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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Scythe42" data-source="post: 1020083" data-attributes="member: 95833">For power consumption and save of energy costs Intel is the better choice. AMD is very poor when it comes to performance per watt. The TCO for AMD is too high give the rise in power prices in the last couple of years. Don't take an i3, take an i5. Better price/performance ratio. Going i3 is saving on the wrong end. H77 chipset should be ok, but Z77 is also fine. I highly recommend ASUS mainboards compared to Gigabytes in the last couple of years. Take the one that suits your general connection needs the most and don't worry much about the chipsets. For your usage H77, Z77 or Z75 make no difference at all. The main difference are in PCIe here: H77 = 1x16, Z75 = 1x16 or 2x8, Z77 = 1x16 or 2x8 or 1x8 and 2x4. So comes down to the numer ob PCIe Slots you need/want to have. In general the CPU is not very important, the GPU is way more important. Integrated GPUs will only take you to a certain level, but all enough for your requirements. For starters integrated is OK, but you probably want to upgrade to something dedicated. So no need to buy it directly, but keep this in mind when planning your budget in the future. For HTPC GPUs always use ATI at the moment. They are more HTPC friendly. Also the latest series has some great new features for HTPC usage but are very pricey. But hey, wait a year and buy them cheap. The integrated sound chip of the mainboard does not matter. You will no use it anyway as you are using a HMDI connection of a dedicated GPU anyway, which is usually a RealTek chip. So don't care what's on he mainboard. Does not make a difference for your usage anyway. And they suck all, but you probably won't hear the difference anyway unless you connect headphones directly to the HTPC and not using an AVR. RAM: don't worry about the timinigs, just take the cheapest Kingstons you MB can handle and put as much in as possible and your budget allows. Buy them in Kits, so they match. RAM timinigs are not critical for a HTPC here. But you want as much RAM as possible for general usage. You can never have enough.</blockquote>

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