My Silvertone cased £500 machine,

[doublej]

Is a HTPC project ever complete ?

I'm up and running...but not finished.

HEre we Go :

ASUS M2V AM2 MOBO

5.1 onboard, - takes DDR2 fast RAM, plenty of expasion, good reputation, overclock or easil more to dual core if needed. roudn 100 USD

What I missed : Could have had onboard wif...doens't have firewire

2gb Corsair ram - always add as much ram as you can afford. It's never wasted

400GB Seagte SATA - size and price point sweet spot : 500GB was (at the time) priced at a slight premium for being hiegh end.


LiteOn 20x COmbo drive

Does everything, is fast and cheap. Support is crap. SATA is convenient

CASE : Silverstone LC10

Got lucky on Fleabay ! Verry lucky ! It's a large but excellent case - accommodates everything, looks sweet - and the VFD adds class.

Graphics - Gigabyte with Nvida 7600 GS Silent Pipe

Agaiin, I viewed this a a sweet spot.... it's quiet, can be paired with another card of the same type using SLI and plays games like Doom3 without a hitch. its possibly over specc'd for a HTPC but handle hi def material without a hiccup. Hooked up over VGA to the telly.

Tuners

Hauppauge HVR 1300

Waste of money and I dont use it Apart form the remote. Software is rubbish, I dont get DVBN-T, co-ax connections dont provide the quality i like. A bad buy, not necessarily a bad card.

Technotrend - DVB-S 1500 basic budget job..... very cheap. Works a treat. Worked first time - but software isn't pretty. Also handle data if you had satellite netowrking.

I didn't add a CI card slot - but i can cheaply and easily do so. At the moment, I have a splittler on the satellie feed - and it seems to use the card in my sky box....... experimental at the moment . Its doing more than i expected but i dont know why.

Wht else ?

A Keysonic wireless keboard with touchpad................lovely - if slightly cheap feeling laptop size keyboard let s me surf from the sofa

I used a Tagan 420 PSU - quiet, incredibly high quality, incredibly flexible. Most impressed by what i though would be the dullest component.

I added a FP34 front panel - takes USB, FIrewire(See note earlier) head phons SD cards etc etc all at the front - so can easily charge stuff from it take pocket media - etc etc. Great buy

Cooling

I cool the chip with a regular fan. and the psu has fans. I have no case fans - because i ordered the wrong size........................it's running so well without them, i'm not going to include them.


Building it

Very easy. Little need for documentation - but component selection meant there'd be no problem. Most of the connectors these days only fit one way - it's called Poke Yoke - they are so designed that you cant get uit wrong. I avoided RAID, which would have added complexity - but thats an option Id consider for Performance and resilience.

I use regular 54g wifi to provide all the media to the house. This is just about enough. I can stream a movie from PC to PC - but theres no room for annything else. - so I might go for for one of themutlichanel versions that are available.


My other big constraint is, i only have a half meg internet connection provided my my company. I could just use a little more

happy to take questions....sorry its such a rush job,.

JJ