HTPC advices please

I would like to built a HTPC with £1000 budget, what sort of spec, manufacterer hardware and stuff do I need?:mexican:

Start by picking out a case that you like. HTPC cases are expensive and you should really decide on this first to see how much you have left to spend. £200 is not unreasonable for a decent case.

Then you want to get near-silent everything. Passively cooled VGA card, some variable speed zalman cooler for the CPU, a quiet DVD drive (very difficult, check the thread not far below this one), a decent Freeview card (or 2), at least 1 GB of branded RAM (preferably 2GB)....then see whats left for motherboard and CPU :)

www.avforums.com has a good HTPC forum and QuietPC.com I can recomend for parts, including the case.

Plan this through well, or you might be disapointed.

I saw some case from silverstone i.e. L16M, i'm expect to get a good PSU with it, RAM will denitely go for corsair brand, just wondering on the motherboard, cpu and graphics card. I'm using a 32'' LCD hd ready, is there anywhere to get a good hdmi pci output card? or a decent graphics card will do the same job?

Sapphire, MSI and possibly Gecube (if memory serves) are the only people to have released HDCP-compliant graphics cards.

They are few and far between.....a quick search pulls back (from www.overclock.co.uk)

1. Sapphire X550 256MB - £52

2. MSI RX850XT 256MB - £235

HDCP compliance will be needed if you ever want to watch movies via a HD-DVD or BluRay PC-based player when they become available.

Motherboard, just buy any good solid board that has the features you want. NForce4 (ABit or Asus) would probably be a safe bet.

Also, seeing as this system is looking like a High-Def video HTPC, the faster the CPU, the better :)

Zalman has their HTPC range of products including the PC case.. Have been raved about during its preview not too long ago. Not sure whether its here yet.. Ohh.. and the HTPC case will even fit a CNPS9500..

The rest of the bits, probably 7900GT on a VF900-Cu if u do some gaming, or a measly passive 7600GS would do just fine.. they sell for like £80..

The rest of the bits will probably revolve around some 120mm SilenX fans to iterate air flow inside the case.. and some fan bits that probably came with the Zalman HTPC case..

Then throw in a 2x250GB Samsung Spinpoints.. dead silent..

with a £1000 budget you should be laughing!

case: several are available (silverstone, zalman, ...) which come with VFD and remote already built in, some cases are basically high quality desktop ATX cases, others are smaller, sleeker, but possibly require special psu's and require better heat control.

graphics card: an AIW card is a decent bet, especially if you require video-in, although I am unaware of any HDCP cards available (I read an article on the inquirer about an x1600 pro with hdcp/hdmi that might be on the horizon) but remember that you can always upgrade this part! Some of the more recent AIW cards have freeview receivers, older (9800-era) cards seem to be analogue only afaik. Not sure of the nvidia equivalents...
N.B. if your graphics card is passively cooled using huge heatsinks and you're using a slimline case double check that the heatsinks won't hit the case...

cpu: cool'n'quiet and powerful enough for your most demanding application...
dual-core if possible, and with your budget easily accounted for! socket 939 (or new lower-power AM2?) or a Pentium D. You might have to investigate undervolting/clocking the cpu to reduce heat/noise...on the single-core front the best options is probably a pentium M


for more advice go have a look on http://www.tomshardware.co.uk and http://www.anandtech.com - both sites recently did how-to's no building your own HTPC ;)


edit:
http://www.anandtech.com/multimedia/
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/2005/1..._theater_pcuk/ <-- this might be the one you want to read...

edit2: more links...
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/2006/0...ap_with_gb_uk/
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/2006/0...der_part_1_uk/
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/2006/0...der_part_2_uk/
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/2006/0...anza_part1_uk/
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/2006/0...l_equation_uk/
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/2006/0...aganza_part31/

If you have money think about mobile CPUs.

Intel Core Duo T2400 Socket479, Yonah, 1.83GHz, 2MBCache, FSB667 Retail £205.61
AOpen i915GMm-HFS i915GM, S479, PCI-E (x16), DDR 400 / DDR2 533, SATA I / II, SATA RAID, uATX £168.03
2GB (2X1GB) Corsair Value Select, DDR2 PC4200 (533), 240 Pin, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 4-4-4-12 £113.33
SilverStone "LASCALA" LC14B-M (Black) with VFD/IR & Remote Aluminum Front & SECC Body D/top(w/o PSU) £180.89
250 Gb HGST (IBM/Hitachi) 0A31636 Deskstar T7K250, SATA300, 7200 rpm, 8MB Cache, 8.5 ms, NCQ £61.09
256Mb Sapphire ATI X1300 PRO DDR2 VGA TVO DVI PCI-E Retail £58.68
Leadtek WinFast DTV1000 T Digital TV Card £35.64
Samsung SH-W163A/BEBN Black SATA 16x16 ±R Dual Layer DVDRW Writer OEM £28.38
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro - P4 up to 4.4GHz - S775 £15.08

Total £869.34

Be careful. I'm not sure that the T2400 and the i915GMm will work together. It was made for Pentium M and I think there are some socket differences even though they use the same # of pins. There is an Asus that should work, N4L-VM DH, which is also cheeper.

thanks everyone, looks like i've to do more survey or research on them before i go :)