Cheap, low power media PC

[Allen]

Very relevant, bluray, mkv etc... use either vc1 or avc.

You could always go down the route of an underclocked pentium e2xx0 or low power athlon dual core.
I remember on toms ages ago they compared watt at idle and load and the underclocked amd actually beat the atom, just requires faffing in bios. Don't know how much amd itx boards are, but I think they always come with a decent on board gpu and the athlons and pentiums can be had for £30 new or less than £20 second hand.
Could always opt for a matx board, they are very cheap and I think the cases can be cheaper too. Also means you can grab a dvdrw for £10 instead of the £30+ external drives usually cost.

Just throwing a few more options out there for you.

AMD mITX boards can be had with 780G or 785G chipset if you hunt around - they'll be about £100 though. The obvious chip to pair one with would be this Athlon II X2 250u - 1.6GHz dual core @ 25W. It may take some additional undervolting as well, if you're lucky


Hmmm, if you're looking for a bargain, just found this: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/191713 - it's a socket 775 mini-itx motherboard with PCIe x1 for the bargainous price of £37.58! Couple it with a low spec Core 2 Duo or Celeron, and a PCIe x1 graphics card, and you're cooking
p.s. it also looks (from this Zotac information sheet) like it will accept Zotac's ION upgrade card, which is basically the same as the one from Scan, only a little more expensive - although at least it's actually in stock!

Didn't think of this... it may suit me fantastically. I have an E2180 in my current setup and am really wanting to upgrade it to a Core 2 Quad, so could use this chip in the HTPC. Thanks for the idea chaps!

Will look into those options scaryjim, cheers. Never heard of ZOTAC though, they any good? And a silent GPU would be best, so may hunt around for another option.

[scaryjim]

Zotac are reasonable - they produce one of the most popular s775 mITX boards in the 9300-WiFi, as well as a budgetish range of NVidia graphics cards. I've not heard much bad about them as a company.