HTPC - Spec Me

Soldato
Joined
30 Dec 2004
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Location
Stoke-on-Trent
Looking to spend £300-350 on a htpc, needs to have audio over hdmi and a bluray player and is from scratch.

Any suggestions?
 
i would say that's pushing it a bit.

Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H AMD 780G Micro-ATX £62.26
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4800+ 2.50GHz £50.51
OCZ 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-6400C4 Dual Channel Platinum £35.24
Samsung SpinPoint F1 1TB £98.69
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 80GB £25.84
Pioneer BDC-202BK 5x BD-ROM + 12x12 DVD±RW £85.76
Antec Fusion HTPC Case - 430HE Watt PSU £123.36

total £494.53 in shipping inc vat

you could drop the 1TB drive, use one partitioned HD drive instead of two, fined a cheep not so nice case.shop around a bit

you might also want to drop a TV card in or even two?

and a copy of Vista HP?? £70 odd
 
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Your basket
Product Name Qty Price Line Total
Gigabyte GA-P31-DS3L Intel P31 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £39.99
(£46.99) £39.99
(£46.99)
Antec NSK 4480B Mini Tower Case (Black) - 380W Earth Watts PSU £45.99
(£54.04) £45.99
(£54.04)
Asus ATI Radeon EAH3650/HTDI/256M HD 3650 256MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail £43.99
(£51.69) £43.99
(£51.69)
Pioneer BDC-202BK 5x BD-ROM + 12x12 DVD±RW Serial ATA Dual Layer ReWriter - (Black) - OEM £72.99
(£85.76) £72.99
(£85.76)
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 160GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (ST3160815AS) £26.99
(£31.71) £26.99
(£31.71)
Intel Celeron E1200 1.6Ghz Dual-Core Processor (LGA775) - Retail £25.99
(£30.54) £25.99
(£30.54)
GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-6400C4 800MHz Ultra Low Latency DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GX22GB6400UDC) £29.99
(£35.24) £29.99
(£35.24)
Sub Total : £285.93
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £12.95
VAT is being charged at 17.5% VAT : £52.30
Total : £351.18


sorry about the small HDD, i know its not ideal but i couldnt fit a bigger one in without going over budget, change to a bigger hdd if you can.

picked a e1200 over a e2160 due to budget and due to the fact that the majority of the processing work for decoding media will be done by the GPU anyways.

not sure if Graphics card has HDMI output or HDMI to DVI converter included, check before you buy, or dont check if you have one lying about spare.

get cheaper ram if you want, i picked that RAM, as it matches the stuff in your sig so it will give you a chance to replace your main pc's ram if anything goes wrong there while you send it back and with it being ram you used before, i guess you trust it.

no tv cards, OS, and other parts included as that goes too far over budget. i expect you to add them on at a later date or give us a bigger budget to play with.
 
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Honestly at that budget nothing is going to compete with a PS3 for Bluray playback, it offers pretty substantial codec support now and a really nice interface. You can always use TVersity to stream media files if they are not compatible as it'll transcode them in real time. It'll take a standard 2.5" HDD and is easy peasy to upgrade.

Its DVD playback is top notch as well as is audio support and output especially now that DTS-HD MA has been added. Oh and its whisper quiet.
 
gone back though and been a lot more brutal with this spec,

following is 20 quid over but includes os and a 500GB HD drive

Samsung SpinPoint F1 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache £46.99
Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H AMD 780G Micro-ATX £62.26
OCZ 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-6400C4 Dual Channel £35.24
Pioneer BDC-202BK 5x BD-ROM + 12x12 DVD±RW £85.76
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4400+ 2.30GHz £43.46
Compucase 6CS3 Black Midi Tower with 400W PSU £25.84
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 32-Bit Edition DVD OEM £70.49
£370.04 inc VAT

ugly, but will do the job

EDIT: that motherboard does the decoding, so you don't need a add in card, less heat equals less noise, also you have lots of room to expand into as all 4 slots are free.

EIDT2: if your planing to use an open source OS and media centre then drop the OS and replace with 2 duel channel TV tuners. then you can record 4 programmes simultaneously
 
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I spec'd this up earlier for my parents:

OCZ 2GB Kit (2x1GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 CL 4-4-4-15 PLATINUM XTC
Antec NSK1380 Black/Silver MATX Cube Case - With 350W PSU
Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H 780G Socket AM2+ onboard VGA 8 channel audio mATX Motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ 2.5GHz Energy Efficient Socket AM2 L2 1MB (2x512KB) Cache Retail Boxed Processor
Maxtor STM3250310AS 250GB SATAII 8MB Cache - OEM

£221.95

You just need to add the cheapest bluray drive to it and a OS unless you already have one. The HDD is only 250GB as I am sure you wouldn't be needing a large drive if you have a bluray player PLUS you can just stream anything else over the network. Oh and add a TV card if you need one ;)

Read/watched a few reviews on the case mind, and its supplied PSU isn't exactly quiet so something to bare in mind.
 
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