Spec me a cheap Media PC.

Prophet · 13 Mar 2008 at 11:53

I'll hopefully be buying a 1080p LCD soon. As SD is fairly pants on LCD's I'll mostly be playing stuff direct from my PC in 720/1080 def.

What spec would I need to cope with this?

Prophet · 17 Mar 2008 at 10:21

Anyone?

nikebee · 17 Mar 2008 at 10:38

Roughly how much are you looking to spend?

Prophet · 17 Mar 2008 at 10:55

I'd say £500 at the moment.

Kamakazie! · 17 Mar 2008 at 10:58

Energy Efficient AMD Dual Core (or just a 3800+ if power consumption is not extremely important).
780G motherboard
2gig of PC5300 DDR2 ram
Blu-Ray Reader (Think there is a Pioneer one for £80)
Vista (32 or 64..)
PowerDVD Ultra (For HD layback)

You are pretty much set. The 780G integrated graphics will fully offload VC-1 and H.264 content decoding from the cpu and the mobos have HDMI ports that will carry 5.1 PCM/DD/DTS.

Prophet · 17 Mar 2008 at 11:09

Excellent mate, Thanks

spicypixel · 17 Mar 2008 at 12:35

Agreed on the AMD dual core + a 780G motherboard. Simply the best HTPC atm.

Prophet · 17 Mar 2008 at 12:36

What case would work well with this setup? I'm looking for something small and quiet.

Glaucus · 17 Mar 2008 at 12:41

Have a look at thefishdude reply in my thread.
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17853839

Prophet · 17 Mar 2008 at 12:48

I can't see any downside to this motherboard. Great spec for the price!

DizzyEgg · 17 Mar 2008 at 14:09

i'd personally go for a silverstone sugo, as i think they look slick and seem to be quite small, but i would say a case is totally up to you. antec do a nice htpc case if your going for the desktop style case.