HTPC Part 1

Posted: June 21st, 2009 | Author: saldarji | Filed under: technology | No Comments »

I always thought that having an HTPC would save me some money because I could record programs and I might become a more efficient consumer of media. Also, by being able to record shows and play flash-based media on the big screen, I feel like I can reduce my cable spend.

I decided to build my own HTPC and learn along the way. The first step is to build the platform, so I decided to buy everything but the TV Tuner card in this go.

Case – $100
I started off by purchasing a case. After doing some research, I picked the Antec NSK 2480. It has many attractive features, such as it’s form factor (Micro-ATX). It still holds two HDs though, so I can put in a RAID. It has a decent power supply and was built to be quiet. I purchased the case for about 100 dollars at Microcenter.

Motherboard – $75
I bought the ASUS M3N78-VM with NVIDIA GeForce 8200 HDMI AMD Motherboard for this box. I liked several things about this board. First, it has onboard HDMI video capabilities, so I don’t need a separate graphics card. It is an “enterprise” edition so I figure there will be a lot of support for it out there. It is also purported to be green.

CPU - $60
I bought the AMD Athlon 64 X2 5050e Brisbane 2.6GHz Socket AM2 45W Dual-Core Processor to go along with this. I read some great reviews about this chip, and the lower power consumption and heat characteristics were what sold me.

Hard Drives – $180
I purchased two Western Digital 1TB Caviar Green Hard Drives. The purported features are: lower power-consumption, cool, and quiet.

Memory – $31
Kingston HyperX 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Desktop Memory Model KHX8500D2/1G – Retail

Cables and Accessories – $6
OKGEAR 6 ft. HDMI cable, male to male, black Model GC6HDMI1

So I spent a total of $452 for the initial build. I think that with a cable card I can keep it to under $600.

Note that the CPU came with a stock heatsink and that had thermal grease on it. Also, I decided to forgo the DVD player for this round and install from a USB stick. Lastly, I plan on using VNC from my computer to control the box, but I may end up purchasing an IR card to make things a bit easier.

The next few posts will go through and describe my findings as I build the machine. Also, I will load up a picture or two so the non-technical folks can get a sense of what I’m building…a box!

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