreds of tapes waiting).

Looking forward to your ideas.

Fix the existing PC since it was working well. When my capture PC died I bought the same exact motherboard off ebay so that my setup wouldn't change at all.

Is there are reason you're limiting yourself to only that exact board? Because there are some other modern(ish) Dual/QuadCore boards that support AGP. Europe is actually easier to find some of the ideal AGP/Core2 type boards, as it appears many (most?) were sold in Europe originally. I often see those boards from Hungary, Estonia, etc.

If I had an AIW (and I do!), I'd probably try to repair it. In fact, I'm upgrading a system right now.

If you're willing to put up with older single core P4, with IDE (or slow SATA), then you have virtually unlimited motherboard choices, and cheap. And it seems that's what you've been doing?

I have been planning to upgrade my capture rig for a while and the crash made it compulsory. I do not want to stay on P4 machines anymore because it seems that I would be able to make better investment regarding on efficiency and energy consumption with newer PC than staying on the older one.

Yes there are lot of Dual/QuadCore AGP supported motherboards available, but these are only bare boards and I have to find more components to suit them as well. Mostly these boards are worth over 100€ and not including the shipping which adds 50% to the price. Also having experiences with old stuff like this you can not never trust that they are 100% working as well. Never found any AIO build to give it a try as well. If you have any tips regarding old PC building I would read them as well.

I think it seems that I am giving a life to old i5/i7 laptop with USB-Live-2 stick as it seems that would fit my needs more than PC would do.