Build a HTPC £200/300

MeMeMeMe · 7 May 2010 at 20:59

I will soon be building a media player to attach to my TV. I'd like it to be powerful enough to run games at low settings.

My budget will be either £200 (or a little over - though I'm dubious it's possible to do it this cheap) or £300 - not sure yet. Can you spec me one of each?

I don't keyboard, mouse, monitor, OS, etc - just the box and the stuff inside it.

What do you suggest?

mrteabag · 7 May 2010 at 22:33

Would you consider getting an ion netbook and using the hdmi out?Ive seen youtube videos of people playing call of duty on a tv with the little things.
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=LT-020-HP

MeMeMeMe · 8 May 2010 at 00:56

Thanks for the suggestion. When my parents plan to upgrade their latop, I'll keep that in mind.
But for this role, the machine I want will sit under the TV and be plugged into a network cable. A netbook doesn't seem the right fit.

DireEmblem · 8 May 2010 at 14:10

PS3 for the blue ray/ media server connection anyone?

MeMeMeMe · 9 May 2010 at 06:35

We don't use blue ray disks, and I have a big library of PC games I can let my dad use on the HTPC - if it's a PC. For a PS3, he'd have to start buying new games - which would end up costing a lot more.

Azra · 9 May 2010 at 07:25

How "pretty" do you want it to be? A £200 budget (with current memory prices) doesn't leave a lot of room.

dazman · 9 May 2010 at 08:00

I was going thru the same decision process and ended up going with an Acer Aspire Revo nettop. Got the 250Gb Linux version for £189 and threw Win 7 on it and couldn't be happier. Virtually silent, loads of connectivity and it feeds the 42" 1080P TV in my bedroom perfectly with the HDMI port by streaming from my main rig downstairs thru powerline adapters. I got a media center IR remote (cheapy £9 one but works great) and Logitec Di Novo bluetooth desktop (BT for the range as most RF have poor mouse range) for £38 (new but Spanish with stickers on some keys) and it is a pleasure to use. If you go with this you will need to get an external USB DVD for the games. They can be had pretty cheap but I haven't bothered yet.

MeMeMeMe · 9 May 2010 at 22:55

Azra said:
How "pretty" do you want it to be? A £200 budget (with current memory prices) doesn't leave a lot of room.

It doesn't have to be pretty at all.
I was figuring that 2x1GB was going to be my limit.

All this talk of netboxes has made me remember I have an old inspiron 9100 laptop, with radeon 9800 mobile graphic card that might be worth testing out in this role.