New HTPC case

[CK1]

I have recently built myself a new Core 2 Duo PC and in the process have made all my previous components redundant. I am looking to put the old components together for a new PC to sit under my telly. the TV is a Sony 40W2000 with a resolution of 1920x1080 via HDMI.

I have a Socket A Asus Mobo (A7N8x-Deluxe) for my Athlon 3200+ CPU (Barton) and 1GB of RAM (PC 3200 - which I will probably up to 2GB). An MSI AGP 6600GT Gfx card, and 40GB HDD. I will need to buy a new DVD writer, and might buy a new HDD.

My main issue it with finding a case. I had my heart set on the Silverstone Grandia GD01, however I have found out that it is too deep. My cabinet under the TV has a depth of 40cm and ideally I would like a case that is less than 38cm in depth, but most ATX cases are aropund 43+ cm in depth. I would also like a case with a display and a card reader on the front. And it has to be black.

I am not too worried about the height as I have at least 20cm of space there but the unit will need to house 2 PCI and 1 AGP card. 1) the gfx card, 2) WinTV card, and 3) a wifi card (Netgear - to match the router for faster speeds).

Can anyone recommend a case for me?

Or, I could sell all my old stuff (any offers?) and start from scratch with a uATX system.

Thanks for any help.

CK

[DanceswithUnix]

You could replace the motherboard to switch to micro-atx.

Difficult to get a socket-A system quiet though, so if you can afford it I would go for a new system. An energy efficient athlon-64 on a cheap uATX motherboard will be very quiet and very fast.

If you want to display High Def stuff from DVD on that telly, then you will want a modern graphics card that can do HDCP encryption. You can get motherboards with HDCP built in, or cheap PCIe video cards but AGP takes away lots of your choices.

[Merlin4458]

prob wouldnt cost u a huge amount more than what u can sell ur stuff for (seperately)

Dances has amde a good suggestion there tbh

[CK1]

Ok - after reading that I am tempted to sell my old stuff on ebay to raise the funds and with a little extra cash I can build a uATX system.

I would like to follow the Intel C2D route but am curious about cooling the CPU as the stock cooler is quite large and probably wont fit into a uATX case. The mobile Intel C2D CPU's are very expensive, so are there any other option if I stick with Intel?

What are the coolers like with Athlon 64 Dual Core CPU's? Are they able to fit into a uATX case?

Thanks

[DanceswithUnix]

The advantage of being lower performance than core-2 duo is that the X2 range produce less heat

I use the retail AMD cooler in my Fusion uATX case.