I am looking to replace the inards of my current HTPC and have come up with the following based on a recent CustomPC article.
Gigabyte GA-P31-DS3L iP31 £40.86
OCZ 2GB Kit (2x1GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 CL 4-4-4-15 PLATINUM XTC £32.00
Intel Pentium Dual Core E2180 2GHz Socket 775 800MHz FSB L2 1MB £44.22
Sapphire HD 3450 256MB DDR2 VGA DVI TV Out PCI-E Graphics Card £24.09
Zalman CNPS7500-CU LED Socket 478, 775, AM2, 754, 939 & 940 CPU Cooler £24.59
Cart total inc vat: £165.76
I already have the following
Silverstone LC16B-MR Black Desktop
Xilence XP480-12R Power 480W Quiet PSU
Netgear PCI WG311TGE Adapter 108Mbp
Samsung SH-S202N/BEBN 20x DVD±R
Samsung Spinpoint 250GB HDD
Keysonic KB-ACK-540RF v2 Notebook
Microsoft LifeCam VX-3000 USB2 Web
I mainly use this PC webcaming the in-laws in South Africa and streaming movies from my PC upstairs. I want to be able to play hi def stuff, i.e. 1080p and want to know if the system will cope OK. My old system manages 720p OK but really struggles with 1080p.
If the CPU manages to do all of this without a problem then I am not to bothered about overclocking it as my main priority is to keep the noise down, hence the passively cooled video card.
Please let me know your thoughts
Regards